(First President of the State of Israel. 1874-1952). Typed Letter Signed, written in German to Rabbi Yitzchak Unna of Mannheim, Germany.

WEIZMAN, CHAIM.

5th June

London

1934

On official letterhead of ‘The Jewish Agency for Palestine: Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews’.

The present leThe present letter is part of a lengthier dialogue between Weizman and Unna regarding the religious environment (or lack thereof) that German youth were exposed to while working at Kibbutz Ein Harod. More broadly, the letter signifies the increasingly diverging poles of Jewish leadership, with the secular Zionist Weizman at one end, and the traditionalist rabbi Unna at the other. Responding to Unna’s accusations that Weizman knowingly allowed religious youth to be sent to a settlement with a secular agenda, Weizman countered: “It is not possible to create volunteer opportunities for German children in Palestine that accord to every shade of opinion in Germany… It is up to the parents… to find out beforehand if the character of the education the children will receive corresponds to their ideals…’. R. Yitzchak Isak Unna (1872-1948) headed the non-isolationist German Orthodox camp, under the banner of the ‘Association of Traditional Torah-Abiding Rabbis.’ In 1935 he left Germany and settled in Jerusalem.