Published: 15 September 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
IN THE WINTER of 1926-27, Chaim Weizmann fell in love. Vera, his wife and the mother of his children, was sufficiently far away for him to allow himself to woo another woman unabashedly. And not just any woman, but the star of Habima Theatre, Hanna Rovina.
Weizmann, who would go on to become Israel’s first president, was captivated by the first lady of the Hebrew theatre, 14 years younger than he, after attending a performance in New York by Habima of The Dybbuk, in which she played the lead.
(It was only the following year that the Hebrew-language company, which had been founded in the Russian Empire in 1912, moved to Tel Aviv.)
Shortly afterward, he sent to her hotel a box of citrus fruit from Palestine – gifts he had brought with him across the ocean for close friends and others whom he wished to impress. In the note that he attached, he suggested that the two meet soon. How soon? Two days later.
FULL STORY This founding father of the Jewish state was a serial cheater who hated Israel (Haaretz)
Photo: Chaim Weizmann (David Eldan/GPO)
