John M. Machover, Veteran Zionist Leader, International Lawyer, Dies at 91

John M. Machover, veteran Zionist leader, noted social worker, leading international lawyer and respected sage, died here today shortly after his 91st birthday. Born in Mogilev, Czarist Russia, Mr. Machover graduated from the University of St. Vladimir in Kiey and practiced law in that city until after the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1913 he was junior defense counsel in the trial of Mendel Beilis, who was acquitted of blood-libel charges. For many years, Mr. Machover was a Jewish-self-defense leader in the Ukraine, coining the maxim: “There were never any pogroms where there was effective Jewish self-defense.” Mr. Machover was a leader of Russian Zionism for two decades. He wrote lectured and organized, and was a delegate to several Zionist Congresses. Frustration with what he deemed slow progress under the British Mandate drove him into the Revisionist camp: a friend of Vladimir Jabotinsky since early youth, he became a close advisor to the Revisionist leader. But Mr. Machover did not follow Jabotinsky when the Revisionists left the World Zionist Organization. With Meir Grossman and others, he founded the Jewish State Party.

Moving to England after the Russian Revolution, Mr. Machover co-founded the Federation of Jewish Relief Organizations (FJRO) in 1929 and was its chairman for many years. Mr. Machover, who was hale, hearty and in full mental vigor to the day of his death, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month that he was completing his autobiography and another book. He was also involved with Josef Fraenkel, the Russian Polish-born journalist and historian on a history of the Jewish State Party. Mr. Machover’s books included “Governing Palestine–The Case Against a Legislative Council,” “Jewish State or Ghetto” and “The Nazi Experiment in Total Destruction of Peoples and States.” Joseph Leftwich, director of the FJRO, praised today Mr. Machover’s “lifetime of service to our Federation.” His death, Leftwich said, was “an irreparable loss.” He added that Mr. Machover had recently told him that “the Federation had become part of his own personality, and he could not possibly give up this connection even in his 90s.”