On Zionism

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Abstract

Russian-Jewish writer Vladimir Jabotinsky shocked his readers with the feuilleton “On Zionism,” published in “Odesskie Novosti” in September 1902. A brilliant stylist and essayist, Jabotinsky used the feuilleton to defend the Jews as a nation and their right to return to the Land of Israel. “On Zionism” is central to Jabotinsky’s development because it was his first serious political credo and signaled his intellectual future. During the first decade of the twentieth century, he retained his effervescent style, irony, and spirit of vitality—the spirit of the feuilleton—but dedicated their use to Zionism.