In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 5 Hail to Assimilation: Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky's Ambivalence about Fin-de-Siecle Odessa Vladimir Jabotinsky's novel Piatera (The Five; 1936) has bewildered the author 's biographers. And rightly so: no matter how much one tries to read the novel through Zionist lenses it does not work. Shmuel Katz's I,SOO-page political biography has only one reference to the novel, and it does not even appear in Katz's index1 The many encyclopedia articles on Jabotinsky give intentionally short shrift to a work that, published only four years before his death, seems at odds with the personality of its author. Jabotinsky's name has become associated with militancy and militarism. He was famous as the creator of Zionist revisionism, organized the Jewish Legion under British command during World War I, and in the 1920s, openly confronted the British government with the demand for a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River. As a result of Jabotinsky's extremism, he was ejected from the leadership of the official Zionist organization. In the 1930s, he started his own party, Betar, attracting many thousands of young Zionists to his program, which included the encouragement of illegal immigration to Palestine. Piatera, a novel/memoir of Russia's Silver Age, points to a paradox: Jabotinsky , a Zionist devoted to the goal of Jewish separatism, was intensely attracted to universal ideas, including the unity of all people and their assimilation . The novel actually shows that borders between Jewish separatism and ultimate assimilation can be porous. In fact, the image of a political activist and apologist for military force clashes with that of the author of Piatero, which tells of the demise of an assimilated Jewish family in fin-de-siecle Odessa. As the talented historian Michael Stanislawski writes, "[T]he narrator as Jabotinsky (or Jabotinsky as narrator) concludes his story with a jarring ideological passivity in regard to the very essence of the real-life creed and the real-life-indeed life-and-death-battles of Vladimir, also known as 'Ze'ev' (The Wolf) Jabotinsky.,,2 Stanislawski is right when he argues that for some Zionists, and Jabotinsky in particular, the motivation for Zionism lies not in traditional Jewish life or even in Jewish national struggles, but in the universal ideals of brother1 Samuel Katz, Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsktj (New York: Barricade Books, 1996). 2 Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siecle, 235. HAIL TO A SSIMILATION 87 hood, equality, and utopian cravings for a better world3 For Jabotinsky, an important source for these ideals and cravings is Odessa circa 1905. There, among decadent intellectuals and individuals engaged in "life-creation" (zhiznetvorchestvo)-modeling one's life according to aesthetic principlesJabotinsky encountered strivings for eternal beauty and individual selfrealization . On the surface, these ideas seem far from collective Zionist politics and the establishment of a Jewish state, for instead of fully rejecting bold individualism and aestheticism, which contradict Jewish separatism, in the novel he expresses an attraction to them. Piatero is composed of 29 chapters, which revolve around the lives and fates of the five children of the Milgrom family in the years preceding and succeeding the Revolution of 1905. The five are Marusya, Marko, Serezha, Lika, and Torik. At the novel's beginning, Marusya, the eldest, is an attractive and passionate woman who has had affairs with many men. Marko is a dreamer, absorbed by the intellectual currents of the time such as Buddhism, Nietzschian decadence, and revolutionary socialism, but is unable to form an attachment to any single philosophy. Serezha is a highly talented poet and musician, but is bereft of practical skills. Lika, anti-social and ascetic, is obsessed with the coming revolution. Torik alone is depicted as interested in Jewish culture. Significantly, he reads Heinrich Graetz's History of the Jews and learns Hebrew from tutors. The parents, formerly from the provinces, have made enough money to give their children a place in the intellectual jet set. But each child has a moral flaw that leads to tragedy. Within a few years, Marusya and Marko are dead, a jealous husband maims Serezha, Lika becomes the lover of a spy in the pay of the tsar, and Torik converts to Christianity for the sake of his career. The parents, having witnessed their children's ruin, are emotionally broken. For consolation, the father turns to the Book of Job and the Jewish God. Many readers have interpreted the novel as a castigation of...

Share