"The Song of Songs" – Ze'ev Raban – Berlin, 1923 – Numerous Signatures by Zionist Activists from the Soviet Union

"The Song of Songs" – Ze'ev Raban – Berlin, 1923 – Numerous Signatures by Zionist Activists from the Soviet Union
The Song of Songs, illustrated by Ze'ev Raban. Berlin: HaSefer, 1923. Hebrew and English. First edition.
26 color illustration-plates are mounted on the book's leaves – on the right side of each spread (printed from left to right). The text of the Song of Songs appears on the margins of the illustrations. An English translation is printed on the left side of each spread.
At the beginning of the book appears a dedication to Professor David Schorr, written in Moscow on 27.6.1924: "Souvenir, to R' David Ben Shlomo Schorr, 7th Adar II - 12th Sivan 5684. To you, silence is gratitude".
Below the dedication are more than thirty signatures of Russian Jews, some of them members of the Zionist-Socialist movement that was active in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. Among them: Bat-Sheva Haikina [Haikin], Shneur Zalman Zeitlin, Moshe Lechtman, Reuven Cohen, Tova Hindin and many others.
Thousands of Jews were imprisoned in the Soviet Union during the 1920s for forbidden Zionist activity. Many of them were exiled to Siberia. David Schorr (pianist, composer and teacher, born in Crimea) arranged a deal with the authorities in which those who had been arrested would be exiled to Palestine instead of Siberia. This book was presumably given to Schorr in gratitude for his role in arranging the deal.
[31] leaves, 34 cm. Good condition. Some stains, mostly on the tissue guards. Small tears at inner margins of endpapers (adjacent to the spine).