“We must create a new people, a human people whose attitude toward other peoples is informed with the sense of human brotherhood and whose attitude toward nature and all within it is inspired by noble urges of life-loving creativity.”
— A.D. Gordon, “Our Tasks Ahead,” 1920.
164 years ago today, Aharon David Gordon was born to a wealthy Orthodox family in Podolia, part of the Russian Empire. After managing his family’s estate for many years, he left Russia for the Land of Israel, then under Ottoman control. Unlike his younger peers, Gordon had already been habituated to white-collar work, yet he threw himself into the Zionist labor enterprise with gusto, quickly becoming a mentor of sorts to his younger colleagues.
At night, Gordon began to record his understanding of the Zionist idea, a dream to reinvigorate the spirit of a people through land and labor, and thus, bring forth its blessings to the world at large. By sinking their roots into the land through agriculture, Gordon suggested, Jews simultaneously achieve unity with one another and realize the uniformity of the human condition, giving them the strength and compassion to treat neighboring peoples with dignity and respect.
As the prioritization of agriculture that Gordon advocated has faded from Israeli (and American) civilization, the need for a medium to reinforce the crucial concurrence of strength and compassion has grown. Without the labor of land to remind us of our basic human frailty and equality, where can we turn in search of a unifying force that also reminds us of the basic equality of the human condition?
— Rabbi Josh Knobel