A. D. Gordon: a transcendental Zionist

Abstract

A. D. Gordon was a Utopian mystic whose personal ethical system became the philosophical mainstay of the early pioneer movement in Palestine. He personfied socialist-Zionism, that pragmatic synthesis of Judaism, socialism, humanitarianism and naturalism from which the dominant nationalist ideology of the modern state of Israel evolved. But Gordon was more than a nationalist philosopher; he was also an educator. Gordon himself viewed his theories as educational rather than philosophical. In fact, Gordon, the educator, had a greater impact on the pioneer movement than Gordon, the philosopher. He educated and inspired others by setting the highest personal standards for himself. Aaron David Gordon was born in Mir Trayance, Russia, in 1856. He left there to study for a year in Vilno when he was 14, but returned to Mir where he became a cashier, a job he held for the next twenty-three years even though he disliked it intensely. It was not until he was 47 years old, in 1903, that he finally decided to leave his family to go to Palestine, and he departed the following year. On arrival, he first went to work at Petah-Tikva, a well-established Zionist settlement where the Jewish concerns relied heavily on Arab workers for much of the hard labour in the vineyards. Gordon soon realized that this settlement was not a model for a new society but a duplication of the old. Thus he was instrumental in forming the first Palestine-based socialist-Zionist organization, Hapo'el Hatzacir, in 1906, a mission-oriented group of pioneers who went to the Galilee and settled in Dagania where Gordon lived until his death in 1923. An unusual feature of the first Hapo'el Hatzacir platform was its call for revitalizing the Hebrew language, which is not so curious when one looks into the origins of its creators. Members of Hapo'el Hatzacir, like Gordon, came from bourgeois middle-class homes where the Hassidic tradition was strong and the Hebrew language preserved and spoken. In this sense, they differed greatly from Marxist-oriented socialists who were recruited largely from the ranks of assimilationists, those who attended the Russian gymnasium and adopted the language and customs of the locality in which they lived. For Gordon and his followers, Zionism was the dominant force and influence that pervaded everything they did. For the Marxist-socialists, Zionist goals were subordinate to the dictates of the socialist revolution. Where the Marxists were dogmatic and doctrinaire, seeking to force Zionism to conform to their preconceived notions of socialism, Hapo'el Hatzaeir was founded with the idea of creating a truly Zionist way of life, adapting socialist principles to their unique needs and institutions. The two camps inevitably viewed each other with suspicion even though both were socialist in practice. In examining Gordon, it is necessary first to explore the roots of his F