I am very grateful to be able to commemorate the famous letter from my forebear, Arthur James Balfour, to Lord Walter Rothschild.
Debate and controversy continue to surround the genesis and the wording of the Balfour Declaration but for myself I believe it was the end result that counts.
It was written in the wake of the pogroms, particularly from Tsarist Russia, whereby hundreds of thousands of Jews found themselves in strange lands where their customs and language were far less compatible in the countries they found than in today’s accepting interlinked, multi-cultural world.
For 30 years I have been lucky enough to travel the globe and almost everywhere I meet members of the diaspora. Not because I seek them out but because, from arriving destitute, be it in Canada or Argentina, their descendants have remarkable stories to tell leading up to successful corporations, scientific and cultural achievements wherever they ended up.
