Chaim Weizman, the first president of Israel (not prime minister) exchanged knowledge of acetone production for the Balfour Declaration. The British Empire could continue to make munitions when most of the world’s supply during WWI was controlled by the Germans. In exchange, Weizman received a 67 word ambiguous proclamation from the British Empire in 1917. (Oddly enough, I learned this from a British systems physiology professor in college.)

While the 67 words are written in imprecise political language raising too many questions, the upshot is that when the largest and most powerful empire on the planet viewed “with favor” Jews returning to Israel, many Jews did exactly that.

Of all the early modern Zionists, I respect Weizmann the most for his traditional Jewish values and bringing scientific research to Israel. He’s an Israeli version of Thomas Jefferson. As a Jew, he read Unesaneh Tokef as he died. As a chemist, he reminds me of a bit of my grandfather in interests and tastes, and he received some ridiculous number of patents. (My grandfather invented a blue dye which they masked rather than seeking a patent … the masking was more expensive than the dye and competitors reverse engineered it anyway.)

Chaim Weizmann’s House

Walking up to his house in Rehovot, now a museum, it smells like America. It took me a moment to realize why – there’s a well watered, large, grass front lawn of American style and nothing like anything else I’ve seen in Israel. People remember smells / are brought back to previous places by them, more than any other sense.

On a previous trip, I visited the science park where you can play with Archimedes screws, an elliptical sound reflector which reflects even whispers to a specific point for another to hear (John Quincy Adams used this effect in an elliptical Whitehouse room to spy on others), and other fun science toys. The good pictures all have my kids in them because I wasn’t thinking of blogging about it at the time. So you just get to see this short video I took at the place:

Back to Weizmann’s house … or, as it’s on my credit card bill, “Haim Vayzman”, a poor back translation of his name, the tour starts in Israel style, with a short movie before you explore. (The word in modern Hebrew is ‘siyor’ which seems to be another funny back translation as the word ‘tour’ is in the Bible).

The movie makes mention of his agreement with Emir Faisal (of a kingdom in what is now western Saudi Arabia) who had lots of nice things to say about Jews returning to Israel. Turns out his Zionism wasn’t as clear cut as I thought, having just read the article on Wikipedia about it.

After the movie, they staff gives you a card with a QR code to load a webpage with numbered locations to select, in order, to hear about what you are looking at.

Who doesn’t appreciate a good Fibonacci sequence staircase?

Henry Ford II

They have Weizman’s Ford Lincoln automobile designed for Harry Truman for which one of 18 were given by Henry Ford II to dignitaries. It had no air conditioning and apparently Henry Ford’s son wasn’t an antisemite like his rabidly anti-sematic father who wouldn’t take his company public because he couldn’t avoid Jewish investors. Jews are good at finance and science – and Weizmann helped make modern Israel what is today … a center of hi-tech (which is a word in Hebrew) for the world and a huge part of Israel’s current economy.

Side interesting fact: In 1997 Ford Motor Company sponsored all the commercials for a network television showing of Shindler’s List. No commercials during the movie – just a Ford logo during the intermission. Sixty-five million people – about 1/3 of all households in the United States – watched the movie, commercial fee. Ford wanted to do teshuvah for their namesake.

What’s in the House

Inside, the house looks like that of period houses one would find in nice homes in Europe, and for which the styles are found in similar fashions in America such as by my grandmother. There’s a little bit of seeing technology of the era … a large radio with record player, period telephone, iron, fire hazard electrical cords for light, and grandfather clock. The light switches are American style rather than the clunky huge things they use in Israel today.

From behind the line, I had to pan his desk with zoom on my camera to notice the thermometer that you see to the right which correctly measures in Fahrenheit.¹ Readers of my blog will already have been convinced is far superior to Celsius for everyday measurements not in a science lab.

Outside are grounds, which are 12 acres are flowers, plants, and orchards. Very pleasant. While Weizmann died in 1951, his wife lived there until her death in 1966 and then the grounds fell into disrepair to be revived later with things like a modern sprinkler system instead of hired household help. Sounds similar to Monticello – Thomas Jefferson’s home fell into disrepair until Uriah Levy bought it and restored it, today being a museum with hardly a mention of why the house still stands thanks to a Jewish admirer of Jefferson. Weizman is kind of like Israel’s Jefferson.