2008 Woodie Awards
A President Passing
Reflections Occasioned by the Death of Ezer Weizman
Shalom Carmy
Issue date: 5/16/05 Section: Opinion
Constitutional monarchs in waiting spend a lifetime preparing for the job that may never arrive. Other ceremonial heads of state, like the Presidents of Israel or Ireland, are plucked from the midst of active life, usually professional politics, and deposited in an office that promises prestige but little power.
For decades Chaim Weizman was a dominant figure in Zionist politics. By the 1940's the more militant Ben-Gurion had pushed aside the aging Anglophile Weizman. When the Knesset voted for the first President, the ailing Weizman was the obvious majority choice; the right nominated the nationalist historian Professor Joseph Klausner as his opponent. But Ben-Gurion frustrated his erstwhile rival by ensuring that his powers were carefully restricted Upon his death, Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, an elderly, bookish colleague of Ben-Gurion, became the second Israeli head of state; reelected to another five-year term, he too died in office.
His successor, Zalman Shazar (Hebraized from the initials of his original name Shneur Zalman Rubashov), like Ben-Zvi, was a politician-intellectual. He had co-authored the first Hebrew textbook of Bible criticism, served as editor of a party newspaper, published poetry, and during a mercifully short term as minister of education, was a notoriously poor administrator. As president, he hosted intellectual evenings, and made much of his warm feelings towards religious tradition; when in the United States, his visits to the Lubavitcher rebbe often made the news. I recall shaking hands with him in the shul where he marked the first Friday night after his election.
From that point the presidency, ceremonial as it was, declined in prestige. I say this not out of nostalgia for Shazar who, with his heimish dignity, was the model president of my childhood. First of all, the Israeli head of state's constitutional exercise of power gradually became less free. His most important political function, similar to that of the British monarch, is choosing the prime minister. One of the most fascinating essays in Andrew Roberts' Eminent Churchillians describes the king's reluctance to send for Churchill-too melodramatic, emotional and stubborn to the royal taste-- in 1940 when Neville Chamberlain resigned. In theory, the president of Israel may invite any member of Knesset to form a government that can win a vote of confidence. Even today, after a close election or other crisis, this gives the president significant power to affect events. Yet a president who nowadays insisted on his legal right to overlook the leader of the largest party in the Knesset in favor of another candidate would simply be incredible. Limiting the president to two five year terms, in place of the routine reelections that virtually ensured lifetime tenure, likewise diminished the patriarchal charisma of the position, as also occurred with respect to the Chief Rabbinate.
Secondly, pride in the Israeli presidency, like that of other symbols of the first Jewish state in two thousand years, lessened over time. R. Lichtenstein once observed, apropos the enthusiastic reception David Ben-Gurion received at YU in the 1950's, that one could not imagine this happening for any Israeli statesman, even one universally acclaimed, in the 1980's, not because Yeshiva had turned away from Zionism, but because the excitement of the early years cannot be duplicated.
Lastly, the "politics" in the selection process became more overt. Prime Minister Begin publicly revealed that he wanted a Sefaradi President, and nominated a not particularly distinguished individual for the post. The Knesset, in secret ballot, rejected his choice. Since then men like Yitzchak Navon and Chaim Herzog have made the presidency the capstone to a luminous, respected career. Nonetheless, the sense that such distinction is inevitable has permanently departed.
II
Shaya Lerner asked me to comment on the recent death of Ezer Weizman, nephew of Chaim, who was Israel's president in the 1990's. Weizman was elected in the twilight of a remarkable military and political career, yet in crucial respects he diverged from the pattern sketched above by way of introduction. As a personality, he belongs less with the tame Shazars and Herzogs than with undomesticated, self-centered Israeli generals cum politicians like Moshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon. A sabra like them, Weizman's military aviation life started in World War II and Israel's War of Independence. Moving from the cockpit to the planning office, he was largely responsible for the development of the Israeli air force that played a major role in 1967 and subsequent conflicts.
And then, upon retirement, he entered politics, and chose to join Herut, the party of Menachem Begin, soon to become the primary component of the Likud. At that time, when the establishment was Labor, and Labor was the perpetual party of government, while the Herut leadership, condemned to be the eternal right wing opposition, seemed to comprise mainly Begin loyalists, it was a dramatic event that a military superstar cast his lot with the party, and a harbinger of its evolution into a viable contender for power. A few years later, Sharon's entry into politics was instrumental in forming the Likud. And when Begin was elected Prime Minister in 1977, it was Dayan who conferred a measure of international legitimacy on the unknown new government by crossing party lines to serve as his foreign minister.
As chairman of the Likud and its Number Two, Weizman deserves much credit for that 1977 campaign, during which Begin's heart condition cut down on his activity and aroused voter anxiety. So it was as defense minister that he took part in the negotiations that resulted in the Camp David agreements and peace with Egypt. Here he first showed himself a pragmatist and conciliator, who enabled Begin to make concessions that initially went against the grain. Depending on one's perspective, Weizman is either a hero for helping to achieve accord, or an ideologically unreliable compromiser. Eventually Begin sacked him, as he did Dayan.
For the rest of his parliamentary existence Weizman was a political maverick. He was elected to the Knesset on the Labor list, and as the leader of his own splinter party; for like Sharon and Dayan, from time to time he was attracted to the idea of a small, leader-driven party, whose platform was tailored to his views of the moment. Overall, having commenced in politics on the right, he ended up identified with the left.
One of the hot books of the past year is Anita Shapira's biography of the warrior and statesman Yigal Alon. A few years older than Weizman and Sharon, Alon, for many, was the quintessential New Hebrew Man, fair-haired, hard-working, resourceful, Galilee-bred, kibbutznik when there was peace, fighter and Palmach chief when the going got tough. Aviv Heldo ("His World in Springtime") meticulously chronicles Alon's life until the early 1950's. Shapira does not plan a second volume, to cover the second half of Alon's life, when he was a prominent minister and author of the Alon Plan. All this she summarizes in the closing section of the work. For Alon, in the eyes of the community that looked up to him, was not only a great man who died before he was old, but a tragic figure who never fulfilled his destiny, too pure to climb to the top of the political greasy pole.
In a kind of Plutarchian pairing, Alon is contrasted with Dayan, with whom he cooperated and competed from his teens on: Alon the straight arrow, forever loyal to the movement he joined and its ideals; Dayan, the individualist, always ready to break ranks and go his own way. And Shapira notes that though Dayan, unlike Alon, whose highest post was foreign affairs, obtained the defense portfolio, he too failed to reach the top: he was never prime minister and ended up in the political wilderness. The same can be said of Weizman.
Yet Weizman's presidency was hardly the quiet dignified coda typical of his predecessors. True to his nature, he injected his personality into the political arena as if he were in the thick of things, rather than on the honorary sidelines. His one big opportunity to play the dignified national unifier on the world stage, Prime Minister Rabin's funeral, was a failure: the rambling, pugnacious recollections of his murdered colleague ("Oh, we ate some good food together, and we drank some good stuff together") came across as insultingly informal. If some remember his presidency admiringly, it is because he often spoke up, not as an elder statesman, but in the voice of the annoyed citizen. When Labor was in office, he articulated the public's exasperation with the high price and negligible benefits of the Oslo Accords; when Netanyahu came in, he criticized what many perceived as the aimless obstructionism of the government's reactions. Did his scolding serve a purpose? He certainly riled the ins and cheered the outs, but I suspect that Weizman's multiple past inconsistencies encouraged many to dismiss him as a loose cannon and thus blunted somewhat the authority of his presidential convictions. Not a few were relieved when a pecuniary scandal forced his resignation midway through his second term.
"All Jews are sons of kings," but unlike royalty, most of us cannot anticipate the demands that will be made of us in the course of a lifetime. And, as we have seen, even ceremonial presidents, in time of crisis, may be called upon to act in circumstances unforeseen and marshal virtues and capacities they had not deliberately cultivated.
Like royalty, and like presidents of Israel, most of us will be called upon to deliver bland inoffensive remarks and act in dignified unexceptional ways. Rabbis, especially, are expected to fill such roles amiable and gray, as if the performance were a matter of ultimate importance, as sometimes it is. Like Ezer Weizman, be it due to inclination or the challenge of unusual situations, we often must consider whether it is indeed advisable or imperative to break the official mold. One reason to study history is the opportunity to relive first hand the variety of ways in which people at different times and places conducted their lives. We do so to know others and also to know ourselves, to prepare ourselves for the task that is surely awaiting us, poised to pluck us up from the predictable course we thought would be ours forever.
Rabbi Shalom Carmy is assistant professor of Bible at Yeshiva College and editor of TRADITION.
For decades Chaim Weizman was a dominant figure in Zionist politics. By the 1940's the more militant Ben-Gurion had pushed aside the aging Anglophile Weizman. When the Knesset voted for the first President, the ailing Weizman was the obvious majority choice; the right nominated the nationalist historian Professor Joseph Klausner as his opponent. But Ben-Gurion frustrated his erstwhile rival by ensuring that his powers were carefully restricted Upon his death, Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, an elderly, bookish colleague of Ben-Gurion, became the second Israeli head of state; reelected to another five-year term, he too died in office.
His successor, Zalman Shazar (Hebraized from the initials of his original name Shneur Zalman Rubashov), like Ben-Zvi, was a politician-intellectual. He had co-authored the first Hebrew textbook of Bible criticism, served as editor of a party newspaper, published poetry, and during a mercifully short term as minister of education, was a notoriously poor administrator. As president, he hosted intellectual evenings, and made much of his warm feelings towards religious tradition; when in the United States, his visits to the Lubavitcher rebbe often made the news. I recall shaking hands with him in the shul where he marked the first Friday night after his election.
From that point the presidency, ceremonial as it was, declined in prestige. I say this not out of nostalgia for Shazar who, with his heimish dignity, was the model president of my childhood. First of all, the Israeli head of state's constitutional exercise of power gradually became less free. His most important political function, similar to that of the British monarch, is choosing the prime minister. One of the most fascinating essays in Andrew Roberts' Eminent Churchillians describes the king's reluctance to send for Churchill-too melodramatic, emotional and stubborn to the royal taste-- in 1940 when Neville Chamberlain resigned. In theory, the president of Israel may invite any member of Knesset to form a government that can win a vote of confidence. Even today, after a close election or other crisis, this gives the president significant power to affect events. Yet a president who nowadays insisted on his legal right to overlook the leader of the largest party in the Knesset in favor of another candidate would simply be incredible. Limiting the president to two five year terms, in place of the routine reelections that virtually ensured lifetime tenure, likewise diminished the patriarchal charisma of the position, as also occurred with respect to the Chief Rabbinate.
Secondly, pride in the Israeli presidency, like that of other symbols of the first Jewish state in two thousand years, lessened over time. R. Lichtenstein once observed, apropos the enthusiastic reception David Ben-Gurion received at YU in the 1950's, that one could not imagine this happening for any Israeli statesman, even one universally acclaimed, in the 1980's, not because Yeshiva had turned away from Zionism, but because the excitement of the early years cannot be duplicated.
Lastly, the "politics" in the selection process became more overt. Prime Minister Begin publicly revealed that he wanted a Sefaradi President, and nominated a not particularly distinguished individual for the post. The Knesset, in secret ballot, rejected his choice. Since then men like Yitzchak Navon and Chaim Herzog have made the presidency the capstone to a luminous, respected career. Nonetheless, the sense that such distinction is inevitable has permanently departed.
II
Shaya Lerner asked me to comment on the recent death of Ezer Weizman, nephew of Chaim, who was Israel's president in the 1990's. Weizman was elected in the twilight of a remarkable military and political career, yet in crucial respects he diverged from the pattern sketched above by way of introduction. As a personality, he belongs less with the tame Shazars and Herzogs than with undomesticated, self-centered Israeli generals cum politicians like Moshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon. A sabra like them, Weizman's military aviation life started in World War II and Israel's War of Independence. Moving from the cockpit to the planning office, he was largely responsible for the development of the Israeli air force that played a major role in 1967 and subsequent conflicts.
And then, upon retirement, he entered politics, and chose to join Herut, the party of Menachem Begin, soon to become the primary component of the Likud. At that time, when the establishment was Labor, and Labor was the perpetual party of government, while the Herut leadership, condemned to be the eternal right wing opposition, seemed to comprise mainly Begin loyalists, it was a dramatic event that a military superstar cast his lot with the party, and a harbinger of its evolution into a viable contender for power. A few years later, Sharon's entry into politics was instrumental in forming the Likud. And when Begin was elected Prime Minister in 1977, it was Dayan who conferred a measure of international legitimacy on the unknown new government by crossing party lines to serve as his foreign minister.
As chairman of the Likud and its Number Two, Weizman deserves much credit for that 1977 campaign, during which Begin's heart condition cut down on his activity and aroused voter anxiety. So it was as defense minister that he took part in the negotiations that resulted in the Camp David agreements and peace with Egypt. Here he first showed himself a pragmatist and conciliator, who enabled Begin to make concessions that initially went against the grain. Depending on one's perspective, Weizman is either a hero for helping to achieve accord, or an ideologically unreliable compromiser. Eventually Begin sacked him, as he did Dayan.
For the rest of his parliamentary existence Weizman was a political maverick. He was elected to the Knesset on the Labor list, and as the leader of his own splinter party; for like Sharon and Dayan, from time to time he was attracted to the idea of a small, leader-driven party, whose platform was tailored to his views of the moment. Overall, having commenced in politics on the right, he ended up identified with the left.
One of the hot books of the past year is Anita Shapira's biography of the warrior and statesman Yigal Alon. A few years older than Weizman and Sharon, Alon, for many, was the quintessential New Hebrew Man, fair-haired, hard-working, resourceful, Galilee-bred, kibbutznik when there was peace, fighter and Palmach chief when the going got tough. Aviv Heldo ("His World in Springtime") meticulously chronicles Alon's life until the early 1950's. Shapira does not plan a second volume, to cover the second half of Alon's life, when he was a prominent minister and author of the Alon Plan. All this she summarizes in the closing section of the work. For Alon, in the eyes of the community that looked up to him, was not only a great man who died before he was old, but a tragic figure who never fulfilled his destiny, too pure to climb to the top of the political greasy pole.
In a kind of Plutarchian pairing, Alon is contrasted with Dayan, with whom he cooperated and competed from his teens on: Alon the straight arrow, forever loyal to the movement he joined and its ideals; Dayan, the individualist, always ready to break ranks and go his own way. And Shapira notes that though Dayan, unlike Alon, whose highest post was foreign affairs, obtained the defense portfolio, he too failed to reach the top: he was never prime minister and ended up in the political wilderness. The same can be said of Weizman.
Yet Weizman's presidency was hardly the quiet dignified coda typical of his predecessors. True to his nature, he injected his personality into the political arena as if he were in the thick of things, rather than on the honorary sidelines. His one big opportunity to play the dignified national unifier on the world stage, Prime Minister Rabin's funeral, was a failure: the rambling, pugnacious recollections of his murdered colleague ("Oh, we ate some good food together, and we drank some good stuff together") came across as insultingly informal. If some remember his presidency admiringly, it is because he often spoke up, not as an elder statesman, but in the voice of the annoyed citizen. When Labor was in office, he articulated the public's exasperation with the high price and negligible benefits of the Oslo Accords; when Netanyahu came in, he criticized what many perceived as the aimless obstructionism of the government's reactions. Did his scolding serve a purpose? He certainly riled the ins and cheered the outs, but I suspect that Weizman's multiple past inconsistencies encouraged many to dismiss him as a loose cannon and thus blunted somewhat the authority of his presidential convictions. Not a few were relieved when a pecuniary scandal forced his resignation midway through his second term.
"All Jews are sons of kings," but unlike royalty, most of us cannot anticipate the demands that will be made of us in the course of a lifetime. And, as we have seen, even ceremonial presidents, in time of crisis, may be called upon to act in circumstances unforeseen and marshal virtues and capacities they had not deliberately cultivated.
Like royalty, and like presidents of Israel, most of us will be called upon to deliver bland inoffensive remarks and act in dignified unexceptional ways. Rabbis, especially, are expected to fill such roles amiable and gray, as if the performance were a matter of ultimate importance, as sometimes it is. Like Ezer Weizman, be it due to inclination or the challenge of unusual situations, we often must consider whether it is indeed advisable or imperative to break the official mold. One reason to study history is the opportunity to relive first hand the variety of ways in which people at different times and places conducted their lives. We do so to know others and also to know ourselves, to prepare ourselves for the task that is surely awaiting us, poised to pluck us up from the predictable course we thought would be ours forever.
Rabbi Shalom Carmy is assistant professor of Bible at Yeshiva College and editor of TRADITION.