My Father’s Favorite President
If Only We Had Him Now
Growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, I did not hear too many stories of great rabbis from my father, Meyer Oberstein, z”l. He had settled in Montgomery in 1921 and was out of the loop as far as the renaissance of Torah learning in America was concerned. However, my father still retained the sharp, logical mind of a Litvak. Instead of the gemora, he analyzed the newspaper. When I was a little boy, he used to explain things to me in great detail, since my mother wasn’t interested, and his customers in the grocery store weren’t that interested either. A recent article in Newsweek magazine brought back memories of those conversations with my father.
Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989, by Michael Beschloss, is a new book on brave leaders who changed America. In the May 14 edition of Newsweek magazine, there is a lengthy excerpt dealing with Harry Truman’s recognition of the new State of Israel, a mere 11 minutes after independence was declared in Tel Aviv. I cried more than once as I read this very informative piece, full of information I have never seen in previous accounts of this period.
Back when I was growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, my father’s favorite president was definitely Harry Truman. He told me more stories about him than even about Roosevelt. In one of the stories, one sees the hand of G-d. Let me encapsulate:
Harry Truman was an accidental president if there ever was one. He would never have been nominated in his own right, and yet, today, he is considered one of the nation’s better presidents. Roosevelt was influenced to pick him, according to my father, to get him out of the Senate, where he was investigating wartime profiteering. Truman was a machine politician from Missouri, loyal to a boss named Pendergast. But when Roosevelt died, a mere three months after being sworn in for his fourth term, this “nobody” suddenly became president.
In his article, Beschloss shows how much antisemitism still lurked in the heart of a president I always thought of as a philo-Semite, an ohev Yisrael. How did it come about, asks the Newsweek article, that Truman defied everyone and “made one of the most significant foreign policy decisions in U.S. history”?
We will never know for sure, of course, but Beschloss reveals a little known fact: For two years, a Jewish family, the Viners, lived next door to the Trumans, and young Harry not only played with Abe Viner but was the family’s “Shabbos goy.” What is well known is that during World War I, private Eddie Jacobson clerked for Lieutenant Harry Truman. As Harry wrote to his future wife, Bess Wallace, he had a “Jew clerk” running his canteen and he was a “crackerjack.”
After the war, the two men pooled their vast winnings in poker and opened a clothing store in Independence, Missouri. The store went bankrupt, but Harry and Eddie remained lifelong friends. Eddie was the one person who could walk into Truman’s office whenever he wanted, usually to share a drink and talk about the old days.
Now back to our story. In the years after the Holocaust, many American Jews realized that they should have done more to save the Jews of Europe. They determined not to make the same mistake again, and agitated for admission of the survivors to the Land of Israel, then called Palestine. In July 1946, Reform Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver “pounded on Truman’s desk and bellowed at him.” That same month, two senators from New York and a pro-Zionist diplomat named James McDonald warned the President not to abandon the Jews. All of this pressure had the opposite effect. Truman erupted, “You cannot satisfy the Jews anyway....They are not interested in the United States.”
Tactlessly, McDonald noted that FDR would have understood. Truman completely lost his temper and cried out, “I am not Roosevelt, I am not from New York...I must do what I think is right.” Truman would not be bulldozed by anyone, and had a chip on his shoulder against the arrogant and the powerful. He banned Zionist leaders from his office.
My father told me that story many years ago, when he explained to me that we were Alabama Jews, not New York Jews. This resulted from my coming home with a sefira beard, which caused my mother to think I was becoming a fanatic. My father calmly sat down and told me about how the New York Jews were different. Of course, the fact is that none of the people in the Truman story were frum, but so what? My father wanted to make a point.
Jewish leaders searched for some way to reach Truman. Our Sages teach us that “every man has his hour.” Eddie Jacobson played a vital role in the history of the Jewish people. He wasn’t an observant or learned Jew and not particularly active in Jewish organizations; he was a plain simple man. Beschloss points out that Jacobson and his wife Bluma were never once invited into Harry and Bess Truman’s home in Independence. Bess felt it was beneath her station in the community to let a Jew into her parlor. The friendship between the two men had never involved serious business, only card playing, drinking, and joke telling. The reason Eddie could go into Truman’s office if he wanted to was because he never took advantage of their friendship for personal gain.
In the summer of 1947, the national president of Bnai Brith, Frank Goldman, sought out Eddie. He wanted his help in getting back to see Truman. Eddie, his attorney, A.J. Granoff, and Goldman, sat down in a hotel in Kansas City. Eddie told them that he would never ask Truman for a personal favor but would always be glad to discuss with him “my suffering people across the seas.” This is one of the points at which I could not help but cry. This was truly the situation of am Yisrael in 1947: a few hundred thousand survivors of the Holocaust stuck in Europe and the Jewish people on the brink of despair in Palestine, and one simple Jew asked to make a difference.
I always thought that Eddie only had to see Truman once. It wasn’t so simple. First he wrote Harry a letter, which said, “Harry, my people need help, and I am appealing to you to help them.” In the State Department, however, Assistant Secretary of State Loy Henderson warned that if the U.S. had anything to do with the founding of Israel, it would jeopardize oil supplies, and “the whole Arab world would become the enemy of the United States.”
Even when Harry decided to favor partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, Henderson did not give up, but tried to make the Jewish state as small as possible. He argued that Jaffa was essentially Arab and that Arab herdsmen required the Negev desert for “seasonal grazing.”
Truman agreed to see Chaim Weizmann, who took out maps and showed him that, without the Negev, Israel would have no access to the Red Sea. At that moment, Truman was convinced to side with the Zionists, but the U.S. position continued to be touch and go. The State Department fought the Zionists with all their might. In January 1948, Henderson and the State Department thought they had convinced Truman that a Jewish State could never survive an Arab onslaught and that Palestine should be a trusteeship, not a two-state solution.
Horrified that Truman seemed to be wavering, Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist movement, tried in vain to see the President again. Truman told his aides he had seen enough Zionists. Frank Goldman of Bnai Brith called Eddie Jacobson and told him that the President was “washing his hands” of Palestine. Eddie sent a wire to Truman, in which he wrote, “I am begging you to see Dr. Weizmann.” The answer was no.
Eddie Jacobson then took a plane to Washington. Remember, this was a “pashute Yid,” a simple, unlearned Jew, who rose to the occasion. He entered the office, and Truman said,” I know what you are here for, and the answer is no.” Truman bellowed that the “Eastern Jews” had slandered and libeled him since the moment he became president; he didn’t want to discuss Palestine or the Jews.
Jacobson was dismayed. He felt “shocked” and “crushed” that his “dear friend” was “as close to being an antisemite as a man could possibly be.”
Now, what would you have done if you were Eddie Jacobson? I believe that G-d came to his rescue at that moment, putting the proper words into his mouth. Harry Truman had a statue of Andrew Jackson on his desk; Jackson was Truman’s hero. This is what Jacobson said: “Harry, all your life you have had a hero. Well, I have a hero, too, the greatest Jew who ever lived Dr. Chaim Weizmann. He is a very sick man…but he has traveled thousands of miles just to see you. Now you refuse to see him because you have been insulted by some Jewish leaders.”
I cannot record Truman’s exact words, as they were curse words, but he gave in. On Thursday, May 18, Weizmann was slipped into the Oval Office. Truman couldn’t pronounce his name – he called him “Cham” – and whatever Weizmann told him, I do not know. But the result was that Truman promised to support partition, asking that it be kept a secret, especially from his own State Department.
There is more to the story, and Truman’s decision could have unraveled at any moment. Clark Clifford, Truman’s aide and advisor, pressed for recognition of the Jewish State. However, the Secretary of State, the great General Marshall of World War II fame, threatened not only to publicly oppose the President but to vote against him in the upcoming election if he recognized the new state.
Truman was very unpopular at that time, and nobody thought he had a chance to win the election in 1948. Every poll said he could not beat Dewey. Did he support Israel to get the Jewish vote, or did he do it because it was the right thing to do? I don’t know, but Truman lost New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan anyway. The Jews split their vote, with many voting for the leftist splinter party of Henry Wallace, and Strom Thurmond pulled away some of the southern states, but Truman won anyway. G-d was on his side, even if the ultra-liberal New York Jews voted for Wallace. Such ingrates!
Eleven minutes after the proclamation establishing the State of Israel, Truman spoke from the White House and recognized Israel. At that very moment, at the United Nations, the U.S. ambassador was opposing statehood and proposing trusteeship, leading to an embarrassing moment when he got a note that Truman had gone over the heads of the entire government and recognized the Jewish state.
A short while later, Stalin recognized Israel also, but that is a different story.
Chosen as the first president of Israel, Weizmann invited Jacobson to New York. When his airport limousine approached the Waldorf Astoria Hotel where Weizmann was staying, he noticed a huge crowd staring up at the flag of Israel flying next to that of the United States. (The Waldorf always flies the flag of a head of state who is staying at the hotel.) Jacobson later wrote, “I stood on the sidewalk like a fool and cried and cried and cried.”
President Weizmann presented President Truman with a sefer Torah in the Rose Garden of the White House. “Thanks,” said Truman, “I’ve always wanted one of these.”
It is interesting to point out that Chaim Weizmann led the Zionist Organization for many years. He was the one who had secured the Balfour Declaration from the British way back in 1914, which led to Britain holding the Palestine Mandate, and Weizmann was the one who convinced Harry Truman to go against everyone and recognize the new Jewish State as soon as it was declared. Yet, his long-time rival, David Ben Gurion, refused to let him sign the Declaration of Independence of Israel, with the phony excuse that he was not in the State at the time it was declared. Itche Meyer Levin, the brother of the Gerrer Rebbe got to sign it as a representative of the Agudah, even though he was in Jerusalem, not in Tel Aviv, at the time of the declaration of the State, but Weizmann was excluded. To me, this shows a character flaw in Ben Gurion and in all those around him, who did not respect Weizmann’s invaluable role in the founding of Israel.
Like all of his contemporaries, Weizmann had gone to cheder in his youth – he was from Motel, Ukraine – but he went off to university as a young boy and married a woman, Vera, who was very secular. Weizmann was not frum his whole adult life. Interestingly, though, when I visited his museum, it showed that when he died, he was looking into a machzor open to “Unesaneh tokef.” Maybe he had a hirhur teshuva, thoughts of repentance, in his last moments.
Chaim Weizmann and Eddie Jacobson were G-d’s messengers to bring our people some solace after the great destruction. Without them, who knows what might have been?
I cannot leave this topic without recounting the one time my father really got mad about something I told him from yeshiva. I was repeating what is standard dogma, that Esau hates Jacob, and will until the end of time. My father was the coolest head I ever met; he had the patience of Job. My mother had a different temperament, but she could never get my father riled. He would tell me, “She doesn’t mean it; it’s her nerves.” This was the one time I saw him loose his cool.
My father said that statements like mine cause the gentiles to hate us. He said that, back in Poland, Jews used to spit when they walked past a church. Gentiles were not inherently our enemies, and that he had benefited from fine relations with them ever since he came to America. We have to expunge such prejudice from our minds.
He was definitely an apologist for Roosevelt, saying that, under the circumstances, Roosevelt couldn’t do more. Maybe my father was wrong, but he felt strongly that antisemitism is not a given, and that overreacting to it would only make things worse. I think most Jews of his generation and background felt that way.
So how would he explain Harry Truman’s newly revealed antisemitic outbursts? He probably would have said, “He didn’t mean it; it was his nerves.” He would have blamed the “New York Jews,” who were insulting and pushy and treated him with disdain.
Abba Hillel Silver was a Republican from Cleveland (not in New York, but who is being particular) and a fan of Senator Taft, no friend of Truman. Thus, he may not have been the right spokesman for the Jews at that moment. I think my father would have put Truman in the context of his times and excused his outbursts, because, in fact, he helped the State of Israel. Jews have to stop being so thin skinned and learn how to live with gentiles and show them we are not what they have heard us to be. Racism and prejudice had no place in my father’s mind.
Later in his life, Truman was very proud of his decision to recognize the State of Israel. As a boy, he had been an avid reader, due to the fact that his poor eyesight prevented him from playing sports. He knew about Cyrus the Great of Persia, who had enabled the Jewish people to return and rebuild the Temple. Truman started to think of himself as a modern-day Cyrus the Great.
In my opinion, based on my upbringing, of course, I think that we sorely need a president like Truman today. His use of the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands of American soldiers from fighting house to house on the mainland of Japan. His Marshall Plan after World War II was the opposite of the disastrous punishment of the defeated nations after World War I. By rebuilding Germany and saving Europe for democracy, he showed himself to be truly a man of vision. Truman single-handedly abolished segregation in the armed services and opened up opportunities for people like Colin Powell, who could never have become leaders were it not for Truman’s courage in defying the prejudices of the South and even of his own background to begin the process that would eventually open up the American dream to people of color. He had the guts to fire the popular General MacArthur when he defied him, and show who was the boss. He was a real leader, who did not shirk from making decisions and letting the chips fall where they may. “The buck stops here” was his credo, and he was one of our better presidents.
One more thing: Truman’s come-from-behind victory over Dewey in 1948 was one of the greatest election stories in American history. My father marveled at how Truman fought on despite all the polls, despite all the negative feelings of his fellow Democrats, and despite the fact that two splinter parties divided the Democratic vote. His whistle-stop tour of the United States won him the election under the radar, while the Republicans slept with overconfidence. The iconic picture of Truman the morning after the election holding up a newspaper with the incorrect preprinted headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman,” goes down in the annals of politics as a defining moment.
The present election cycle shows the dysfunction of the whole process. Who needs a two-year campaign? Why should only millionaires or those who are bought and paid for by millionaires have a chance to be president? The corrupting influence of money prevents a populist candidate like Truman – a man of the people who rose in stature as president – from getting a fair chance. We need a president we can respect. Doesn’t America deserve better?
