Talk:Chaim Herzog

Chaim Herzog visiting Beit Yitzhak in 1959 pic - wrong year
Someone just sent me the pic, but the Kid in white in the photo is wearing a Sesame Street Tshirt and these did not exist in Israel before the mid 1980's. Hanaaat (talk) 19:14, 18 March 2015 (UTC)hanaaat

Untitled
Where was he born? I've found websites claiming him for Cork, Dublin and Belfast. Does anyone know for sure?

Seabhcan 22:48, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * Please post the various links you found and I'll look into it more. Thanks! Jewbacca 22:57, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)


 * I have a link here that says "The Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin was founded in 1985 and opened by Dublin born Chaim Herzog, then president of Israel." --Irishpunktom\talk

May 2005 (UTC)
 * He was, actually, born in Belfast. However the family moved to Dublin a few months later.  Many, erroneously, believed that he was born in Dublin. To say that he was born in the UK is misleading.  --ClemMcGann 09:25, 27

Ireland
Some Jews who entered Ireland during the war years were granted citizenship in 1946, including Rabbi David Freilich, who had been living with the Herzog family. see. (The dates given for entering Ireland may be unreliable)--ClemMcGann 09:55, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Vivian Herzog
Is this the same person as Vivian Herzog, who served as intelligence officer in the Haganah in 1948? If so, this name should be mentioned in the article.

I have changed the part which says he was born in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland did not exist in 1918.

Chaim Herzog and Vivian Herzog were the same person (source: Dominique Lapierre's O Jerusalem) He was given both names at birth but was refered to largely as Vivian Herzog until 1956 (Ergo, still called Vivian during his Haganah days). While he was called Chaim Herzog in Israel, he continued to let himself be addressed as Vivian Herzog by people, especially English journalists

Chaim Herzog was born on the Cliftonville Road in Belfast in 1918 where his father Dr.Isaac Herzog was a Rabbi. A small plaque adorns the house in which he spent his early childhood. See http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk/chaimherzog.htm

I remember a radio interview in the mid 1990's in which he was asked how he came to be called Vivian by many of his English speaking friends. He claimed that during basic training when he joined the British army, the Corporal asked him his name. The Corporal looked askance when he was told Chaim. Another Jewish member of the squad said that it was Hebrew and meant life, and that Vivian would be the English equivalent. At which point, the Corporal said "Well, we are not having any expletive Hebrew in this expletive army, from now on your expletive name is Vivian."76.176.15.145 (talk) 22:57, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Chaim vs. Haim
User:Number 57 recently moved this from Chaim to Haim, citing a passing mention in an article on .gov.il as evidence that it's the official transliteration. However, Chaim is a far more common transliteration, in both official and unofficial contexts. It's the one used in his biography on the official site of the Presidency, for example, and by most English news sources. A quick google search of .gov.il shows 226 mentions of "Chaim Herzog" versus 41 of "Haim Herzog". Therefore, I'd propose moving this back. --Delirium 05:50, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I can give you two good reasons not to:
 * To make Wikipedia consistent - it is stupid to have some people with the Hebrew name חיים transliterated as "Chaim" and some as "Haim". Seeing as the latter is definitely winning these days (all but one of the "Chaims" on the Chaim page are deceased whilst most of the "Haims" mentioned on Haim are living people), Haim should be the standard.
 * More importantly, "Haim" is the correct transliteration of the name. The "ch" transliteration of ח (Hebrew letter Het - note also beginning with "h" rather than "ch") was most likely developed by Yiddish/German speakers (Ben-Yehuda himself was a Yiddish speaker), as for them it is correct, as "ch" in German (as in Ich) has the same sound as Het (this is probably also why "Chaim" seems to be used for older people's names rather than younger ones as these days more Israelis speak English than Yiddish/German). However, as I'm sure you're aware, there is no equivalent in English (ch being used for words like Church), and therefore we use "h" at the start of a word or "kh" in the centre/end. Also, the article on Hebrew transliteration shows the primary (academic and ISO) transliterations to be "h" rather than "ch" which is a secondary Israeli transliteration). It also points out in the footnotes of the table that "h" is used when ח is the initial letter. Lastly, the letter H is the actually direct descendent of ח (well, its Phoenician cousin, but it's effectively the same alphabet) via the Greek letter Eta).
 * I admit it was a mistake to cite the Knesset website, as it can be seen to be highly inconsistent (even with different spellings of the name on the same page ). Nevertheless, the fact that something has been transliterated wrongly more often than correctly does not make it right.


 * Number 57 11:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That seems to be somewhat at odds with our "use common names" policy, though. FWIW, the ch/h issue also exists in modern Greek—'ch' is the historical transliteration (developed by Germans), while 'h' is the correct modern transliteration, but we still have Chalcidice there instead of at Halkidiki and so on, though we do use the 'h' for a few names that have no historical usage. Which is inconsistent, but the least surprising for a speaker of English used to seeing whatever name is most common for the particular person/thing in question. I don't feel too strongly on the matter, but using the less common transliteration for a historical figure does seem odd. --Delirium 19:03, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The president was an English speaker and he wrote his name Chaim. None of you have the right to change that because you want uniform transliteration on Wikipedia! Unbelievable, that this should even be an issue. --Gilabrand 05:30, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the photo is too large and in-your-face. Does anyone know how to resize photos in an infobox?--Gilabrand 05:35, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * President Herzog (born in Belfast, native English speaker!) indeed spelled his name Chaim. See the cover of his autobiography in Amazon here The page should be moved back to Chaim Herzog. --Derwig 08:49, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

resize photo
The photo is far too big. Does anyone know how to resize a photo in an infobox?--Gilabrand 05:17, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Just do [[Image:XXX.jpg|200px]] to get the correct size (200 being an example). Number   5  7  16:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I tried it, but it doesn't come out right. You see wording sticking out behind the picture.--Gilabrand 17:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Where did the photo go? Epson291 (talk) 10:24, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Nationality - Israeli
Under nationality it says Israeli. Chaim Herzog was from Ireland. I am going to change it to Israeli/Irish but if you know why it does not say Irish then please tell me and you can edit it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smurkledunk (talk • contribs) 22:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * He was born in Ireland but left to fight for the creation of a Jewish state in the Holy Land as a 17-year-old. If you can find any reliable sources that says Herzog is Irish then you might have a case, but I suspect they don't exist. — Jon C.  ॐ  09:44, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you please explain why you reverted the previous edit Jon, there was no mention of him being Irish and you also removed other relevant sourced historical facts that I included, material that was not relevant to nationality.
 * I get the feeling your politics is negatively impacting your editorial judgement. ÓCorcráin (talk) 23:46, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you please explain why you feel mentioning that he was born in the UK is material that needs removing? — Jon C.  ॐ  09:11, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you please answer my question first than I will be happy to answer yours. ÓCorcráin (talk) 13:15, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * What other "relevant sourced historical facts"? I've tried but I don't see any. — Jon C.  ॐ  14:40, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You still have not answered my question. Anyway I thought it was better to leave UK in, but now you want to remove the other edit. Seriously man, the article is fine the way it is, please leave your politics out of it. ÓCorcráin (talk) 16:21, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't understand which question you mean. Anyway, my last edit wasn't removing "Irish-born", just the Britannica reference. That he's Irish born is obvious. — Jon C.  ॐ  19:16, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I am sorry I didn't see that, my browser is acting funny :), my apologies! ÓCorcráin (talk) 20:07, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Changed lede from "British-born" to "Irish-born"
He was born in Belfast, while it is part of the UK, is in Ireland not Britain. Added is the fact he was born prior to Partition and that his family were involved in Irish republican politics, the designation of British is especially dubious.IrishStephen (talk) 15:37, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

CHANGE A PICTURE
The Herzog foundation - Leah Goldberg - has requested me to change a picture. its the first pic on the page of Chaim Herzog. Thblum2004 (talk) 09:40, 29 May 2015 (UTC) The request comes from the leader of the Labor party- Chaim herzog's son, Yitzhak Herzog

the picture was shoe by Al Gilbert from Toronto and needs to be credited as such.

This is the link to the requested picture:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/132866478@N07/18039374128/in/datetaken/

thanking you for your consideration

Mark — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thblum2004 (talk • contribs) 10:33, 29 May 2015 (UTC)


 * , that photo doesn't appear to be public, so we cannot see it. In order to add the photograph to this article, you can upload it at the Wikimedia Commons upload page, but the copyright owner (in this case probably Al Gilbert) must be willing to release it under a Creative Commons license. The upload page provides more details on how that process works. —Tim Pierce (talk) 10:53, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the picture. The photographer requested the following credit be under the english and hebrew sites.

As an aside, Mr. Gilbert took another photo of Herzog which was used as an Israeli stamp back in the day. It'd be neat to see an image of that on the page too. -Gilbert Studio — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thblum2004 (talk • contribs) 18:30, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * , I've updated the author information on the original image at commons:File:Chaim-herzog.jpg to fit Mr. Gilbert's request. I am concerned, however, that there has been a misunderstanding about how the Creative Commons license works. The Creative Commons Attribution license grants any user permission to copy and reuse the photograph for any purpose, as long as the author is credited for its use. It cannot be restricted the way they have requested here ("the image is only to be used for this expressed purpose i.e. the Herzog Wikipedia page.  You do not have permission to make copies.") —Tim Pierce (talk) 21:39, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Conflict of interest statement
My surname is Herzog but I do not believe I am related to this Herzog family; however, I am Jewish so there might be some distant connection. If I find out I am related I will cease editing this page. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2016 (UTC)


 * That's respectable but if you have no contact with them whatsoever it's not really a conflict of interest... Synotia (moan) 11:36, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Born Vivian?
According to his Washington Post obituary, Herzog was given the name Vivan at birth and adopted Chaim later in life.

This is repeated in Rodney Carlisle's Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, which says Vivan "may have taken the name" Chaim around the time of the Arab revolt.

Does anyone know if there's any truth to this? Or are these authors simply getting muddled? — Jon C.  ॐ  14:23, 9 November 2017 (UTC)


 * At Irish Jewish Roots his record is called "HYMAN (CHAIM) (VIVIAN) HERZOG" but they want 20 euros for his full birth certificate and I'm too stingy. Perhaps it is available for free somewhere else. The Hebrew version of this page has a different version: "During his service in the British Army he was given the nickname Vivian (English version of Chaim), who accompanied him for the rest of his life." Certainly there is something to it but I'm not sure what. Other sources for him being Vivian from birth include the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Jewish News of Northern California. Zerotalk 05:34, 10 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I looked at his autobiography "Living history", 1st edition. On p49 he says that he was given Vivian as a nickname in the British Army in 1942-3 "and so I have remained ever since".  It would still be interesting to look at his birth certificate. Zerotalk 06:16, 10 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Now I have a copy of his birth certificate. Birthplace: 2 Norman Villas, Cliftonpark Avenue (his parents' address). Date: 17 Sep 1918. Name: Chayim. Father: Isaac Herzog, Jewish rabbi. Mother: Sarah Herzog formerly Hillman. So the many sources that say he was Vivian from birth are wrong, and there is no reason to doubt his account that he adopted it later on. Zerotalk 13:16, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

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