Jewish Current Issues

The 242nd Year of Independence

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara attended an event in honor of American Independence Day hosted by US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, yesterday evening. From the Prime Minister’s remarks about the American-Israeli alliance:

What makes this alliance so powerful? So enduring? What makes it so? Well, one thing – common values. We have common values that are clear – it's freedom, liberty, democracy. These aren't hollow slogans. They are the bedrock of Western civilization. They're the secret of America's success and of Israel's success. . . . . We have tremendous respect for American ingenuity, for American creativity, for American mobility, for American capacities in every field.  And we know where that comes from. It comes from a free society, from free discussion. We argue about everything. Believe me, I know. We have a free press. Believe me, I know. We have free speech. We have freedom of religion. Freedom, liberty, democracy. Real values. Here's what the Liberty Bell says, inscribed on it: 'Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all of its Inhabitants'.  We know that phrase. It comes from the Bible. It comes from Leviticus. So much of America's heritage is rooted in the Hebrew Bible.

 This would be a good day to read Ron Dermer's remarkable essay, "Proud to Have Been an American," written at the time he gave up his American citizenship to become Israel's ambassador to the United States:

The United States insists that foreign diplomats working on its soil not hold American citizenship. The reasonableness of this demand makes my decision to relinquish my citizenship no less difficult. I have always been proud to be an American, and I will always be proud to have been an American.

For 33 years I have felt America's warm embrace, and I am eternally grateful for it. I was born in America, raised in America, and formed in America. I have been educated by the wisdom of its founders, inspired by the words of its leaders, and protected by the sacrifices of its soldiers.

When I think of freedom, I think of Lincoln. When I think of courage, I think of Normandy. When I think of justice, I think of Martin Luther King Jr.

America has convinced me that to achieve greatness, a nation must reconcile faith and freedom. It has taught me that the most vital asset a nation possesses is its own sense of justice. It has shown me the power of freedom to change the lives of individuals, of nations, and of the world.

America has inspired hundreds of millions around the globe who hoped to import its ideals, and it continues to do so today. But the true greatness of America lies not only in its creed but also in the people who share it. Americans are a people whose moral sense remains strong and who have been inoculated against the corrosive cynicism that infects so many who live in freedom elsewhere. As long as Americans reject cynicism, America will thrive. As long as Americans continue to be inspired, America will continue to inspire the world.

There are those who leave America because they no longer feel at home there. But I have always felt completely at home in America. I left America because I wanted to help another nation I love defend the freedoms that Americans have long taken for granted. I left America to help another people I love fight not merely for their survival but also for their right to survive.

Thousands of miles from the torch of freedom that has welcomed so many to America's shores, Israel carries the torch of freedom in the Middle East. Manning the frontlines in a war against tyranny and terror is a formidable task. But the Jewish state must also defend freedom in the face of a world that is largely shorn of a moral compass, in which a nation's self-defense is called aggression and in which terrorists and their victims are deemed equally entitled to sympathy.

It is fitting that America chose the eagle as its national symbol. The Bible says that God bore the children of Israel from slavery on the wings of eagles. Soaring higher than any other bird, the eagle carries its young on its back to protect them from the dangers below. America has soared higher than any other nation in the history of the world and protects its sons and daughters from peril. Now, with great sadness, I will leave that protection and face those perils with my new nation.

I am confident that America has armed me well for the difficult struggles ahead. It has convinced me that good can triumph over evil and that a free people, united in a common purpose, will never be defeated by tyrants and slaves.

In order to serve my new country, I have decided to renounce my American citizenship. But I will never renounce America or its people. As a faithful son of America, I will never betray its ideals. In serving the State of Israel and in working to secure our common future, I will champion those ideals all of my life.

May God forever bless America.

 

 

Philip Roth and Memorial Day

COMMENTARY played a significant role in Philip Roth’s career. In early 1957, the 27-year old assistant editor of COMMENTARY, Norman Podhoretz, was perusing the magazine’s “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts and found a piece titled “You Can’t Tell a Man by the Song He Sings,” submitted by a little-known 24-year old named Philip Roth. Podhoretz convinced his senior editors to publish it, and it appeared in the November 1957 issue of COMMENTARY. It became part of Goodbye, Columbus in 1959, which won the National Book Award, and the rest is literary history. In the following decades, Norman Podhoretz's reviews of Roth and his books at COMMENTARY (such as this and this) comprised some of the most trenchant literary criticism written in those years.

This past week, as readers mourned Roth’s passing, there has been a mini-debate about which of his books was his best. Most of the short lists included The Plot Against America, Roth’s novel imagining what might have happened had Charles Lindbergh run for president in 1940, won election as an anti-Semitic isolationist, negotiated an “understanding” with Hitler, and brought fascism to America. Several pages into the novel, which is structured as a memoir, the narrator recalls his false sense of security as a Jewish youngster growing up in America:

Israel didn’t yet exist, six million European Jews hadn’t yet ceased to exist, and the local relevance of distant Palestine (under British mandate since the 1918 dissolution by the victorious Allies of the last far-flung provinces of the defunct Ottoman Empire) was a mystery to me. When a stranger who did wear a beard and who was never once seen hatless appeared every few months after dark to ask in broken English for a contribution toward the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, I, who wasn’t an ignorant child, didn’t quite know what he was doing on our landing. My parents would give me or Sandy a couple of coins to drop into his collection box, largess, I always thought, dispensed out of kindness so as not to hurt the feelings of a poor old man who, from one year to the next, seemed unable to get it through his head that we’d already had a homeland for three generations. I pledged allegiance to the flag of our homeland every morning at school. I sang of its marvels with my classmates at assembly programs. I eagerly observed its national holidays, and without giving a second thought to my affinity for the Fourth of July fireworks or the Thanksgiving turkey or the Decoration Day double-header.

“Decoration Day” was what Memorial Day was generally called before World War II, celebrated every May 30 until Congress moved it to the last Monday in May, to create a three-day holiday.

Making Memorial Day part of a long weekend has had the unfortunate effect of in many cases relegating it to a vacation rather than focusing on it as a day of memory. As Meir Soloveichik notes in the June issue of Commentary, it is “observed by many (though not all) Americans as escapes from work, and too few ponder the link between the sacrifice of American dead and the freedom that we, the living, enjoy.”

Roth’s novel showed how (in Sinclair Lewis’s phrase) it might have “happened here.” But the book was fiction, and the historical fact is it didn’t happen here. Eventually more than 400,000 Americans died in World War II to make sure it didn't, and to secure our extraordinary freedoms. The list of American casualties in various other wars is also stunning. In its legislation, Congress designated the minute beginning at 3:00 p.m. (local time) on Memorial Day each year as the “National Moment of Remembrance”. We owe all of those who died in our defense much more than that.

A Benediction for the Ages in Jerusalem Today

We have been following Pastor John Hagee at Jewish Current Issues for more than 10 years.

In 2006, he established the “Nights to Honor Israel” that have raised millions of dollars for Israel, and commenced the annual Washington, D.C. Summit of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) that brings thousands of Christians every year to Washington to study issues relating to Israel and then spend a day lobbying Congress on those issues. Back in 2006, he described what he had decided to do:

And I said we will do a Night to Honor Israel in every major city in America . . . and they all of them stayed, and that’s how I knew God was in the house.  And I said we’re going to go to once a year to Washington and take as many of our leaders as we can.  We’re not going to stand out on the grass and sing “Amazing Grace,” because Congress could care less about “Amazing Grace.” 

They only care when you go in their offices, look them in the eye and say “I’m a Christian and I support Israel” and you give them a list of talking points for every one of them, and every senator and every congressmen hears the same message from Americans from Maine to California on one day. . . .

He has held hundreds of "Nights to Honor Israel" since then, and CUFI has held its Washington summit every year. The next one is July 23-24. CUFI now has more than 4 million members, dwarfing the membership of AIPAC.

Today, more than a decade he established CUFI, Pastor Hagee stood in Jerusalem and gave a benediction for the ages. Here is the transcript (the video is here):

“Our most gracious Heavenly Father, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God who calls the stars by name, and measures space with the span of his hand, the God who is the King of the Universe, we gather here today to thank you for the joy of living and seeing this glorious and historic day.

 

“We thank you for the State of Israel, the lone torch of freedom in the Middle East, who lives and prospers because of your everlasting love for the Jewish people.

 

“It was you, O Lord, who gathered the exiles from the nations and brought them home again. It was you who made statehood possible. It was you that gave a miraculous victory in 1967 when Jerusalem was re-opened to worshippers of all faith.

 

“Jerusalem is the city of God. Jerusalem is the heartbeat of Israel. Jerusalem is where Abraham placed his son on the altar on the Temple Mount and became the father of many nations. 

 

“Jerusalem is where Jeremiah and Isaiah penned principles of righteousness that became the moral foundations of Western Civilization. Jerusalem is where Messiah will come and establish a kingdom that will never end. 

 

“We thank you, O Lord, for President Donald Trump's courage in acknowledging to the world a truth established 3000 years ago that Jerusalem is and always shall be the eternal capital of the Jewish people. 

 

“And because of that courage of our president, we gather here today to consecrate the ground upon which the United States Embassy will stand reminding the dictators of the world that America and Israel are forever united. We thank you for our Ambassador David Friedman, and pray your anointing upon him as he opens the doors of the US Embassy to receive the nations of the world.

 

“Let the word go forth from Jerusalem today that Israel lives! 

 

“Shout it from the housetops that Israel lives!

 

“Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message—Israel lives!

 

“Let it be heard in the halls of the United Nations—Israel lives!

 

“Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran—Israel lives! 

 

“Let it be known to all men, that Israel lives because, ‘He that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.’

 

“As King David prayed 3000 years ago, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all its inhabitants.

 

“Let the name of the Lord be glorified today for the defender of Israel today, tomorrow and forever is here! Can we all shout hallelujah! Amen!”

 

-- Rick Richman, author of The Race Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler.

 

70 Years of Jewish History in Los Angeles

 On May 10, 2018, American Jewish University held a dinner on the occasion of its 70th anniversary, and honored the Los Angeles families that were its Founders, back in 1948, the same year that the State of Israel was declared.

The following is the address given at the dinner by Dr. Robert Wexler, President of AJU for the last 25 years -- an extraordinary summary of an extraordinary story. He graciously names the many people who played key roles over the years, while modestly omitting his own major contribution: 

 In 1930, a young Israeli named Shlomo Bardin made his way to Denmark to study the Danish folk high schools.  These special high schools were created to overcome a strong cultural assault from nearby Germany and to instill a sense of national pride in Danish youth.

 

So impressed was Shlomo Bardin by what he saw and heard, that he began imagining how the principles of the Danish folk high school could be applied to the education of young American Jews.  Bardin developed an educational philosophy that focused on the need to provide Jews with key educational and cultural experiences that would link them strongly to their own Jewish heritage.

 

Just about the same time that Bardin was pondering the future of American Jewish youth, Dr. Mordecai Kaplan was writing his masterwork, Judaism as a Civilization, which he published in 1934.  Kaplan broke new ground when he insisted that Judaism should not be viewed only a religion but was rather as an entire civilization that included religion, language, ethics, literature, art, and music.

 

 Both of these profound thinkers, Bardin and Kaplan, shared a similar philosophy of Judaism, and they were both instrumental in creating the institution that is now known as American Jewish University.  Both Bardin and Kaplan were deeply committed to the notion that Jews could simultaneously be “good Jews” and “good Americans.”  Bardin went so far as to claim that, “there is no conflict between American democratic ideals and Jewish ideals.” 

 

He also said, “The richer the cultural and spiritual content of American Jewry, the greater its self-respect and dignity.”  Mordecai Kaplan could easily have said the same thing.

 

           Already in 1930, Shlomo Bardin was introduced to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.  Brandeis had become an ardent Zionist, but he was also concerned about the new generation of young, American-born Jews who knew little or nothing about their Jewish heritage.  These Jews were rapidly assimilating into the American mainstream, and the question now became whether they would retain the Jewish loyalties that characterized the generation of their parents.

 

           The collaboration between Bardin and Brandeis led in 1941 to the establishment of the Summer Camp Institute in Amherst, New Hampshire. 

 

By 1943, the program moved to Winterdale, Pennsylvania, and it was renamed the Brandeis Camp Institute.  Bardin was ready to expand his operations to other parts of the country, and he began a correspondence with Julius Fligelman, a prominent Jewish leader on the west coast.

 

           Gradually, with Fligelman’s help, a plan was put in place to open a Brandeis Camp Institute in southern California.  Land was purchased in the Simi Valley, and in 1947, the Brandeis Camp Institute made the big move to California.

 

           Meanwhile, with the influx of so many Jews into Los Angeles after World War II, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the central institution of Conservative Judaism, also began to feel the need to establish a presence in the West. 

 

Almost simultaneously, the Bureau of Jewish Education in Los Angeles recognized the need for a school that would prepare Jewish teachers for the expected growth in the population of Jewish children.  Initially, the plan called for an inter-denominational institution of higher Jewish education that would also include the Orthodox and Reform.  Extensive discussions along this line took place, but the plan for an inter-denominational, pluralistic institution did not pan out as the Reform leadership decided to establish their own west coast branch of the Hebrew Union College.

 

           Mordecai Kaplan had long dreamed of remaking the Jewish Theological Seminary in line with his vision of Judaism as a civilization.  This is what Kaplan had to say about the type of school he wanted “…a kind of institution of higher learning…Instead of being a theological seminary fostering a specific denominational view of Judaism, that institution should be an American Jewish University which would do the organized thinking and planning for American-Jewish life. ” 

 

As you just heard, Kaplan spoke of his ideal school as an “American Jewish University.”  Nevertheless, that is not the actual name he proposed.  Instead, Kaplan wanted JTS in New York to rename itself “The University of Judaism.” Of course, as we known, this suggestion was rejected, and instead, the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Bureau of Jewish Education partnered to actualize Kaplan’s dream in Los Angeles by establishing the University of Judaism.

 

The UJ’s first campus was at 4^th and New Hampshire at the original site of Sinai Temple.  Later the school moved to Ardmore Avenue, then to Sunset Boulevard, and finally to Mulholland Drive in Bel Air.

 

Both institutions, the Brandeis Camp Institute and the University of Judaism grew rapidly.  The two organizations had a tremendous amount in common—they shared faculty like the gifted musician, Max Helfman, and dance pioneer Benjamin Zemach; they shared scholars and administrators such as Dr. Alvin Mars, Dr. Bruce Powell, Rabbi Daniel Gordis Dr. Samuel Dinin and Dr. Max Vorspan. 

 

And, of course, there was also significant overlap in lay leadership starting with Julius Fligelman who served as an early board chair of both institutions.  Other shared board members included Ed Meltzer Sr., Max Laemmle, Max Zimmer, Frank Horny, Paul Lehmann, Willard Chotiner, and producers Dore Schary and Milton Sperling.

 

           Shlomo Bardin led Brandeis-Bardin until 1976.  At the University of Judaism, the founding president Dr. Simon Greenberg, was succeeded by Dr. David Lieber, who served as president for 29 years from 1953-1992.  Both institutions also boasted two long serving board chairs—Judge Joseph Wapner at Brandeis and Jack Ostrow at the University of Judaism.

 

           In 1953, Brandeis Bardin established Camp Alonim which for 65 years has been the cherished summer home of thousands of inspired and devoted Jewish youngsters.  In 1956, the University of Judaism established its own camp, Camp Ramah in California.  

                  

Expansion followed expansion, and the UJ created its Graduate School of Nonprofit Management in 1979, followed by the undergraduate College of Letters and Science in 1982 and the Ziegler Rabbinical School in 1996.

 

           In 2006 the Brandeis-Bardin Institute and the University of Judaism decided to take the plunge and become one institution, and that brings us to today’s celebration, as we recognize 70 years of history.  Two institutions developing along parallels lines with complementary visions of the Jewish future, finally joined together to become the American Jewish University.

  

 

 

 

Israel at 70: The Second and Third Israeli MIracles

The Jewish Journal has published my article entitled “The Second and Third Israeli Miracles," a reflection on the 70^th Anniversary of the State of Israel.

Here are opening paragraphs:

Much of the commentary on the 70^th anniversary of Israel’s founding has focused on the miraculous re-creation of the Jewish state after 1,878 years, on the same land where Jewish kingdoms had existed for centuries, with Jews speaking the same language in 1948 that they spoke in the first century, when the Romans exiled them from their land.

But there was another miracle in 1948. David Ben-Gurion described it in an essay he wrote in 1954, when Israel was six years old, entitled “The Eternity of Israel.”

The second miracle, Ben-Gurion wrote, was the extraordinary Jewish unity on May 14, 1948. Zionism had never been a single ideology. The movement included very disparate factions -- Labor Zionists, Religious Zionists, Socialist Zionists, Revisionist Zionists, General Zionists, Cultural Zionists – and the conflicts among them had been fierce.

But every group signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence after resolving a final, seemingly intractable issue: some of the Zionists insisted that the document express thanks to God, while others were adamantly opposed, since they thought the Jewish state was solely the result of human effort, in a world where God was either indifferent or did not exist.

Ben-Gurion managed a compromise through the use of a skillful phrase. In its final form, the Declaration expressed the signatories’ faith in the “Rock of Israel.” It was a phrase that could be read as a reference to God – or rather as a metaphor for Jewish national strength.

The third Israeli miracle is almost the opposite of the second. Continue reading by clicking here.

D'Var Torah, April 14, 2008, Sinai Temple

    A few weeks ago, Jason Kahan asked me if I would give a brief D’var Torah, and I said “Of course, I’d be honored.” Then I looked at what I thought was today’s portion, and it was all about leprosy, skin diseases and menstrual purity. And I thought, “This is going to be the briefest D’var Torah in the history of the Men’s Club.”

     But I discovered that it is actually next week’s Torah portion, and today’s portion is Shemini, which is one of the richest in the Torah. It includes Moses’s instructions about sacrifice and ritual; the harrowing story of Aaron’s sons, who offered “alien fire” to the Lord and were immediately struck dead; Aaron’s heartbreaking silence about it; the Lord’s words to Aaron afterwards; and then the extensive laws of Kashrut -- what we can and cannot eat.

    So I could keep us here for quite a while.

    But by mistakenly reading next week’s haftarah, I came across a story I think provides an insight into the laws of Kashrut, and it will let me keep this D’var Torah pretty brief.

    The laws of Kashrut seem both inexplicable and ineffective. We can eat chickens and turkeys, but not eagles and pelicans. We can eat cows, but not pigs. We can eat seafood, but only if they have fins and scales. We can’t ever mix milk and meat. What is the rationale of these rules? What good do they do?

    To understand Kashrut, it may help to consider not the rules, but rather the ritual. Perhaps what the ritual of Kashrut does is continually remind us that we can make each meal holy. That we are more than what we eat. That we cannot always get what we want, but we can get what we need. These are lessons that can enrich our lives.

    In next week’s haftarah, there is a story about an Aramean army commander, who had leprosy. He’s advised to go see the prophets of Israel, who it is said can cure him. So he sets out on his journey, with 6,000 gold shekels and 10 changes of clothes, and gives the money to the King of Israel, who refers him to the prophet Elisha.

    Elisha tells him, “bathe seven times in the Jordan River, and your flesh will be restored.” And this enrages the commander, who says, “I thought he would invoke the name of his God and wave his hand and cure me. I could have stayed home and bathed in the rivers of Damascus.” You can almost hear him saying, “For this, I paid 6,000 shekels?!”

    The haftarah recounts that his servants calm him down by saying, “Sir, if the prophet told you to do something difficult, would you not do it? How much more when he has only said to you, ‘Bathe and be pure’.” So, the commander immerses himself in the Jordan, seven times, and the haftarah says he was cured.

    Like the advice the Aramean commander got from Elisha, the rules of Kashrut are not difficult. They are a symbolic way of making ourselves pure. They remind us that we must be holy because the Lord is holy. They can help cure us of the disease of taking things for granted.

    And they reflect not simply the advice of a prophet, but the wisdom of the Lord, and they are given to us for free -- and are worth far more than 6,000 shekels,  because they can help us, if we respect the ritual, to lead a richer life. Shabbat Shalom.

-- Rick Richman

"David Ben-Gurion's 1940 Mission to Rouse the Fighting Spirit of American Jews"

MOSAIC MAGAZINE has published an excerpt from my book, Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler, which will be published by Encounter Books on January 30, 2018:

In 1940, as millions of Jews came under Nazi control in the countries conquered by Hitler, and as the route to safety in Palestine remained closed by the British Mandatory power, three of Zionism’s greatest leaders traveled to America. They came at different times, on separate missions, but all three—Chaim Weizmann, the president of the Zionist Organization, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement, and David Ben-Gurion, the Labor Zionist leader who headed the Jewish Agency in Palestine—shared a single goal: to win support in America for a Jewish army to fight the Nazis alongside the British.

This article focuses on Ben-Gurion, the last to come. Writing to his wife Paula before leaving London for the United States, he said he wanted “to see with my own eyes what we can expect from America in wartime.” In particular, he wrote, “I want to know the extent of the contribution America’s Jews are prepared to make for the life of their own people.”

Ben-Gurion would remain in America for four months, on a visit that—like those of his two predecessors—would reveal a great deal not only about American Jews but also about their Zionist visitors. The following brief account draws on Ben-Gurion’s diary, translated into English for the first time, as well as on letters and other contemporaneous documents, most of them previously unpublished.  [CONTINUE READING HERE].

Racing Against History hit No. 6 on the Amazon list of best sellers in New Releases on Jewish History yesterday, prior to its actual publication. 

A Monumental New Volume on Hasidism

 

From Princeton University Press, Hasidism: A New History, written by an international team of scholars, including David Biale UC Davis), David Assaf (Tel Aviv University), Benjamin Brown (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Uriel Gellman (Bar-Ilan University), Samuel Heilman (Queens College), Moshe Rosman (Bar-Ilan University), Gadi Sagiv (Open Univeristy of Israel, and Marcin Wodzinski (University of Wroclaw), with an Afterword by Arthur Green. Here is the publisher's description of the book:

This is the first comprehensive history of the pietistic movement that shaped modern Judaism. The book’s unique blend of intellectual, religious, and social history offers perspectives on the movement’s leaders as well as its followers, and demonstrates that, far from being a throwback to the Middle Ages, Hasidism is a product of modernity that forged its identity as a radical alternative to the secular world.

Hasidism originated in southeastern Poland, in mystical circles centered on the figure of Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, but it was only after his death in 1760 that a movement began to spread. Challenging the notion that Hasidism ceased to be a creative movement after the eighteenth century, this book argues that its first golden age was in the nineteenth century, when it conquered new territory, won a mass following, and became a mainstay of Jewish Orthodoxy. World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Holocaust decimated eastern European Hasidism. But following World War II, the movement enjoyed a second golden age, growing exponentially. Today, it is witnessing a remarkable renaissance in Israel, the United States, and other countries around the world.

 

The Tikvah Fund Maimonides Scholar Program for High School Students at Yale This Summer

The Tikvah Fund has posted a video for its 2018 High School Institute at Yale this coming summer.

It is one of the finest Jewish educational experiences available to high school students. The application deadline is February 16, 2018.

The program is for current high school juniors (rising seniors) "from diverse Jewish backgrounds who wish to push their intellectual limits and deepen their understanding of what it means to be both an American and a Jew in the modern world." 

Accepted students will study with some of the nation's preeminent professors, authors, theologians, and civic leaders in intensive seminars and workshops.

 

A New Book on Jabotinsky's Legacy

IN THE MAIL from Princeton University Press -- Jabotinsky's Children: Polish Jews and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism:

The author is Daniel Kupfert Heller, assistant professor of Jewish studies at McGill University.

Here is a paragraph from the Introduction:

Vladimir Jabotinsky, was described by his supporters and opponents alike as one of the Zionist movement’s most spellbinding orators, brilliant writers, magnetic personalities, and provocative activists. … [H]is Odessan Russian and Germanic Yiddish lent him an almost foreign, aristocratic aura in the eyes of the eastern European Jewish audiences to whom he frequently lectured. His early life looked vastly different from the childhood of other Zionist activists from the Russian Empire, most of whom came from provincial towns and Yiddish-speaking, religiously observant homes. Born in 1880 and raised in the cosmopolitan port city of Odessa, the young Jabotinsky was immersed in Russian language and culture and well read in numerous European languages. Graduating from one of the city’s finest gymnasia, he spent several months at a Swiss university, followed by three years as a student in Italy, where he simultaneously worked as a correspondent for a Russian-language newspaper back in Odessa. Although his early work as a poet, playwright, journalist, and political activist had brought him some recognition in the Zionist movement, he gained fame during the First World War for creating the Jewish Legion, which under his leadership participated in the British Army’s conquest of Ottoman Palestine. He also achieved popularity among Zionists for his role in organizing the Haganah Jewish defense network during the Jerusalem riots of 1920. Soon after, Jabotinsky broke with the mainstream Zionist movement and called for a more aggressive approach to dealing with Mandate Palestine’s British colonial administration and Palestinian Arab population. His Union of Revisionist Zionists, founded in 1925, would go on to become one of the most popular Zionist organizations in the interwar period.