Gavriel Cohen’s Conversations with Isaiah Berlin
Gavriel (‘Gaby’) Cohen (1928–2021) was an Israeli historian who served in the Knesset for the Alignment and Labor Party from 1965 to 1969.
Cohen joined the Palmach in 1946 and fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In 1949 he was one of the founders of Palmachim, a coastal kibbutz some ten kilometres south of Tel Aviv, leaving to study history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1951–4 and 1956–8. He joined the Ahdut haAvoda branch of the political party Mapam in 1953, staying with Ahdut haAvoda when it split from Mapam in 1954. He married Batya Barlas in 1955. From 1959 to 1962 he studied for a DPhil – supervised by Elizabeth Monroe (1905–86) – on ‘British Policy in Palestine from the Second World War to the end of the Israeli War of Independence’ at St Antony’s College, Oxford (making further visits in later years), but did not complete the degree. It was probably during his first visit to Oxford that he met Berlin. From 1962 he taught history at Tel Aviv University (where he was awarded a PhD), becoming a professor in 1976, the year in which he published two books based on his doctoral research at Oxford, Churchill and Palestine 1939–1942 and The British Cabinet and the Question of Palestine, April–July 1943. He was Dean of the Humanities Faculty 1983–7. Thereafter he became a member of Israel’s Council for Higher Education.
In 1987–9 Cohen held a series of thirty conversations with IB in the UK, presumably with a view to writing an account of IB’s life and opinions. Illness prevented him from executing this plan, but the conversations had been recorded and transcribed, and thanks to the generous help of his daughter Ya'alah it is now possible to make these revealing conversations public.
The transcripts made for Cohen by Donna Shalev and others are in the process of being roughly edited by Henry Hardy for greater ease of reading. In order to make the transcripts available sooner rather than later, meticulous checking of the recordings word by word has been postponed. But many repetitions, false starts and garblings, and a few sensitive remarks, have already been amended or cut. Some so far indecipherable passages are indicated by ‘[?]’, preceded by a space when no provisional transcription is offered, not preceded by a space when the uncertainty afflicts the preceding word(s). The recordings are posted with enhanced treble and slightly reduced speed to facilitate decipherment.
Corrections to the transcripts are welcome.
Links to transcripts [in progress] 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Links to recordings [in progress] 1A | 1B | 1C ‖ 2A | 2B | 2C ‖ 3A | 3B ‖ 4A | 4B ‖ 5 ‖ 6A | 6B ‖ 7 ‖ 8A | 8B ‖ 9 ‖ 10A | 10B ‖ 11A | 11B ‖ 12A | 12B ‖ 13A | 13B ‖ 14 ‖ 15A | 15B ‖ 16A | 16B ‖ 17A | 17B
A story about the cassettes
A (very) short story in Hebrew by the Israeli author Aner Shalev, husband of Donna Shalev, one of the transcribers (‘Cassettes’, in his 1996 collection Overtures, 144–5), re-imagines the process of transcription, speaking of ‘the deep bass of the mysterious man from the cassettes’ and relating, entirely realistically, how the same word sometimes had to be played twenty times until the transcriber was completely sure of it. A translation of the story by Ya'alah Cohen may be read here.
Quoting from the conversations
All quotations from, and references to, the conversations should use the transcripts (where available) and not the recordings. Permission for any public use (online or in print or speech) must be sought from the Trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust.
The recommended bibliographical reference is: ‘Gavriel Cohen’s Conversations with Isaiah Berlin’ (The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library, 2023–2024, bit.ly/GC-IB, accessed [date]). References to individual conversations should add the relevant details in the form ‘No. 7, p. 23.’
© The Trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust and Henry Hardy 2023–2024
Selected topics
Conversation No. 1 | 4–6 October 1987
Transcript
Recording 1A | 1B | 1C
- Origin of interest in Russia
- Interest in opponents
- America
- New Dealers
- Churchill
- Time & Tide
- European exiles
- Freud & psychoanalysis
- Opera
- Early maturity
- Teachers at St Paul’s School
- W. F. R. Hardie
- Herbert von Karajan
- Heroes
- Solomon Rachmilevich
- The Schalits
- International Centre for Peace in the Middle East
- Raymond Carr
Conversation No. 2 | 26 October 1987
Transcript
Recording 2A | 2B | 2C
- Dorothy Hodgkin
- John Crowfoot
- Nicholas (‘Nicko’) Henderson
- Jock Colville
- Gay Marggesson
- Henry Hardy
- Reaction to America
- Liberation at Oxford
- Post-war FO offer
- Guy Burgess
- Richard Crossman
- Jews at Oxford
- 1940 trip to US with Burgess
- John Foster
- Constantine Oumansky
- Harold Nicolson
- New York
- Sailing from Lisbon to New York
- Seeing/meeting Aline Strauss
- Hans Halban
- Schooldays
- Corpus Christi, Oxford
- Leonard Schapiro
- IB’s parents and money
- Bernard Spencer
- Oxford Outlook
- Arthur Calder-Marshall
Conversation No. 3 | 15 November 1987
Transcript
Recording 3A | 3B
- Staff of Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, Oxford
- Avi Shlaim
- Benno Tzadi
- Nazi–Zionist relations
- Susan Zuccotti and Yehuda Bauer
- Marshall Pétain
- Alan and Nibby Bullock
- Alastair Horne
- Family attitude to religion
- Hasidism
- German Jews in Riga
- Russian Jews in Riga
- Riga’s unofficial ghetto (Red Dvina)
- The Schalits
- Riga chocolate-makers
- The Volshonoks
- Eating kosher
- Zionism
- Ben-Zion Eshel (Lansky)
- Bored by the Talmud
- Hannah Podzius
- Chayetta Berlin
- Yitzhak Sadeh’s wedding
- Andreapol
- Famous Yiddish joke
- Katzenellenbogen
- Moses Finley
- Return to Riga
- Anti-Semitism on the train
- Bribes
- Marie and Mendel Berlin
- Surbiton
- Early schooldays
- Babes in the Wood
- The kosher butcher
- Zionist meeting in the Kensington basement
- Kadima
- The Creditors
- Bialik and Emerson
Conversation No. 4 | 26 November 1987
Transcript
Recording 4A | 4B
- Andreapol
- Attitude of Jews to churches and priests
- Berlin’s Gentile friends in Petrograd
- Seeing the February Revolution in Petrograd
- The policeman dragged off for lynching
- Attitude of Berlin’s family to the first Revolution
- Holidays in Staraya Russa
- The October Revolution
- Synagogues in Petrograd
- The Rogatchover
- Mordehai Dubin
- Abraham Harkavy
- Leonard Schapiro in Pavlovsk
- Yitzhak Sadeh
- The Beilis case
- Pronaitis and Shmakov
- Maurice Samuel’s book on Beilis
- V. A. Malakov
- Gentiles in Andreapol
- Anglomania, Anglophilia and anti-Semitism
- Sadeh’s wedding
- Yitzhak Sadeh’s wedding and subsequent life
- Sadeh’s ugly wife (Berlin’s aunt Evgenia)
- Zionist songs
- Tabenkin, Gromyko
- Meeting Sadeh in 1947
Conversation No. 5 | 27 November 1987
Transcript
Recording 5
- Herbert Hart and the Katzenellenbogens
- Marie and Mendel Berlin and pressure on IB to study
- IB not a scholar
- Professor Kupfer in Riga, 1920
- Cramming for exams
- IB’s poor command of Hebrew and German
- Unimportance to IB of his Hasidic background
- Beit Rabi
- The Lubavitcher Rebbes
- Gentile and Jewish friends at St Paul’s
- The Goldbergs
- Halpern, Ettinghausen [Eytan]
- Rabbi Shem Tob Gaguine
- Emil Marmorstein and sex
- Duschinsky [Duchin]
- The Gasters
- Marmorstein and Kedourie
Conversation No. 6 | 10 December 1987
Transcript
Recording 6A | 6B
Conversation No. 7 | 24 December 1987
Transcript
Recording 7
- Shortage of historians of ideas in England
- No. English intelligentsia
- The Church of England
- Writing about Karl Marx
- Karl Marx
- Vittorio Strada
- Unoriginality of Russian ideas
- French versus German and English imperialism
- Herder and nationalism
- IB’s closest friends
- Freddie Ayer
- Mary Fisher
- The Lynds
- Shiela Grant Duff
- Marrying a goya
- IB’s self-belittling temperament
- His wish not to influence people
Conversation No. 8 | 8 February 1988
Transcript
Recording 8A | 8B
- Relationship with Chaim Weizmann
- Desmond Morton
- Ralph Wigram
- Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
- IB and the upper classes
- Clarissa Churchill
- Richard Williams-Thompson, The Palestine Problem
- Julian Oxford
- Mells Manor
- Bernard Fergusson
- Waddesdon and the Rothschilds
- The Club and the Other Club
- Ronald Tree
- Ditchley
- ‘They’ll kill you in the end.’
- Ernest Bevin
Conversation No. 9 | 17 February 1988
Transcript
Recording 9
- Talking to Chaim Weizmann
- Talking Russian
- New immigrants to Israel in the 1970s
- Patricia Blake and Max Hayward
- B. C. Gillinson
- The newspapers on Israel
- Weizmann’s politics and his views on immigrants
- ‘There is no bridge between Washington and Pinsk’
- Herzl and Ahad Ha'am
- Ahad Ha'am’s three major issues
- IB’s anticlericalism
- IB’s attitude to Hasidism
- IB’s unbelief (but acceptance of the religious urge)
- The Pope
Conversation No. 10 | 18 February 1988
Transcript
Recording 10A | 10B
- Julian Asquith
- Churchill and Eden
- Chaim Weizmann and the West
- Jews not having gardens
- Weizmann’s character
- Josef Cohn, Ernst Bergman
- Ben-Gurion, Sde Boker, Eilat
- Sharett’s declined invitation to IB to join the Jewish Agency
- IB’s talks to trainee diplomats in Israel
- IB offered job in Foreign Office after war
- Two groups of anti-appeasers
- Nahum Goldmann
- IB (as a child) first meets Ben-Gurion in London; subsequent meetings
- Ben-Gurion/Ben Cohen anecdote
- Artur Lurié
- Meeting Jabotinsky
- Richard Kahn
- Teddy Kollek
- Ben-Gurion in Oxford
- Maistre on war
- Ben-Gurion’s Bible class
Conversation No. 11 | 22 February 1988
Transcript
Recording 11A | 11B
- British Information Services
- The US labour movement
- American Federation of Labor, Congress of Industrial Organizations
- US union leaders
- John L. Lewis, Jay Lovestone, Communism
- Lucy Lang, Forverts
- Syndicalism
- Why IB was transferred from New York to Washington
- R. H. Tawney in Washington; the telegrams
- A Jewish army
- Israel Sieff and the transfer of Arabs from Palestine
- British attitude to Zionists; Lord Bearstead
- Alexander Halpern
- Hereditary honorary citizens
- Mark Wolff
- The Humanitarian Trust, Michael Pollack, Matthew Ginsburg
- The Hebrew University in 1934
- Einstein and Magnes
- Redcliffe Salaman, Philip Hartog
- Academic refugees in Oxford
Conversation No. 12 | 13 March 1988
Transcript
Recording 12A | 12B
- Philosophy in Oxford in the 1920s and 1930s
- The (high) status of philosophy in Oxford
- Other subjects at Oxford
- Ernst Cassirer
- History of philosophy versus philosophy
- Philosophy and rot
- Philosophical orthodoxy
- Hegelian idealists
- The Locke Prize
- John Plamenatz
- The Aristotelian Society, the Jowett Society, the Oxford University Philosophical Society
- The philosophy BPhil and DPhil
- J. L. Austin
- Hugo Bergmann
- Leon Roth and Jean Fayard’s Oxford and Margaret
- Continental philosophy
- Voting in elections: the candidates to be MP for Oxford
- How IB voted in general elections
- The Union debate on King and Country: Joad versus Hogg
- National politicians at All Souls and their guests: Dawson on Mussolini
- Men who were and were not elected to All Souls before, with and after IB
- Saul and Sol Adler
- Appeasers and anti-appeasers
- The abdication of Edward VIII
- Wykehamists, Etonians and socialism
Conversation No. 13 | 6 July 1988
Transcript
Recording 13A | 13B
- IB’s last visit to Russia, March 1988, with Alfred Brendel
- Soviet reaction to IB’s 1947 broadcast on Belinsky and his 1960 introduction to Venturi
- Brendel’s concerts in Moscow and Leningrad
- Likachev and his encounter with Gorbachev
- Visit to Sakharov and Elena Bonner; their attitude to Akhmatova
- Status of Akhmatova in the USSR
- Origin of Akhmatova’s Requiem
- Her Poem without a Hero
- Michael Straight publishes story of AA and IB in New Republic
- Akhmatova’s reaction to IB’s marriage, as told to Elena Chukovskaya
- Akhmatova’s 1965 visit to Oxford and her reaction to Headington House
- IB’s immortality in Russian literature
- Zhirmunsky’s account of the poems by Akhmatova relevant to IB
- Visit to Lydia Chukovskaya
- Herzen and Lenin
- The Herzen Museum in Moscow
- Zoya Tomashevskaya
- Pasternak’s birthday party: Voznesensky, Yevtushenko, Richter
- The man on the plane: Lenin a Kalmuck
- Constitutions, change and monism
- Origins of monism/pluralism: intellectual, moral, psychological
- Fichte and William James on philosophical beliefs and temperament
- The Roman Empire and Christianity
- The dogmatic, monistic nature of Communism
- Gorbachev not a pluralist
- Why IB didn’t read Freud
- The Church of England
- Not understanding what ‘God’ means
- The irrelevance of theology
- The interest of religion and the narrowness of bone-dry atheists
- Catholics in Oxford
- Father D’Arcy
- The absence of anti-Semitism at Oxford
- Quintin Hogg and the Nazis
- Crossman a left-wing Nazi
Conversation No. 14 | 11 July 1988
Transcript
Recording 14
- Which countries are anti-Semitic?
- Was there a Russian emigration to England?
- Other Russian Jewish families
- The annual ORT ball
- Russian friends
- Ivan Bilibin
- Anna Kallin
- The Pasternak sisters
- George Katkov
- Oskar Kraus and the Brentano archive
- Dimitry Obolensky
- Alexander Halpern, Leo Istorik
- IB’s strange retention of Russian
- His ‘Menshevik’ accent
- Nicolas Nabokov
- Irena Baruch Wiley’s salon
- Jasper Ridley and family
- Michael Ignatieff and family
- Various experts on Russia
- Aline Berlin and her Russian connections: the Ginzburgs/Gunzburgs/de Gunzbourgs
- Horace Gunzburg, Pierre de Gunzbourg
- The Deutsch de la Meurthe family
- Reading Russian books
- IB’s differing abilities in other languages
Conversation No. 15 | 17 September 1988
Transcript
Recording 15A | 15B
- Science and maths at school
- Incomprehension of economics
- Marxists and Communists in Oxford: the Pink Lunch
- Scientists IB knew in Oxford
- The case against sociology
- Getting to know T. S. Eliot
- The Criterion
- Eliot visits Oxford
- After Strange Gods and Eliot’s alleged anti-Semitism: ‘Jewish Slavery and Emancipation’
- Exchange with Koestler
- Exchange with Eliot
- Eliot on IB’s ‘torrential eloquence’
- Letters stolen from All Souls
- IB’s attitude to anti-Semites
- Eliot and the YMHA
- The effect of the creation of the state of Israel on anti-Semitism
Conversation No. 16 | 18 September 1988
Transcript
Recording 16A | 16B
- A book for Shimon Peres
- The London Library and Herzen
- IB’s talk on Belinsky
- Noel Annan and his book on British ideas
- The intelligentsia as a Russian phenomenon
- No British intelligentsia
- Boborykin, Turgenev, Annenkov and ‘The Remarkable Decade’
- Bloomsbury
- Annan’s introduction to Personal Impressions
- The letters stolen from All Souls: Bernard Berenson
- IB’s meetings with Berenson
- Berenson and Wilde
- Berenson and Yiddish
- IB’s letter to Berenson about taking ship from Naples
- Two kinds of Jews
- Hasidim versus misnagdim
- Wykehamists versus Etonians
- Smooth Wykehamists versus shaggy Wykehamists
- IB’s preference for Etonians and hasidim
- ‘The hasidim are Etonians, the mitnagdim are Wykehamists’
- The Oxford Chabad and IB
- Yehudi Menuhin, IB’s cousin
- The 1961 Tagore Conference in New Delhi
- Humayun Kabir
- Tagore as the Indian Ahad Ha’am
- Aldous Huxley in India
- Other Indians IB knew
- IB on Japanese culture
- Beaverbrook’s offer of a job to IB and his refusal
- IB’s talk on America and England in The Listener
- Reply in the Evening Standard
- IB’s other meetings with Beaverbrook
Conversation No. 17 | 22 September 1988
Transcript
Recording 17A | 17B
- Adam von Trott’s story (at some length)
- Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff meets Marx
- IB’s attitude towards non-Western civilisations: Japan, India
- Aldous Huxley
- ‘Jewish Slavery and Emancipation’ and why IB didn’t reprint it
- Keith Joseph, Arthur Koestler, T. S. Eliot
- Namier on the Jews
- T. S. Eliot and Wilhelm Busch
- Busch’s ‘Naturgeschichtliches Alphabet’
- Korney Chukovsky
- IB’s piece on Tippett
Conversation No. 18 | 24 September 1988
- [to come]
Conversation No. 19 | 31 September 1988
- [to come]
Conversation No. 20 | 6 October 1988
- [to come]
Conversation No. 21 | 16 October 1988
- [to come]
Conversation No. 22 | 29 October 1988
- [to come]
Conversation No. 23 | 5 December 1988
- [to come]
Conversation No. 24 | 16 December 1988
- [to come]
Conversation No. 25 | 31 December 1988
- [to come]
Conversation No. 26 | 8 January 1989
- [to come]
Conversation No. 27 | 15 January 1989
- [to come]
Conversation No. 28 | 20 January 1989
- [to come]
Conversation No. 29 | 27 January 1989
- [to come]
Conversation No. 30 | 28 January 1989
- [to come]
First posted 4 May 2023; last updated 28 April 2024