Chaim Gross historian Lewis Jacobs made a 30-minute feature of Gross carving, called "Tree Trunk to Head", showing Gross at work in his East Village studio on a portrait of his wife Renee, who models in the film. In 1949 Gross sketched Chaim Weizmann, President of Israel, at several functions in New York City where Weizmann was speaking. Gross began a portrait in clay and then traveled to Israel in the summer of that year hoping to be able to meet Weizmann and have him sit for a portrait. Weizmann was too ill, but Gross completed the bust in bronze later that
Joseph Massel of Hebrew Poets; 1725–1903". By the time Chaim Weizmann arrived in Manchester in 1904, Massel was living in a small street of the lower end of Cheetham Hill Road (where his Hebrew printing works was based) across from Red Bank and not far from the Central Synagogue. He was much part of Manchester’s Zionist community and was a vice-president of the Manchester Zionist Association. At that time he was the only person Weizmann knew in Manchester. Massel attended the First Zionist Congress (Basle, 1897) and had probably met Weizmann at the Second Zionist Congress (Basle, 1898). Showing Weizmann hospitality he