| Notes |
Baron Edmond de Rothschild
Dorothy’s father-in-law, Baron Edmond de Rothschild of France, began making philanthropic investments in Palestine in the late 1880s, having visited Jerusalem with his wife Baroness Adelheid in 1887. He helped establish some of the first settlements in Eretz Israel and went on to join forces with the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA). Indeed, in doing so, he massively bolstered PICA’s ongoing work.
Under Baron Edmond’s leadership, PICA’s many activities included the establishment of over 40 agricultural settlements and of key industries such as the flour mills in Haifa, the salt works in Atlit, and Haifa’s fertilizer and chemical plants. Likewise, cuttings from the Rothschild vineyards in France were used to help establish Carmel’s Rishon LeZion Wine Cellars — and thus laid the foundations for the country’s wine industry, which today comprises dozens of commercial firms producing world-class wine.
During the Great War (1914-1918), Dorothy’s husband James — French-born and Cambridge-educated — was mobilized into the French army, leaving the London-born Dorothy to replace him as the intermediary between her husband, his father, and the London-based Zionist leaders headed by Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow.
As a result of James’s war-related injuries and prolonged convalescence, Dorothy became Weizmann’s ‘resourceful collaborator’, according to historian Simon Schama. ‘Young as she was’, he writes in Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel, ‘she combined charm, intelligence and more than a hint of steely resolution in just the right mixture to coax commitment from the equivocal, enthusiasm from the lukewarm and sympathy from the indifferent.’
In Chaim Weizmann, The Making of a Statesman, biographer Jehuda Reinharz describes Dorothy as Weizmann’s ‘trusted collaborator’, crediting her with making the connection between Weizmann and the families of both Walter and Charles Rothschild. Or as Schama puts it: ‘Through tireless but prudent social diplomacy she had managed to open avenues of influence and persuasion at a time when they were badly needed.’
Very early on, writes Schama, Weizmann enlisted Dorothy ‘as a vital link between himself and the higher echelons of the Anglo-Jewish and British non-Jewish notability’. In this way, Dorothy was delivered into the maelstrom of Zionist politics. |