Jabotinsky_commentary_On-Zionism
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Part of On Zionism
Commentary
Vladimir Jabotinsky, “On Zionism,” 1902. Commentary by Brian Horowitz
In 1902, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Russian-Jewish writer and later leader of right-wing Zionism, was not known as a politician. Readers of Odessa’s leading newspapers praised him as a brilliant stylist and essayist who regularly published lively and caustic feuilletons. He wrote about everything—the weather, politics, school curriculum, the wealthy and the poor, books, opera, theater—anything and everything. But then, seemingly out of the blue, in September 1902, he wrote a piece, “On Zionism.” Ostensibly it was a response to a critical article on the subject by Iosif Bickerman in the populist journal Russkoe Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth). It was surprising that someone like Jabotinsky would seriously engage the subject. One would expect that Jabotinsky, an assimilated Jew, would agree with Bickerman. However, Jabotinsky tore into Bickerman, accusing him of offending everything sacred to a Jewish person! He formulated a defense of Jews as a nation with an irrevocable right of return to their historical patrimony, Eretz Israel, in order to develop a unique Jewish culture there through the mode of the modern Hebrew language. These ideas seemed so unlike the decadent Jabotinsky that Zionists in the Odessa cultural circles, such as Yehoshua Ravnitsky, were confused and elated.
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It seemed a great catch for the Zionist movement that such a talented writer as Jabotinsky had joined the ranks. Indeed, Jabotinsky put into his mellifluous voice the ideas of spiritual Zionist Ahad Ha’am, arguing that the land could transform the Jews today as they had once been transformed in the distant past. In coming years, Jabotinsky helped build Zionist culture with his translations of Hayim Nachman Bialik into Russian. His advocacy for Hebrew in the diaspora was also significant. His talent as a writer of feuilletons attracted readers to the Zionist newspaper, Rassvet, which was published from 1904 until 1934, first in St. Petersburg and then in Paris.
“On Zionism” is central to Jabotinsky’s development because it was his first serious political credo and signaled his intellectual future. Previously an aesthete and an admirer of Alexander Pushkin and Edgar Allen Poe, from 1902 on he turned to nationalist politics, Jewish issues, socialism, the Bund, and liberalism. Once he found Zionism he never looked back, investing his efforts to promote it.
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. He denounced the Bund (Jewish socialism) and Territorialism, he launched a damning critique of anti-Semitism in Russian literature, and fought with colleagues over Jewish school curriculum and the centrality of Hebrew study in the diaspora. Incidentally, during the 1970s among the Refuseniks in Soviet Russia, many told me that Jabotinsky had been the reason for their decision to devote themselves to Jewish causes and become prisoners of Zion. His good writing combined with his politics proved irresistible.