Eddie Jacobson

Eddie Jacobson’s importance lay not in public office but in a friendship that gave him access when formal channels had failed. A longtime friend and former business partner of Harry S. Truman, he became a trusted intermediary in the dispute over Palestine and the creation of a Jewish homeland. Jacobson was not a Zionist, but his concern for Jewish refugees and his confidence in Truman enabled him to carry an appeal that others could not get through.

Identity and Friendship

Jacobson’s relationship with Truman predated the White House. The two had been business partners, and by the time the Palestine question reached its most urgent point, Truman remained as fond of Jacobson as ever and trusted him absolutely. The book presents this trust as more than a private comfort: it gave Jacobson unusual political leverage precisely because he had not treated their friendship as a standing claim on the President’s time.

Jacobson’s position was not that of a Zionist advocate speaking for himself. Like many American Jews, he was not a Zionist, but he looked to Zionist leaders to address the plight of Jewish refugees and supported the cause of a Jewish homeland. He used his access to bring small groups to the White House to explain the Zionist position. After accompanying Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld and Charles Kaplan to meet Truman in 1946, he joked to reporters, “Kaplan sells shirts, I sell furnishings, and the Rabbi sells notions.” The quip framed his role as that of a practical intermediary: he could bring people with different standing and expertise into the President’s presence without claiming to be their political spokesman.

The Palestine issue had become more urgent after Britain, which had held a mandate over the territory, announced its withdrawal and referred the problem to the United Nations. The dispute involved both the future of Jewish refugees and competing proposals for the territory. Jacobson’s earlier White House visits had introduced Truman to the Zionist case, but the eventual encounter with Chaim Weizmann would depend less on scheduled advocacy than on Jacobson’s personal bond with the President.

From Access to Urgent Appeal

Weizmann arrived in New York from London ill from the strain of events, and efforts to arrange a meeting with Truman repeatedly failed. Late on February 20, while Weizmann lay in his room at the Waldorf-Astoria, Frank Goldman, president of the national B’nai B’rith, telephoned Jacobson in Kansas City and roused him from bed. Goldman said that no one, not even Ed Flynn, could move the President to see Weizmann, and asked whether Jacobson would help.

Jacobson acted directly. In a hurried letter, he asked Truman to see Weizmann as soon as possible. Truman replied in a letter dated February 27 from Key West that Weizmann had nothing new to tell him and that the situation was “not solvable as presently set up.” The reply made plain that Jacobson’s appeal had not secured the meeting. Rather than accept the refusal, he traveled from Kansas City to Washington as soon as Truman returned.

On March 13, Jacobson entered the West Wing without an appointment. Matt Connelly warned him outside Truman’s office not to mention Palestine under any circumstances. The warning reflected how sharply the subject had divided the President’s circle: Truman had been angered by what he regarded as insults from some American Jewish leaders, while officials and advisers continued to argue over the consequences of supporting Zionist proposals. Jacobson nevertheless raised the issue. Truman remained unmoved, and Jacobson later recalled being surprised at his own nerve and feeling crushed by the rebuff.

The Appeal in the White House

The turning point came through a personal comparison rather than a policy argument. On a table beside the wall stood a small bronze equestrian figure of Andrew Jackson, a model of the statue Truman had commissioned for the Jackson County Courthouse. Jacobson pointed to it and invoked Truman’s lifelong hero. He then named his own hero, Chaim Weizmann: a very sick man who had traveled thousands of miles to plead the cause of the Jewish people. Jacobson argued that Weizmann should not be refused merely because Truman felt insulted by other American Jewish leaders, and told him that such a refusal did not sound like the Truman he thought he knew.

The appeal turned an impasse over access into a test of Truman’s regard for his friend and his judgment of Weizmann. Jacobson later recalled Truman drumming his fingers on the desk, turning his chair away, and looking out at the garden. After a long silence, Truman swung around and agreed to see Weizmann. His response was, “You win, you baldheaded son-of-a-bitch. I will see him.” The book gives the pause, the turned chair, and the bronze Jackson their own weight in the scene: Jacobson’s success came not from formal authority but from finding a way to make Truman reconsider a refusal he had already put in writing.

Jacobson walked directly from the White House across Lafayette Square and up 16th Street to the bar at the Statler Hotel, where he drank two double bourbons. The detail marks the immediate release of tension after a confrontation in which he had risked pressing a close friend who had already warned him off the subject. His intervention did not itself settle the Palestine question, but it secured the meeting that previous callers and intermediaries had failed to arrange.

Consequence and Retrospective Significance

Truman later gave Jacobson’s contribution extraordinary weight. He wrote that when Jacobson finally overcame his reluctance to petition him and spoke about the plight of the Jews, he paid careful attention; he also called Jacobson’s contribution of “decisive importance,” a judgment the book notes was not widely known at the time. In 1973, Jacobson’s account of the episode appeared in the Washington Post, bringing his recollection of the White House appeal into public view.

Jacobson’s role therefore joined two kinds of influence that rarely coincide: private trust and public consequence. His friendship did not exempt him from Truman’s anger or guarantee agreement; his first letter was rejected, and his unannounced visit began under an explicit warning. What it gave him was the standing to persist and to speak in terms Truman could not dismiss as another delegation’s argument. The episode distinguishes Jacobson from a professional advocate: he was a friend whose reluctance to ask favors made this particular request carry unusual force, and whose intervention changed what Truman was willing to do next.