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1. Nahum Goldmann Jewish and Zionist Statesman—An Overview
- State University of New York Press
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1 ( Nahum Goldmann Jewish and Zionist Statesman—An Overview Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel M any of the chapters included in this volume share a propensity to comment on the diverse and frequently clashing characteristics of Nahum Goldmann: on the one hand, the charming diplomat and the bon vivant who enjoyed the pleasures of life; on the other, the political loner, acerbic, sharp, and unpredictable. Goldmann himself, in his various autobiographical writings1 indulged in rosy descriptions about his life and lighthearted comments on his activities and style: the game of tennis he played on that night in August 1931, after he colluded to bring down Chaim Weizmann from the presidency of the World Zionist Organization (WZO); or his extensive vacations (“Every fourteen days Goldmann takes two weeks vacations”); his many citizenships; his readiness to jump from Europe to the United States (or the other way around) for a romantic tryst.2 “Es ging ihm immer gut” (approximately , “he always had a good time”), so he described himself in his last memoir, by then well over eighty. “His life seems to have developed without too great commotions or difficulties.”3 Indeed? Or perhaps Goldmann was obfuscating and some scholars were taken in? If so, they are not alone: Goldmann’s contemporaries in the Zionist movement, and later in Israel, never really knew what to make of the man. They were in awe not only of his style but also, and very much so, of the substance: Goldmann’s uncanny ability to read a political reality still in flux and to recognize the necessary steps demanded (which were not always the conventional ones), 3 surprised and bewildered his colleagues. The more famous instances remained engraved in the collective memory of his peers, such as the partition proposal of Palestine of August 1946 or the negotiations with the Germans in 1950 through 1952. Or Goldmann’s last, longest lasting, and ultimately unsuccessful crusade: his efforts to convince the Israeli government to adopt what he considered a more realistic attitude toward Israel’s Arab neighbors. Goldmann impressed his interlocutors as too clever, apt to suggest one thing while keeping a second option (so they suspected) up his sleeve. He seemed logical to a fault on the one hand, impossible to track on the other. In the spring of 1970 he approached Prime Minister Golda Meir and proposed to meet Egypt’s President Nasser, for, well, not exactly negotiations, but at least an exchange of views that might lead to a better understanding between the sides. (“Look, Golda, what is so wrong with having a candid conversation with Nasser?”—Goldmann must have said, exuding plain good sense.) Meir, who probably saw the whole idea as a hopeless and potentially harmful ego trip, found ways to thwart the initiative—now, could it be that this is what Goldmann had been counting on all along? Goldmann was not considered entirely reliable. “I am somewhat worried about the negotiations which our friend Goldmann is carrying out in London ,” wrote Weizmann in 1948, even though he himself introduced Goldmann to the British.4 Goldmann tended to be exceedingly optimistic, thought Weizmann, and many shared that view. Goldmann, an optimist? Weizmann, apparently, no longer remembered Goldmann’s words at the Biltmore Conference in May 1942. Speculating about the dimensions of the ongoing troubles Eastern European Jewry faced (at that point, nobody in the West knew about the exact dimensions of the cataclysm happening in the Germanconquered countries), Goldmann stressed that the reality might be much worse than suspected, and that after the war the survivors would be unable to rebuild their lives and their communities. “We should not fool ourselves into escaping from the results of these facts,” he warned. On that occasion, Weizmann had been the more optimistic one. Although he feared that up to 25 percent of all Jews might perish, he drew a parallel from the experiences of World War I and had expressed the hope that Eastern European Jewry would arise again after the war stronger than before.5 Or in the late 1960s, when Israel, after the astonishing victory in the Six-Day War stood tall and proud as the undisputed military power of the Middle East, there was Goldmann fretting like a disturbing Cassandra amidst the general feeling of strength.6 And then again we see the other Goldmann, humane, tolerant, generous. His humor was famous, and some of his witticisms are still current in Israel, such as “a specialist is a person who...