Reading and Writing

The figure of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, entranced Jabotinsky – although it is likely that he never met him. The early death of Herzl in 1904 profoundly shocked Jabotinsky. It propelled him to look at Herzl as if he were a combination of national deliverer and holy man:

Sometimes from the midst of a nation's gifted individuals there arises a personality who is endowed with an exceptional sensitivity which other mortals lack. Everything sacred that is scattered in fragments in the souls of millions is collected in the soul of this man, is welded into one piece – and then the God of the nation speaks through the lips of this man and creates with his hands, and he becomes the chosen leader of the masses with the right to achieve their elementary will. Happy are those nations to which destiny grants such a leader.

So wrote the twenty-four-year-old Jabotinsky. He quoted from the poetry of the Italian poetess Ada Negri about the legend of the living water – water that makes you immortal. Yet it is clear that the trauma of finding Herzl and then losing him almost immediately was tantamount to a heavenly sign for the anti-religious, anti-mystical Jabotinsky that his destiny was somehow bound up with Herzl's legacy. In an article eulogising Herzl, he effectively wrote about himself:

We were sitting at the time in the gutter, at the end of the great highway of life and on this road we watched the majestic procession of nations on their way to their historic destinies. And we were sitting aside, like beggars with outstretched hands, begging for alms and swearing in different languages that we merited the charitable offering. Sometimes it was given to us, and then it appeared that we were pleased and contented because the master was in a good mood and had thrown us a gnawed bone. So it only appeared, for deep in our souls was growing a repulsive disgust for the beggar's spot in the gutter and for the outstretched hand, and we felt a confused attraction for the great highway, a desire to walk upon it like others, not to beg but to build our own happiness.