JABOTINSKY, ZE’EV. (1880-1940). Influential Russian-Jewish Revisionist Zionist leader. ALS. (“Z. Jabotinsky”). ½p. 4to. Jerusalem, June 17, 1929. On his Jerusalem stationery headed in both English and Hebrew. To Israeli historian and professor of Hebrew literature JOSEPH KLAUSNER (1874-1958). In Hebrew with translation.

“I would like to see you about something important and urgent. I am free tomorrow from 12 morning to 4.30 pm. I could come to you, but it would be more comfortable if we could meet in the city, wherever you want. Please write; or, if you are not at home, please call tomorrow morning (after 10) to the number 23. Greetings to you both…”

Born Vladimir Zhabotinsky in Odessa, Jabotinsky received a secular Russian education, dropping out of school at age 17 to become a newspaper correspondent and earning a reputation for his dispatches from Italy. His work also brought him under the scrutiny of the Tsarist police who imprisoned him for several months after he published an anti-establishment article. Following the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, Jabotinsky became a Zionist, learned Hebrew, changed his name from Vladimir to Ze’ev and organized the militant Jewish Self-Defense Organization to help protect Russian Jewish villages against ever increasing violence. An enthusiastic orator, he traveled widely in Russia and Europe as an advocate for Zionism and stressing the need to learn Hebrew. However, unlike the more moderate Zionists, Jabotinsky was skeptical that Jews could live peacefully in the territories they had settled and focused on self-defense rather than assimilation. At the outbreak of World War I, Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor convinced the British military in Egypt to allow them to organize Jews deported from the Ottoman Empire into a military organization and join the British in liberating Palestine from the Ottomans. In 1915, Trumpeldor and Jabotinsky established the Zion Mule Corps, or Jewish Legion, as part of the 38th and 42nd battalions of Royal Fusiliers. Most of these volunteers, including Jabotinsky, fought heroically against the Turks at the Dardanelles during the Gallipoli Campaign. After the war, Jabotinsky settled in Palestine, where, in 1920, he was elected to the first Assembly of Representatives. That same year, the threat of Arab riots near Jerusalem led him, once again, to organize a defense organization. He was subsequently arrested by the British for illegal possession of weapons but served only a few months of his 15-year sentence. He quickly grew disillusioned with the British administration of Palestine, parted ways with Chaim Weizmann and, in 1923, formed the Alliance of Revisionist-Zionists and the related youth movement, Betar, whose goal was to establish a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River. He continued to work toward that goal and lectured around the world despite his banishment from Palestine in 1930. His influence on Israeli politics continues to this day.

Born in Lithuania, Klausner was a part of the political intelligentsia of Odessa, where he met Jabotinsky. An ardent Revisionist Zionist and a friend of Theodor Herzl, Klausner attended the First Zionist Congress in 1897. In 1919, he helped organize and was a part of the shipload of Jewish immigrants from Odessa, the Ruslan, which opened the Third Aliya, and which is considered the “Mayflower” of Israel. Known for his scholarship on the Jewish identity of Jesus, he taught Hebrew literature at Hebrew University beginning in 1925. On July 24, 1929, Klausner established the Pro-Wailing Wall Committee to represent Jewish rights at the Western Wall. The following month members of Betar and other Revisionist Zionist activists marched to the Western Wall and claimed it as their own, precipitating the 1929 Palestine Riots in which Klausner’s house was destroyed. In 1949, Klausner lost the election to Chaim Weizmann as Israel’s first president.

Folded into quarters with normal wear and in very good condition. Jabotinsky ALSs are rare.