In the wake of the slaughter in southern Israel, Jewish students at universities across America are reeling with a sense of loss and a sudden realization that university administrators and their student bodies are not with them. They can take hope, though, from one of the most famous letters of the 20th century, written by the Zionist prophet, Vladimir Jabotinsky, to a college student despairing over antisemitism of the sort today’s Jewish students face on campus.

The letter, a facsimile of which can be found in the Encyclopedia Judaica, was written in 1918. Its relevance, though, appears ripped from the headlines. The recipient of Jabotinsky’s letter — his name has stayed private —  was contemplating suicide, forbiden by Jewish law. From the depths he wrote to Jabotinsky, a newspaperman of great gifts from Odessa. His advice, we’d like to think, might buoy those who are harassed on today’s campuses. 

Jabotinsky, who was famous for his pen, wrote that “suicide is more than cowardice; it is surrender.” He adds that “in the case of your generation, it would also be a silly bargain” because “your generation is destined to see miracles, and, collectively, to perform miracles.” In words that would be apt to read at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania, Jabotinsky wrote “don’t get downhearted because of butcheries going on.”

At a moment when it is easy to despair, Jabotinsky’s insistence that “everything, all forces of life and death, are now converging toward one end, a Jewish state” marks the vision and grit that has been Zionism’s calling card since Herzl’s dream. Students today are lucky that Israel is their inheritance.  It has a valiant army, now engaged in desperate struggle. As are our students, arrayed against foes who may be less lethal but are no less implacable. 

Jabotinsky’s prediction that the next ten years would see the Jewish state in Palestine was off by a few decades, and the Holocaust intervened. The insight that it would be foolish to forgo the dream of a Jewish state and that “surrender is the dirtiest trick in creation,” though, proved to be wisdom. His words seem as fresh as today’s headlines. Jabotinsky would be proud of Bill Ackman, Marc Rowan, Jonathan Jacobson, and Jon Huntsman Jr., among others who have come to the defense of Jewish students.

Like Zionism’s other founding fathers, Jabotinsky would also have recognized the way Hamas has used violence to excite anti-Israel activists on campus, like a professor who, at Cornell, finds himself “exhilarated” by mass slaughter of Jews. Or like the dozens of student groups at Harvard that signed a letter asserting that the “Israeli regime is entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” 

We understand that Herzl foresaw that the creation of a Jewish state would be the end of antisemitism and that this hasn’t yet happened. In “The Jewish State” the visionary from Vienna wrote that “the Jews, once settled in their own State, would probably have no more enemies.” That, manifestly, has not come to pass. Antisemitism is reborn as Anti-Zionism. This does not mean Zionism is doomed to failure or that it might not yet happen. 

Jabotinsky, in careful handwriting, intuits the student’s desire for a role in this drama, writing to him that the struggle needs  “privates, doing drab commonplace jobs.” What a letter from the founder of the Jewish Legion and the commander of the Irgun. Jabotinsky tells his melancholic correspondent that he would “be thrilled” to switch places with him and to be 20 years of age — “on the threshold of redeemed Israel and, probably, a redeemed world to boot.”