A Forgotten Zionist

by Rodney Benjamin, David Cebon

Overview

Solomon Jacobi, born in the Ukraine and educated in Odessa, a veteran of the Russian army and a lifelong Zionist activist, died in 1939 at the age of forty-two. Twenty-five years later, the editor of Herut wrote, "I feel the emotional need to resurrect the memory of the man to whom many of us owe our lives. The younger generation have never heard his name; among the older generation only a few know of him." Yet, as the Betar website said in its tribute to Jacobi, he was “the person responsible for Aliyah Bet on behalf of the Betar directorate.… He was the living force of the enterprise.” Who was this man, of whom Vladimir Jabotinsky wrote upon Jacobi's sudden death, “I confess I feel pretty helpless. Nothing done since 1931 was done without him”? Jabotinsky and Jacobi exchanged more than five hundred letters between 1920 and 1939. Yet Jabotinsky’s right-hand man, who ran the London Revisionist bureau from 1934 until his death, has been largely left out of the two major biographies of Jabotinsky and is virtually unknown. The Forgotten Zionist resurrects the legacy of a remarkable man and awards Solomon “Sioma” Jacobi his rightful place in Zionist history.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940044165717
Publisher:	Gefen Publishing House
Publication date:	01/07/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Rodney Benjamin (PhD, University of Melbourne) is an experienced and widely published professional historian, and is the son-in-law of Sioma Jacobi. Rodney is the sole author of four scholarly historical books, coedited and has contributed chapters to several other books, and is a frequent author of journal articles. In 1999 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal by the Australian government for his services to the Jewish community (to the Jewish Welfare Society and to the Friends of the Hebrew University), and also for service to the insurance industry as chairman of a number of insurance professional groups and as an adviser to state governments. He was chief executive officer of a major firm of insurance brokers when ill health forced his retirement at which point he commenced an academic career. Rodney was born in Melbourne, Australia, where he lives with his wife Carmel, their children, and their children.
David Cebon, like his grandfather Sioma Jacobi, is an engineer. He is a professor of mechanical engineering in the Cambridge University Engineering Department and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. David runs an active research group concerned with issues in transportation and has published several engineering books and many papers in technical journals. He is also Managing Director of Granta Design Ltd., a university spin-out company that specializes in information technology solutions for engineering materials. David lives in Cambridge, UK, with his wife Ericka and three school-aged children, Noa, Zak, and Leo.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Preface xi

1 There Was a Man 1

2 The Early Years 7

3 Jewish Self-Defense in Odessa 21

4 Palestine on Both Sides of the Jordan 41

5 Palestine and Then to England 57

6 The Birth of the Revisionist Movement 67

7 ORT-OZE and Emigdirect - The 1928 Journey 85

8 Marriage 99

9 Melbourne, China, Melbourne, South Africa 113

10 South Africa 121

11 To London - The Revisionist Split 129

12 Michael Haskel and the Stavsky Affair 145

13 The Jordania Experiment 155

14 London, 1933 and 1934 159

15 Jabotkisky, Ben-Gurion, Jacobi, and the New Zionist Organization 173

16 Back to the NZO 183

17 Af Al Pi - Clandestine Immigration in Spite of the British Restrictions 195

18 Postscript 213

Selected Bibliography 221

Index 225