Expe­ri­enc­ing an icon­ic his­tor­i­cal fig­ure like Vladimir Jabotin­sky in his own words is a promis­ing prospect, and this first Eng­lish pub­li­ca­tion of his Sto­ry of My Life offers the Eng­lish read­er just that. First pub­lished by Jabotin­sky in 1936, this slim vol­ume serves as the pre­cur­sor to Sto­ry of the Jew­ish Legion, pub­lished ear­li­er. It ends where The Jew­ish Legion begins, at the begin­ning of World War I, when Jabotin­sky for­mu­lat­ed and began cam­paign­ing for what would become his main con­tri­bu­tion to the Zion­ist move­ment, name­ly the idea of an armed Jew­ish force that would fight for Britain in Pales­tine and ulti­mate­ly cre­ate the fait accom­pli of a Jew­ish defense force for the already thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ty of Jew­ish set­tle­ments known as the Yishuv in Pales­tine. Jabotin­sky saw Jew­ish self-defense as cru­cial in over­com­ing the pow­er­less­ness, and as he saw it, the ​“Jew­ish cow­ardice,” of life in the Dias­po­ra, a view that was cement­ed by what he wit­nessed in the after­math of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom.

If one expects, how­ev­er, to get any clos­er to Jabotin­sky through this work, one will be dis­ap­point­ed. Brain Horowitz and Leonid Katsis’s thor­ough intro­duc­tion warns that with Sto­ry of My Life, Jabotin­sky was main­ly con­cerned with estab­lish­ing his polit­i­cal per­sona, not with reflec­tion and intro­spec­tion. Sto­ry of My Life reads like a nar­rat­ed resume, pre­sent­ing sketch­es of his upbring­ing, glimpses of his edu­ca­tion and per­son­al life, and a who’s‑who of the ear­ly days of Zion­ism. The exten­sive end­notes prove help­ful in nav­i­gat­ing this cor­nu­copia of per­son­al­i­ties, the­o­ries and endeavors.

A rep­ri­mand of Jabotin­sky by Her­zl him­self dur­ing the Sixth Zion­ist Con­gress in 1903 (Jabotinsky’s first) was, as the edi­tors point out, most like­ly fab­ri­cat­ed — Jabotinsky’s impres­sion of the great man him­self, how­ev­er, was not: ​“In gen­er­al I do not remem­ber, out of all the expe­ri­ences I have had in my life, one man who made any impres­sion on me what­so­ev­er either before Her­zl or after him. I felt that tru­ly there stands before me a man of des­tiny, a prophet and leader by the grace of God, deserv­ing to be fol­lowed even through error and con­fu­sion.” This admi­ra­tion comes after Jabotin­sky had vot­ed with the oppo­si­tion to Herzl’s cham­pi­oning of the Ugan­da plan, a British-spon­sored Jew­ish pro­tec­torate in East Africa.

There are a few instances, how­ev­er, when Jabotin­sky lets down his guard and shows a sliv­er of his soul; for exam­ple when he decides, right after his mar­riage, to take a break from jour­nal­ism: ​“From the days of my youth until now, I have been inclined to have peri­ods of med­i­ta­tion — what they call in for­eign par­lance ​‘intro­spec­tion.’ For two or three years, I habit­u­al­ly car­ry on the rou­tine of my life with­out com­plain­ing — I even enjoy it for the most part — and then all of a sud­den the great inner secret becomes revealed to me: name­ly that I am tired of every­thing and that this is not my path.” Here the man him­self is revealed, in all his human­i­ty. Pas­sages like these make this book worth­while, aside from the fact that it brings to life the times of ear­ly Zion­ism, the last years of Tsarist Rus­sia and the poly­glot world of Europe before World War I.

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