The aims of the Jabotinsky Institute, founded over 70 years ago, are to foster and disseminate the legacy of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky and the National Movement, and to encourage scholarly research on these subjects.
The Institute’s main components are the Jabotinsky Museum and the Archives of the Jabotinsky Movement, both of which showcase the movement’s history, factions, institutions and prominent personalities.
The Jabotinsky Institute was founded in 1937 by Joseph Pa’amoni. Mr. Pa’amoni (1902-1966) had personally initiated collecting documents and photographs pertaining to Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s activities and writings. Unknowingly, his work formed the basis of realizing the 1933 resolution of the movement’s Central Institution to establish an archive — to be called the “Betar Museum” — to serve as the official repository of the movement’s publications.
The Institute’s beginnings were quite humble: From its first home in the laboratory of Kupat Holim Leumit (the Leumit Sick Fund) on 44 Nachlat Benyamin St., Tel Aviv, it moved to the basement of the “Metzuda” on King George Street, until finally reaching the present location on the first floor of Beit Jabotinsky.
In 1947, shortly before the British authorities outlawed Betar, Pa’amoni and friends decided to change the name of the “Betar Museum” to “The Jabotinsky Institute,” thus saving the museum and its collections from confiscation by the CID (British Intelligence).
In 1958, the Jabotinsky Institute’s archive was recognized as a Public Historical Archive, in accordance with the Archives’ Law (1955).
