The Forgotten Zionist: The Life of Solomon (Sioma) Yankelevitch Jacobi by Rodney Benjamin and David Cebon; Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, ISBN 978-965-229-571-2, 248 pages including index, $24.95.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — This is a loving biography, well researched historically by the son-in-law and grandson of Sioma Jacobi, who was an assistant to Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Revisionist leader who believed a Jewish State should be created on both sides of the Jordan River and was an inspiration to later Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.Jacobi was a loyal lieutenant who distinguished himself with cogent, well-reasoned analyses of the situations facing Jews in various parts of the world. In the period between World War I and World War II, Jacobi was paid by two organizations that focused on bettering the lives of impoverished Jews in Eastern Europe: ORT and OZE, which respectively provided job training and welfare programs.
In that dual representative capacity, and with letters of introduction from the likes of Albert Einstein and Lord Rothschild, Jacobi visited Jewish communities almost everywhere in the world to give speeches and to raise funds in the years leading up to World War II.
He also spoke and did organizational duty, although often without pay, in behalf of the Revisionist movement, so named because its leaders wanted to revise Britain’s plans to create a “homeland” for the Jews, as mentioned in the Balfour Declaration, and instead insist upon a “Jewish State” to be located on both sides of the Jordan.
This position put the Revisionists in conflict not only with the British, but also with General Zionists led by David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency, who felt Britain needed to be handled diplomatically if ever the goal of a Jewish state was to be realized.
While the general outline of the history of Israel’s birth is known, the details of some of the battles–and indeed Jacobi himself– have been forgotten . From our perspective more than 80 years later, some of the intra-Jewish battles seem horrendously wasteful of Jewish energy, resources and lives, given the Holocaust that was then gathering. But, of course, the leaders of that period did not know the future, any more than those of us who disagree over whether Israel should do this or that knows what lies ahead.
Britain, which controlled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, had put strict limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine in acquiescence to Arab demands. Among the saddest parts of the tale are the determined campaign on the part of British consulates to frustrate Jabotinsky’s and Jacobi’s efforts to smuggle Jews out of Europe.
In the mind of the British bureaucrats, every effort to remove Jews from the hell that Hitler was building needed to be thwarted –even those which involved destinations in Asia and South America — because such destinations were considered subterfuges masquerading the real purpose to increase illegal immigration to Palestine.
Jacobi died following unsuccessful surgery for a large brain tumor. His wife Edna and two daughters Carmel and Naomisubsequently relocated to Australia, where co-author and son-in-law Rodney Benjamin is professionally active in the insurance industry and also is known as an historian. David Cebon, like grandfather Sioma, was trained as an engineer, but unlike Sioma, he actually makes his living as an engineer specializing in the field of transportation.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com