From Inside

I am not a representative of the public, nor am I an official party member. My words do not bear an organization’s official stamp of approval, nor did I obtain readers’ endorsements in advance. Rather, one of the workers in the Land simply wishes to speak freely. It is to you, comrade-reader, worker in the Land of Israel [po‘el erets Yisraeli], whom I turn to with these words, and it is you whom I seek out. I know: the workers in the Land of Israel are not cut of a single cloth. We have been given different names; we have gathered from all corners of the earth. Our different and varied pasts, our habits, education, and traditions do sometimes divide us. Nevertheless—we recognize here our unity, our selfhood, and our labor, and we know who we, and what we are to our own selves. And we decided: We are not “a small portion of the Jewish workers”; but rather, we are some special, unique thing that lives of its own accord and stands independently, something whole, which strives to be whole—the workers of the Land of Israel.

If one wants to lead or be led astray, learning from my words that we have no part among the tortured and pained diaspora Jews, that we renounce the great hope of redemption, that we cut the thread of aliyah and immigration, that we distance ourselves from workers outside the land “who tie their futures,” and so on—we will not argue with him. And if we are accused of self-aggrandizement, of overestimating our own value, of a sense of “chosenness”¹—we will not waste words. Who knows, as we do, how meager our movement still is, how it does not suffice to quench our souls or pave our way. How many times has its water dried up, while those who came before us, the first and second waves of immigrants from the exile, remained not infrequently in a standing swamp, their powers spent, their souls departed—in impurity²—before the belated new stream [of Labor Zionism] reached them. And who raises their eyes, as we do, to those who come after us, who will ascend upon us, expand and enrich our lives? Together with them, with all of our collective powers, we will try to bring about, one-by-one, our souls’ hidden wishes.

But do the sense of unity in the nation, the collaboration of the working Jewish multitude (or more precisely, those without work), the aspiration for the nation’s redemption, and the hope for the liberation of labor necessitate that we agree to designate someone as a leader, from abroad, who will rule us?

Neither as public leaders did we come to the Land of Israel to cultivate and tend it (Genesis 2:15), nor as deputies bearing the mandates of someone who “ties his future” to the Land of Israel, charting our path for us. It is our own desolation that we have come to heal: our own lives we have come to build. It is to fulfil our own needs and redeem our own selves that we toil. No voice emanating from the ruins outside the Land rules over us, nor should one do so.

Let us not delude ourselves with vanity. What are the real connections, the similarities, between the workers’ movement in the Land and the Jewish workers’ movement abroad—even if it is also called “Zionist”? How should we help each other? Will they call upon us to help them resolve the question of languages? Will we join them in their political campaigns, and so forth? Will they help us administer the Yishuv and resolve for us the questions of labor and workers in the Land of Israel?

Terrible schisms are forming today between the different parts of the nation. The diaspora is spreading to the farthest corners of the world; languages are being split apart and becoming estranged to each other; different conditions and situations, strange ambitions—let us not obscure them with excuses or theories, nor will we deny them in order to ease their heartache. Is it possible to prevail over the disintegration of the nation? The future holds the solutions. For our part, we know only one way: We will not leave our land. We are a minority within the nation, a small proportion of its workers. “But one must not incline toward the majority” [m. Sanhedrin 1:6]. It is they who will turn to you; not you who will turn to them (Jeremiah 15:19).

And what is the meaning of these words, those who “tie their future,” those “interested in the settlement of the Land of Israel,” and so on? Are the immigrant, the pioneer, the settler, the one who ties [his future], and the one interested in and aspiring to settle in the Land of Israel all really cut of the same cloth? Is one who pays a shekel, or subscribes to the Yidisher arbayter [Jewish Worker newspaper], or pays party dues really one of ours, one of the Land of Israel, to whom we owe a friendly debt, and who has the right to an opinion about our lives and our labor? Or perhaps some party also has a monopoly on immigration to the Land of Israel? Perhaps there are those among us who believe that by strong bonds of a “program” one can conquer a state, or by simply settling party issues one can settle a country?

Yes. Among us—and not only among us—there is a desire to replace the pangs of creation with party bonds, and to replace the hidden powers of the soul, personal skills and desires, with the power of the party’s rule.

But the hope for the redemption of our Land, for its settlement, and for the liberation of the humans working it, will not be realized. And there is no possibility of it being realized without those personalities—people of aspiration, high achievers, seekers of redemption and space for their abounding energies, lovers of life who work out of love—who do not find respite in conventional views or at face value.³ These are the people who have established the new colonies in America and Australia; these are the ones who gave the world planned communal settlement experiments, from the days of the English-speaking pioneers until the Doukhobors.⁴