Weizmann, Chaim (Hajjilm)

WEIZMANN, Chaim (Hajjilm). - Jewish politician, b. at Motol in the province of Minsk in 1874, d. on 9 Nov. 1952. He received his first education in the Jewish elementary school, then went on to secondary studies at Pinsk, one of the important centers of Hibbath Sijjôn (v. HÖBHÉBHE SIJJÔN).

He began his university studies in Berlin, where he became acquainted with Herzl's "political Zionism." He took part in the first Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897. Opposed to assimilation, he became a supporter of practical Zionism, and with a group that also included Solomon Rappaport, he founded the first Swiss Zionist society, hash-Shahar (the dawn), in opposition to the Zionism dominant in the West. In 1900 he obtained his degree in chemistry summa cum laude at Freiburg; he was then a lecturer at Geneva and in 1904 at Manchester, and in England he met for the first time the philosopher 'Abad hâ-'Am. An important invention in the field of explosives put him in contact with influential men of the English government, and at the time of the Balfour Declaration he carried on an intense diplomatic activity. At the same time he took part in the campaign to collect funds for the Qeren haj-jissôdh and supported the founding of the Jewish Agency. In 1928 he concluded an agreement with Emir Faisal, convinced as he was that in Palestine there would be sufficient room for Jews and Arabs.

In 1920 he was president of the World Zionist Organization; his situation, however, was not easy: Ussishkin attacked him and Jabotinsky went over to the opposition, founding the Revisionist Party (which later became the "New Zionist Organization"), which proposed a firmer and more resolute attitude toward England. In 1931 a motion of no confidence in W.'s policy obtained the majority of the Zionist Congress and Sokolow was elected in his place as president of the Organization. W. then returned to his studies, dividing his time between science and Zionist activity. In 1936 he testified before the Peel Commission, and maintained that a Jewish State comprising only a part of Palestine could absorb a great number of immigrants and would provide the means of subsistence for two or three million Jews; he nevertheless always found himself faced with the opposition of the American group of the Mizrahi and of the Revisionists. In 1947 the Jewish Agency sent him to Lake Success and he was therefore present when, on 29 Nov., the United Nations declared themselves in favor of the creation of the State of Israel. On 2 Feb. 1949 he was elected Head of the State of Israel by the Constituent Assembly convened at Jerusalem. On 3 Jan. 1946 the first stone had been laid of the Institute for Scientific Research that now bears his name.

Eugenio Zolli