Quest for Life: A Study in Aharon David Gordon’s Philosophy of Man in Nature 9781644693131

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Quest for Life

A Study in Aharon David Gordon’s Philosophy of Man in Nature

Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah Series Editor Dov Schwartz (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan) Editorial Board Ada Rapoport Albert (University College, London) Gad Freudenthal (CNRS, Paris) Gideon Freudenthal (Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv) Moshe Idel (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) Raphael Jospe (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan) Ephraim Kanarfogel (Yeshiva University, New York) Menachem Kellner (Haifa University, Haifa) Daniel Lasker (Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva)

Quest for Life

A Study in Aharon David Gordon’s Philosophy of Man in Nature YOS S I ( J OS EP H ) TU R N E R

BOSTON 2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Turner, Joseph Aaron, author. Title: Quest for life : a study in Aharon David Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature / Yossi Turner. Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2020. | Series: Emunot : Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2020001917 (print) | LCCN 2020001918 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644693124 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644693131 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Gordon, Aaron David, 1856-1922. | Jewish philosophy. | Labor Zionists. Classification: LCC DS151.G6 T87 2020 (print) | LCC DS151.G6 (ebook) | DDC 181/.06--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001917 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020001918 Copyright © 2020 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-64469-312-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-64469-313-1 (adobe pdf) Book design by Lapiz Digital Services. Cover design by Elad Turner. Published by Academic Studies Press. 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA press@ academicstudiespress.com www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents

Acknowledgementsvii Part I Introduction, Historical and Biographical Background Chapter I: Introduction Chapter II: A Quest for Life: Historical and Biographical Background Part II Philosophy and Life: Nature, Society, and the Question of Ecological Responsibility Chapter III: Gordon’s Philosophy as a Response to Kant, Nietzsche, and Marx Chapter IV: The Foundations of A. D. Gordon’s Philosophy of Man in Nature: Life, Self, and Experience Chapter V: Critique of Society and Civilization Chapter VI: Religion, Family, and the Ethic of Ecological Responsibility Part III Life and Praxis Chapter VII: The National Self in Aḥad Ha’am, Brenner, and Gordon Chapter VIII: Self-Realization as Self-Education Chapter IX: Freedom and Equality in Gordon’s Ideas on the Founding of a Workers’ Settlement Part IV National Individuality, Social Justice, and the Prospects of a Universal Humanity Chapter X: Zionism and Diaspora Jewry Chapter XI: Jews and Arabs Chapter XII: National Individuality as a Condition of Universal Humanity

1 3 13

35 39 47 57 61

73 77 84 92

101 105 108 114

Part V 119 Conclusion121 Postscript: Contemporary Repercussions 127 Bibliography152 Index of Subjects Index of Names and Places

160 163

Acknowledgements

This volume entitled, Quest for Life: A Study in Aharon David Gordon’s Philosophy of Man in Nature, is an investigation into one of the most interesting bodies of Jewish thought in the Modern Period. It is being published in English because of the author’s belief that the presentation of Gordon’s thought speaks to a great many questions relevant to the English-speaking Jewish world and the broader English-speaking public. These include a re-evaluation of Zionism, the problematic relationship of American Jewry to world Jewry and the State of Israel, as well as the state of humanity in contemporary civilization. Because of the importance I attach to this work, with respect to the advancement of scholarship and public discourse on matters of Jewish and Humanist import, I am particularly appreciative of the many people who were involved in the various phases of its development and final production. First and foremost, I’d like to express my deep love and gratitude to my immediate family; to my wife Tzippi, to my children, son- and daughtersin-law, and to my grandchildren, who day-in and day-out make my experience on this Earth a concrete realization of my own quest for life. Next, I’d like to thank my students in the department of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, for the quality of challenge, inspiration and enlightenment that they have generated in my life, particularly in recent years. These students join many of my close friends and colleagues, whose dialogue with me on various aspects of Gordon’s thought and broader issues in the area of Jewish thought and Western philosophy made the present work possible. I should like to mention specifically Eliezer Schweid, Yehoyada Amir, Shaul Magid, Ari Ackerman, Avi Sagi, Einat Ramon, Yuval Jobani, Jeff Spitzer and Steve Peskoff.

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Acknowledgements

A particular note of thanks goes to Dov Schwartz for his support. It is as a result of my familiarity with, and appreciation of Dov’s own scholarly work that I decided to publish this book with the “Emunot” series in Academic Studies Press. A further very special thanks is due to ASP editorial director Alessandra Anzani, and editorial coordinator Stuart Allen for the professionalism, patience, commitment, and care that went into various phases of the book’s production. Finally, I would like to thank the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies for its support through the years and note that this book is being published with the generous help of the Research Fund of the Schechter Institute. Yossi Turner January 2020

Part I

Introduction, Historical and Biographical Background

Chapter I

Introduction

Aharon David Gordon was one of the most interesting and creative Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. When compared with the more famous Jewish thinkers of that century, such as Herman Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Emanuel Levinas, Gordon’s unique character and personality become exceedingly obvious. For like these thinkers, Gordon too had a knack for considering contemporary social and cultural challenges together with the loftiest ideas and values. Like them, Gordon’s writings reflect a deep and relatively unique understanding of the problems confronting Jewish existence in his time, both in relation to the overall state of humanity and in terms of Jewish anomaly. But the social and historical context in which he developed his work sets Gordon apart from these thinkers. The great twentieth-century Jewish philosophers mentioned above were all formally trained in various philosophical and religious schools of thought and held positions of academic or institutionally recognized religious authority. Aharon David Gordon, on the other hand, was largely an auto-didact1 and is best known for his involvement as a philosopher and labor pioneer in the phase of Zionist immigration into the Land of Israel that took place from 1904 until the beginning of World War I known as the Second Aliyah. The social and historical realities characteristic of the Second Aliyah and the Land of Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century make the appearance of a great philosopher in its midst a most surprising 1 This, it should be noted, is true of many of the early twentieth-century Jewish thinkers who grew up in the Russian Pale of Settlement, such as M. J. Berdiczevsky, Hayyim Nachman Bialik, Shimon Dubnov, and Asher Ginzburg (Aḥad Ha’am).

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phenomenon. At that time, in the Land of Israel, there were no universities nor centers of philosophical discourse of any kind. Moreover, the pioneer laborers among whom Gordon lived and worked were dedicated to the material creation of a homeland and many of them rejected abstract intellectual pursuits as an expression of middle-class decadence.2 Nonetheless, one of the aims of the present volume is to show that the inner attachment of Gordon’s philosophical thought to this particular historical and social context provides the basis for an invaluable contribution to the navigation of problems facing Jewish and human existence in our own day. I shall suggest, in the coming discussions, that the grounding of Aharon David Gordon’s philosophy in the pioneering character of the Second Aliyah experience presented a unique opportunity in the history of Jewish thought because of the character of that community as a community that was built from scratch. Transplanting Hermann Cohen’s concept of “origin” from the realm of his own neo-Kantian thought3 to that of Gordon’s understanding of “man in nature,”4 one might say that the ethos of labor, 2

See, for example, Y. Kolat, “The Idea of the University in the Jewish National Movement,” in The History of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem [Heb.], ed. Shaul Katz and Michael Hed (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), 3–74; and Zvi Shiloni, “Phases in the Development of Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel during the Second Aliyah,” in The Second Aliyah [Heb.], vol. 1, ed. Israel Bartal, Zev Tzaḥor, and Yehoshua Kniel (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzḥak ben Tzvi, 1997), 104–134. 3 Hermann Cohen’s concept of “origin” roots the logic of development in the mathematical sciences, ethics, and religion in the inner workings of an a priori universal reason. (For a succinct understanding of the concept in Cohen, see Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, trans. John Denton [Albany: SUNY, 1988], 90–97). We shall see that Gordon rejects this type of rational idealism since he roots even the workings of the human spirit in the self-creation of nature as experienced a-posteriori. And yet, the notion of origin plays a similar role in both in so far as both presume that the various aspects of human cognition, understanding and experience derive from a structure of being that precedes them. 4 I place this term in quotation marks because of its centrality for all of Gordon’s thought and its reflection in the title of Gordon’s major philosophical essay “Man and Nature” (in Aharon David Gordon, Selected Writings [Heb.], ed. Eliezer Schweid [Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 1982], 50–171. For English renditions, see A. D. Gordon, Selected Essays, trans. Frances Burnce [New York: League for Labor Palestine, 1938], 171–253. For a general history of the essay and its appearance see later on in this introduction.) Despite the problem of gender bias, I use the term “man” to translate the Hebrew adam in Gordon’s writing, because this would have been the proper translation into English usage in Gordon’s day, and particularly because Gordon’s use of the Hebrew term refers to the concreteness of human existence, as lived, and not to the abstract or generalized idea of that existence, as would ordinarily be associated with the gender-neutral term “human.” To translate adam beteva or adam veteva as “human and nature” or “human

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Introduction    CHAPTER I

characteristic of the Second Aliyah, represents the “origin” and “ground” of Gordon’s philosophy because of the real-life questions that such an original situation arouses, and because of the role played by labor as a community value in the pioneers’ collective struggle for life. The methodological significance of the Second Aliyah community being a settlement “from scratch” is that the trials and tribulations that faced the community were those that concerned survival and existence on the most fundamental level. There is, of course, no such thing as building a community entirely ex nihilo. The pioneer community of the Second Aliyah was constructed in a particularly Jewish context. It was a community that knew very well from whence it came, but because its relation to the past was largely rebellious, it saw its future as entirely open-ended, and ultimately dependent upon its own initiative. Throughout this composition, I will be referring to the pioneering quality of Gordon’s thought, with respect to the value of human endeavor, on the backdrop of this open-endedness of spirit. I will suggest that it is as a result of the experience of building the community from its foundations that Gordon was able to develop a vision of human existence that served as a radical alternative to both the traditional Judaism left behind in the Shtetl, as well as to the various social, economic and cultural trajectories already established, in his time, in the modern West.

Previous Scholarship and Direction of the Present Work During his lifetime, Gordon influenced those around him mostly by the power and depth of his personality.5 Even in the early years following his death, he was known mostly through anecdotes told by people who knew him directly.6 But in time, there developed a tradition of rigorous scholarship that systematically considered various aspects of his thought. in nature,” rather than as “man and nature” or “man in nature,” would therefore be both overly cumbersome and somewhat misleading. In addition, it should be emphasized, the term adam (or man), in Gordon’s usage, refers explicitly to the concrete human being in its feminine aspects no less, and perhaps even more than to the masculine. (On this point see Einat Ramon, A New Life: Religion, Motherhood, and Supreme Love in the Works of Aharon David Gordon [Heb.] [Jerusalem: Carmel, 2007].) 5 See Yosef Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” in Aharon David Gordon, Nation and Labor [Heb.], ed. Shmuel Hugo Bergman and Eliezer Shoḥat (Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 1952), 65; and Shmuel Hugo Bergman, “A. D. Gordon’s Thought on Man and Nature,” in Bergman, Men and Ways [Heb.] (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1967), 318. 6 Eliezer Schweid, The Individual: The World of Aharon David Gordon [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 5720/1970), 7; Ramon, New Life, 27.

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Surprisingly, some of the earliest writing on Gordon appeared in English as part of a 1932 doctoral dissertation at Columbia University.7 An additional volume on Gordon’s life and work was published in English in New York in 1964.8 Though neither of these compositions had any lasting effect on the overall scholarship concerning Gordon’s thought, I consider them significant for two reasons. First, they stand in sharp contrast to the situation that exists since the closing decades of the twentieth century, when aside from a number of essays written in English by Israeli scholars who do most of their work in Hebrew, no significant scholarship on Gordon’s thought has been published for the English-speaking world. The fact that Gordon’s work has lately suffered from scholarly neglect in English is significant with respect to the discussion that appears at the end of this volume concerning the relevance of his thought for the present. It demonstrates the changes that have occurred in relations between the various segments of world Jewry over the past century, and in the character of Jewish peoplehood more generally. Second, both of these compositions succeed in presenting many of the themes that were prevalent in Gordon’s thought to the English-speaking world, albeit without reference to questions regarding its methodological character, as has become the norm for much of the literature in Hebrew. The high road of scholarship on the thought of Aharon David Gordon begins with Shmuel Hugo Bergman’s introductory essay to the second volume of a three-volume set of Gordon’s works, published in 1940.9 In this and other essays he wrote over the years, Bergman presented some of the central philosophical distinctions Gordon developed in his thought, such as those arising between cognitive understanding (hakarah) and life-experience (ḥavayah) or between what he calls the expansion (hitpashtut) and contraction (tzimtzum) of self and experience. He showed how from these terms Gordon developed specific philosophical positions in the area of society, ethics, religion, and art, and compared various aspects of Gordon’s 7 Shlomo Bardin, Pioneer Youth in Palestine (New York: Bloch, 1932), 58–91. 8 Herbert Rose, The Life and Thought of A. D. Gordon: Pioneer, Philosopher, and Prophet of Modern Israel (New York: Bloch, 1964). 9 This essay was reprinted in Bergman, Man and Ways (note 5 above). A shorter English version of Bergman’s evaluation of Gordon’s philosophy was translated from German into English as “A. D. Gordon: The Recovery of Cosmic Unity,” in Samuel H. Bergman, Faith and Reason: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought, trans. Alfred Jospe (Washington D.C.: B’nei Brith Hillel Foundations, 1961), 98–120.

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Introduction    CHAPTER I

philosophy with those of more famous Western thinkers such as Herder, Bergson, and Jung. A central aspect of Gordon’s thought already presented in Bergman’s essays, but methodically explicated only in the later scholarship, concerns its religious character. The present volume makes use of Bergman’s identification of the “religious” with the “cosmic” in Gordon’s thought, as a methodological premise for interpreting the wide variety of issues discussed in his many essays. In his 1970 The Individual: The World of A. D. Gordon,10 Eliezer Schweid rejected Bergman’s comparison of Gordon with Western philosophers as the proper context in which his thought needs to be explicated. Though he dedicated the first chapters of the work to a presentation of the relevant biographical background, he quickly turned to a systematic explication of Gordon’s primary philosophical concepts. He analyzed Gordon’s positions regarding the relation between cognitive understanding and life experience as a fullblown epistemology, and between man and nature as a proper philosophical ontology that provides the form and substance for virtually all of Gordon’s writings. In this context, Schweid offered the first systematic evaluation of the organic character of Gordon’s social thought, focusing on relations between individual, family, community, and people or nation,11 while demonstrating its inner connection to the Second Aliyah ethos of labor. Schweid was also the first to demonstrate that the relationship of Gordon’s philosophy with more traditional Jewish sources is one of continuity, while emphasizing the creative freedom that this continuity allows in the present. In the next generation of Gordon scholarship, Sara Strassberg-Dayan’s 1995 publication, Individual, Nation and Mankind, builds upon the systematic form of Gordon’s thought, already laid out in Schweid’s work, in order to demonstrate the similarities that exist between Gordon’s concept of man and that of his Land of Israel contemporary, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.12 In his 1996 book, The Kabbalistic and Hasidic Sources of A. D. Gordon’s 10 See note 6 above. 11 In Gordon’s writings, as in the writings of most East European Zionists, the term “nation” refers to groups that identify themselves as a shared ethnicity, and may be interchanged with the term “people,” as in the Hebrew term am. But since Gordon also uses the terms le’om, and umah, which in contemporary English usage are sometimes translated as “nationality” or “nation,” I will at times use the terms interchangeably. 12 Sara Strassberg-Dayan, Individual, Nation and Mankind: The Conception of Man in the Teachings of A. D Gordon and Rabbi Kook [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuḥad, 1995).

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Thought,13 Avraham Shapira delves into the philological aspect of his debt to earlier forms of Jewish religiosity with a painstaking examination of his terminology drawn from Kabbalistic and Hassidic literature. Einat Ramon’s A New Life: Religion Motherhood and Supreme Love in the Works of Aharon David Gordon,14 published in 2007, also examines the traditional and religious aspects of Gordon’s thought, while breaking new ground through her application of feminist critique to Gordon’s writings. Shalom Ratzabi, in his 2011 volume entitled Anarchy in Zion, expands on the influence of Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature with regard to society and politics through a comparison with Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy.15 The importance of the above-mentioned scholarship for the present work is overwhelming. But the general direction of the present volume is that of a response to a more recent work on Gordon’s thought that was dedicated specifically to a comprehensive delineation of Gordon’s philosophical method. I am referring to a doctoral dissertation completed by Ehud Fuehrer in 2013.16 There is much that I agree with in Fuehrer’s work, particularly his claim that even though some important first steps have been made, the intricacies of Gordon’s philosophical methodology have not to date been sufficiently explicated. I take exception, however, to his criticism of the poetic character of Gordon’s writing and his subsequent attempt to “rescue” Gordon’s method from his poetic style. This, I believe, is a severe mistake because it would mean a rejection of Gordon’s fundamental understanding of the connection between philosophy and life. Life, for Gordon, is worthy of philosophical consideration only because it is much more than an object of philosophy. For Gordon, life includes the dynamic movement of the natural cosmos in which the human being is born, and in which his or her self and personality develop. In addition, life, in Gordon’s philosophy, constitutes the creative power through which a particular individual or community is realized.17 As such, life itself provides the philosophical predisposition from which Gordon speaks. It is the stuff 13 Avraham Shapira, The Hassidic and Kabbalistic Sources of A. D. Gordon’s Thought [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1996). 14 Ramon, New Life. 15 Shalom Ratzabi, Anarchy in Zion: Between Martin Buber and A. D. Gordon [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2011). 16 Ehud Fuehrer, New Man: A New Reading in A. D. Gordon’s Philosophy [Heb.] (Ramat Gan, Bar Ilan University Pub., 2019). 17 Many of the chapters in the present work are designed to demonstrate these claims.

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Introduction    CHAPTER I

that all of nature, all of existence, is made of, and like nature, it contains the power and the mystery of creation. His poetic style may be understood, in this context, as the expression of life when perceived in nature as continuous creation, rather than as concept or idea. To free Gordon of his poetical expression would therefore amount to freeing his philosophical consideration of the nature of human and worldly existence from the very occurrence of life that constitutes their reality.

The Character of Gordon’s Writings and Method Generally speaking, Gordon’s essays consist of two types that are not, in the end, all that different from each other.18 The first type includes essays he wrote and published with the intention of influencing the hierarchy of values, modes of thought, and programs for development of the new Jewish community that was, at that time, being established in the Land of Israel.19 These essays touch on the function of literature in building a new society, education, the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, the value of labor, communal settlement, and many other issues relevant to the social, cultural, and political agenda of the Second Aliyah community. The second type features a more methodical discourse on largely philosophical issues. To this category belongs his primary philosophical 18 English translations of some of Gordon’s writings may be found in abridged form in Selected Essays (note 4 above). Since there are no other collections of Gordon’s writings in English, wherever possible I reference Selected Essays in addition to the original Hebrew citation. It should be noted, however, that the translations included in Selected Essays are based upon an earlier Hebrew volume that was organized according to topic, and in which the original essays were not only shortened but portions of the essays were moved from their original context and joined with others according to the topical headings assigned to them in that collection. At times I adopted some of the language from the translated texts, but more often than not I either used my own translation or redid the translations found in Selected Essays so as to conform more precisely with the original Hebrew. 19 See, for example, “An Irrational Solution,” in Gordon, Selected Writings, 178–191; “An Open Letter to Y. H. Brenner,” ibid., 192–198; “On the Clarification of our Idea From its Foundations,” ibid., 229–266 (also published in Selected Essays, 4–15); “Principles for the Bylaws of a Workers’ Settlement,” in Selected Writings, 304–314 (also published in Selected Essays, 263–267); and “On Our Accounting of Religion,” in Selected Writings, 408–409 (also published in Selected Essays, 284–286). See also Gordon, Nation and Labor, 132–139; “On the Clarification of Our Position,” ibid., 215–232; and “Our Work from Now On,” ibid., 233–257 (also published in Selected Essays, 29–42).

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essay, “Man and Nature,”20 and to some extent, his “A Clarification of Our Fundamental Idea.”21 “Man and Nature” is essentially a composition that was put together on the basis of the philosophical journal (including assorted notes found on scraps of paper) that Gordon wrote over the years after coming to the Land of Israel. We do not know when he wrote the specific passages in this journal. But the first section of the extensive essay known to contemporary scholars as “Man and Nature” was already published under this title in 1909.22 “A Clarification of Our Fundamental Idea,” on the other hand, is an anti-Marxist polemic that he wrote following World War I, when a new wave of immigration, known as the Third Aliyah, brought to the Land of Israel a particularly doctrinaire, institutionally oriented, and militant form of Marxist ideology.23 The reason why these two types of writings are not that different from each other is that their topics often intersect. Even in those essays that directly respond to issues of public concern, Gordon roots his positions in the philosophical thinking that he developed most extensively in the texts that eventually formed the expanded version of “Man and Nature.” And the philosophical agenda of “Man and Nature” has as its goal the explanation and justification of Gordon’s perception of society and civilization, in a manner that has direct bearing on the practical issues that were discussed at the time of the Second and the beginning of the Third Aliyah. What is important for us to consider in these introductory remarks, is that there is a strong connection, in Gordon’s writing, between philosophy, life, and praxis. As I will show, the interaction between these three provide the dynamic through which Gordon’s thought developed over the years into a comprehensive and methodically consistent philosophy. A detailed rendition of the development of Gordon’s thought remains for 20 Selected Writings, 49–171 (also published in Selected Essays, 171–253). 21 Selected Writings, 229–266 (also published in Selected Essays, 4–15). 22 It is important, therefore, to distinguish the later enlarged essay, sewn together by Bergman and Shoḥat (in The Writings of A. D. Gordon in Three Volumes, ed. Shmuel Hugo Bergman and Eliezer Shoḥat [Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 5717]) from the shorter earlier one, which reappears as the first section of the longer version. Compare Schweid in The Individual, 63, and particularly Ramon, New Life, 25. 23 Because of the interweaving of the real-life oriented polemic with the fundamentals of Grodon’s overall philosophical worldview in this essay, Schweid believed that its extensive explication may serve as an excellent starting point for the study of Gordon’s thought in its entirety. For this reason, he returned to the study of Gordon’s thought and published a comprehensive evaluation of the essay in 2014. See Eliezer Schweid, The Foundations and Sources of A. D. Gordon’s Philosophy (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 2014).

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Introduction    CHAPTER I

future scholarship, insofar as it requires, among other things, a painstaking examination of the original form of his philosophical manuscripts and an attempt to date their various sections.24 General impressions of Gordon’s published writings, nonetheless, appear to support the following two contentions. First, the parameters of his thought are determined by his inquiry into the character of human existence, nature, and the cosmos, alongside of his analyses of the practical issues facing the Second Aliyah community. Second, despite their inner consistency, Gordon’s writings do not comprise a unified canon, but rather form an organic development of ideas starting from early philosophical intuitions that gestated over a period of time, with a turn to relative systematization, as a result of his need to respond to the growing complexity of practical challenges that faced the Second Aliyah pioneer community, in his later years.

Structure and Goals of the Present Book Shortly before his death in 1922, Gordon asked that in the future his works not be discussed or disseminated unless they are found to be of actual importance at the time. This is in line with his self-perception as an educator whose philosophical interest is pedagogical.25 In line with this statement, the present work will pursue two distinct goals. First, it will demonstrate the inner authenticity of Gordon’s thought as a manifestation of the creative activity characteristic of the Second Aliyah. Second, it will offer the conception of life in Gordon’s overall philosophy of man in nature, as the starting-point for a reconsideration of the fundamental problems of present-day Jewish existence and Western civilization. Because of the scarcity of literature on Gordon’s thought in English, a number of discussions in this book are intended as a broad presentation 24 Following submission of the present volume for publication, a critical edition of “Man and Nature,” prepared by two Israeli scholars, Yuval Jobani and Ron Margolin (A. D. Gordon, Man and Nature—Critical Edition [Heb.] Jerusalem: Magnes, 2020) was released. This critical edition will hopefully make it possible for future scholarship to create a more detailed chronology of the development of Gordon’s thought. 25 See Eliezer Schweid, “The Philosophical-Educational Structure of the Thought of A. D. Gordon,” Iyyun [Heb.] 46 (1997): 393–414; and Yehoyada Amir, “Towards a Life of Expansion: Education as Religious Deed in A. D. Gordon’s Philosophy,” in Abiding Challenges: Research Perspectives on Jewish education, ed. Y. Rich and M. Rosenak (London: Freund, 1999), 19–63.

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of the issues that Gordon philosophically confronted and his position on each. On this level of discussion, I shall show that the general character of Gordon’s thought is best described, using contemporary terminology, as an ecological philosophy that understands all of existence in terms of a multivalent and yet interconnected and unified whole. I will show that from a philosophical perspective, Gordon’s identification of nature with the totality of existence rests upon his belief in human life as a particular aspect of the organic character of nature as a living and breathing ecosystem. Most importantly, I will explicate the methodological implications of Gordon’s primary philosophical intuition concerning the rootedness of the human self in the mysterious or hidden dimensions of natural creation, as an alternative to contemporary discourse, in a way that may prove to be critical in regard to the fate of humanity and the Jewish people in our time.

Chapter II

A Quest for Life: Historical and Biographical Background

The proper place to begin an evaluation of Gordon’s overall philosophy is with its biographical and historical background. The establishment of a serious intellectual biography for Gordon is not possible since we do not have in our possession any of his writings prior to his emigration to the Land of Israel.1 Nonetheless, we have enough selective information to piece together central aspects of his personality and some of the issues that concerned him during the first part of his life in the Russian Pale of Settlement, while there is quite a bit of collected material from which to draw a picture of Gordon’s life and thought from the time he arrived in the Land of Israel in 1904.

Early Life in the Pale of Settlement: 1856–1903 When Gordon was born in 1856, Alexander the II was the new Tsar of Russia. The decade of his birth saw a moderate turn toward liberalism in the Russian Empire. And as opposed to the later period, when Gordon emigrated to the Land of Israel, at the time of his birth there were still hopes 1 Based on testimony by Gordon’s daughter, Yael, Einat Ramon writes: “If Gordon retained publications, manuscripts, diaries, letters or pictures, from the period before he migrated to the Land of Israel, these would have been stolen at the time the carriage he was riding in was held up by Arab bandits during his move from Judah to the Galilee in 1912.” Ramon, New Life, 20.

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for a Western-style civil reform.2 The Hebrew literary movement known as the Haskalah, or Enlightenment, had slowly been developing since the beginning of the nineteenth century and held out much promise for the modernization of Jewish culture.3 However, in Russia, industrialization would not begin in earnest for quite some time, and except for a small number of wealthy Jews, Jewish life was confined to the Pale of Settlement. Therefore, Jewish family and community life remained there, at least until the final third of the nineteenth century, relatively intact. Gordon was born to a traditional Jewish family in the Ukrainian province of Podolia, which was open to the Enlightenment.4 In his early childhood Gordon received a traditional upbringing, though except for a single year when, at the age of fourteen, he attended a yeshiva in Vilna, he did not have any significant formal education. Some of his education was through personal tutors and occasional stints to teachers in nearby towns.5 Most of his learning, however, was autodidactic. In his adolescence, Gordon’s family hired a private tutor who taught him Bible and Hebrew grammar. But by the time he was seventeen, Gordon developed a strong desire to learn languages and science. Within four years, with his parents’ agreement, he learned Hebrew, Russian, German, and French, and began to read professional literature in the arts, sciences, and philosophy in each of these languages. While Gordon remained a strictly observant Halakhic Jew, at least until his arrival in the Land of Israel in 1904, his Enlightenment sensibilities can 2 Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005), 102–111. 3 See, for example: Shmuel Feiner, “The Pseudo-Enlightenment and the Question of Jewish Modernization.” Jewish Social Studies 3, no. 1 (1996): 62–88; Eli Lederhandler, “Modernity Without Emancipation or Assimilation: the Case of Russian Jewry,” in Assimilation and Community, ed. Jonathan Frankel and Steven Zipperstein (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 324–343; and Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 90–101. 4 The little that is known today about Gordon’s early life is mostly based upon the biographical sketch prepared by Yosef Aharonovitch for the first collection of Gordon’s writings. Aharonovitch was a close friend of Gordon’s. He was also the first editor of the Hapo’el Hatza’ir newspaper, in which Gordon published many of his essays. His biographical sketch on Gordon was partially based upon the testimony of Gordon’s daughter Yael, partially on things he heard directly from Gordon, himself, and partially on things that he heard in his youth when he lived in the same area of the Ukraine as Gordon (Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 72). 5 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 56 (and compare Rose, The Life and Thought of A. D. Gordon, 36).

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Historical and Biographical Background    CHAPTER II

be discerned in a broad range of educational activities throughout his early life. Following his marriage to Fayga Tartakov and the birth of his children, he became heavily invested in their education. 6 He regularly read educational literature, consulted with his children’s teachers, prepared educational programs, and spent much time hiking and talking with his children.7 This educational activity, in the familial context, foreshadows Gordon’s understanding of education as a natural process of life in his later philosophy. In addition, way before the idea of gender equality became popular, Gordon made sure that his daughter would receive the same education in Hebrew and other Judaic studies that were offered to his son. Under his tutelage, his daughter Yael, together with a friend of hers, organized classes in Hebrew and the sciences for all the girls in the community. This endeavor ultimately developed into a sort of Hebrew day school for girls, in which the Hebrew language was a central part of the curriculum.8 Because of Gordon’s diverse interests and his openness to all kinds of discussion and learning, his home became a meeting place for the local young people. He organized his books and newspapers into an informal reading library, and many of the young people took the opportunity when coming to Gordon’s home to read material that they could not access elsewhere. He organized lectures, discussion groups, and even social gatherings for the community youth. He also left a strong impression on the parents of the surrounding Jewish community through sermons he delivered in a local synagogue on matters concerning education, the idea of a national renaissance, the pre-Herzlian Lovers of Zion movement, and other issues on the local Jewish agenda. At one point, he established and ran a library for the clerks of the town in which he lived and worked, making sure that not only books written in Russian, but also in Yiddish and Hebrew would be well-represented.9 Earlier on, his Enlightenment attitudes caused him a certain amount of difficulty with his wife’s family when, following their marriage, they lived for two years in the town of Obodovka, where his wife’s family resided. 6 There seems to be a discrepancy as to Gordon’s age when he married. According to Aharonovitch (“Biographical Notes,” 57) and Bardin (Pioneer Youth, 59), he was eighteen or nineteen. Rose, however, reports that he was twenty-two years of age (Rose, The Life and Thought of A. D. Gordon, 37). 7 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 59–60; Rose, The Life and Thought of A. D. Gordon, 38. 8 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 59–60. 9 Ibid., and see Schweid, The Individual, 19–20.

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As Aharonovitch reports, these were not happy years for Gordon, since Obodovka’s significant Hassidic population viewed him as a heretic despite his high level of religious observance. This was probably because of his involvement in secular learning. Gordon’s Enlightenment attitude was a source of constant dispute, particularly with his brother-in-law.10 The discomfort that Gordon must have felt as a traditionally oriented maskil in Obodovka returned with a vengeance years later, through a falling out that he had with his son Yehiel on religious issues. His daughter Yael alludes to a conflict that existed between Gordon and his wife in the period that preceded his decision to emigrate; a conflict involving Gordon’s disapproval of his son’s increasing Orthodoxy, and Yehiel’s decision to leave home in order to study in a yeshivah in Lithuania.11 I do not claim that Gordon’s earlier difficulties with the Obodovka Hassidic community and his son’s decision to study in a Lithuanian yeshivah prompted Gordon’s aliyah. But his estrangement from Yehiel must have reminded him of the difficulties he had experienced earlier in Obodovka and cause him to wonder whether, in the context of Jewish life in the European exile, his own harmonious approach to tradition and modernity was still viable as a basis for the continuation of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement. However Gordon might have enunciated what he was feeling, it appears to me that his decision to emigrate to the Land of Israel was the result of his holding, intuitively, to a sense of life as existential telos. I shall suggest that he was particularly attracted by the zest for life, demonstrated by the radical Jewish youth emigrating to the Land of Israel at the beginning of the Second Aliyah. Following this, I will present a detailed description of the struggle for life in the Second Aliyah community and Gordon’s personal involvement in that struggle, in order to set the background for the explication of his overall philosophy. Returning to Gordon’s difficulties as a Maskil in light of his son’s increasing Orthodoxy, there is good reason to think that he perceived his difficulties with family members concerning religion and modern culture as a reflection of a broader cleavage within the Jewish community. All through 10 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 58, and see Schweid’s more detailed description in The Individual, 16. 11 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 63; Rose, The Life and Thought of A. D. Gordon, 38. Neither father nor son could know, at that time, that they would never see each other again. The son, Yehiel, died in Europe from an illness in the summer of 1920.

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his life Gordon intuited significances and meanings that were found later on to be of a broad social or historical significance. It is therefore entirely possible that the ever-widening divide between “Torah (or religion) and Life,” characteristic of Eastern European Jewry in the final decades of the nineteenth century,12 became manifest in his own personal and family experience, causing a degree of anxiety that could only add to a crisis situation, in which Gordon found himself in 1903. The Gordon family was not particularly well-off, and yet, until a relatively late date, it enjoyed a degree of financial security thanks to the employment offered by their wealthy relative, the Baron Ginzburg.13 At the time of his birth, Gordon’s father held a lease for the village of Troyanov and managed its finances for the Baron. When the Troyanov lease expired, his family went on to manage a lumber business in the local forest and made their home there. Aharonovitch claims that it was life in the forest during this period that prompted Gordon’s affinity with nature that was manifest in his later writings.14 Whether or not this is so, it is certain that Gordon derived satisfaction from the time he spent in the forest much more than he did later on, during the better part of the twenty-three years that he spent working as a clerk in the Baron Ginzburg’s Mohilna estate. As a result of the May Laws enacted in 1882, when Gordon began to work on that estate, the family was forced to live outside the town, and Gordon found himself traveling some distance each evening in order to be with his family, only to return to his clerical job in the morning; a job he found somewhat distasteful.15 The expansiveness of Gordon’s personality was, apparently, not very well suited to clerical work. But Aharonovitch 12 This term was used to denote the radical conflict between an extremely conservative form of Jewish Orthodoxy and those who identified with the Haskalah, or Enlightenment, at the end of the nineteenth century in Eastern Europe. See, for example, Rabbi Hayyim Hirschenssohn’s later recollection of this historical division, where he wrote under the heading “Hatorah Vehaḥayim,” that “for a long time many thought religion cannot conform to life and that peace cannot be made between them without one giving in to the other. The Orthodox [Ḥaredim] demanded that life give in for the sake of religion, and the Enlighteners, for their part, demanded that religion give in for the sake of life. And so the two continued . . . until these no longer had religion and these no longer had a life.” (Rabbi Hayyim Hirschenssohn, Malki Bekodesh [Romania: Sinai, Vayder, 1928], part 5, IV). For more on this topic see the reference in note 20 below. 13 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 55, Rose, The Life and Thought of A. D. Gordon, 36. 14 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 57–58. 15 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 57.

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reports, in addition, that Gordon had occasional run-ins with senior managers who would “not forgive his integrity and obstinate commitment to fairness. . . . These run-ins forced him at times to take a break from his employment.”16 In 1903 the Ginzburg lease on the Mohilna estate expired and Gordon found himself, for the first time, unemployed. Shortly afterward, both of his parents, who by then lived in his home and whom he supported financially, passed away.17 It has been claimed that these factors were connected to his decision to emigrate.18 The passing of one’s parents after years of close and intimate contact, the humiliating situation of unemployment, and concern for family welfare inevitably affect a person’s life vision and sense of self. This is certainly so for a person of expanded personality and acute sense of ethical responsibility, such as Gordon. But it appears that in order to make sense out of Gordon’s decision to emigrate to the Land of Israel, it is necessary to understand how his new station brought together the personal and the national aspects of his life experience. Whether we are speaking here of historical coincidence or the long-term result of common socio-historical processes, it is significant that the turn toward immigration to the Land of Israel among the radical Jewish youth in the Pale of Settlement occurred at the same time that Gordon became orphaned, unemployed, and therefore in need of a new direction. Gordon was already forty-eight years old at the time. His state of unemployment and the death of his parents clearly signify an end to a long period of relative stability in Gordon’s life. The fact that he considered, for a 16 Ibid., 59. As testimony to Gordon’s innate sense of integrity, it is worth mentioning an incident from his adolescence, while still living in his parents’ home. Word got around that he was about to be drafted into the Russian army, which for a young Jew without influence could mean years upon years of an arduous and sometimes life-threatening existence away from home and the Jewish community. Even though his mother took ill at the thought of that prospect and his family believed it could raise the money necessary to bribe his way to freedom, Gordon already showed himself to be a person of principle and refused this option. His reason was that if he were to buy his freedom from army service, the authorities would simply take someone else in his stead. This, he believed, would be an injustice to which he could not be party. In the end, he was found physically unfit and left alone (Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 57). 17 Ibid., 63–64. 18 Schweid lists this factor along with many of those I recall in the coming paragraphs. He bases his analysis on Aharonovitch, as do I, but he offers an anachronistic explanation, applying some of Gordon’s later ideas to this earlier period (The Individual, 34), and suggests a personal need for social relations that could no longer be fulfilled in Gordon’s immediate surroundings (ibid., 36).

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while, emigration to America indicates that the search for a livelihood was part of his considerations. But since, with his wife’s support, he decided to emigrate to the Land of Israel instead, it is also clear that consideration for his and his family’s livelihood was not the decisive consideration, and that his motivation for making Aliyah should be considered from the side of what he was looking for, rather from immediate circumstances alone. I submit that whatever it was he looking for, there was good reason for him to believe that it would be found in the qualities, characteristic of the radical Jewish youth, who founded the labor oriented Second Aliyah community toward the end of 1903 and the beginning of 1904. Already in the 1870s, Moses Leib Lilianblum saw the collapse of the Jewish economy as a reason to call for a reorientation of the Enlightenment’s interest in modernization from literary endeavor to vocational training.19 This is broadly seen as the beginning of the conflict between “Torah and Life,” mentioned above.20 The radical Jewish youth movements, including those that subscribed to Jewish socialism and Labor Zionism, were a response to the deteriorating conditions of Jewish life following the anti-Semitic measures taken by the government in the wake of the assassination of the Tsar in 1881, as well as to the continuing collapse of the Jewish economy and the sporadic violence waged against Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement throughout the period.21 The collapse of the Jewish economy in the rural areas and 19 Moses Leib Lilianblum was a pivotal character in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish thought. In his youth he was traditionally Orthodox but later on adopted modes of thought characteristic of the moderate Enlightenment, including an interest in the scholarly research of Judaism. His first publications included a call for a moderate reform of Jewish practice in Eastern Europe, but he radically changed his approach to the problems of Jewish existence in light of the economic crises in the 1860s and the 1870s. By this time, Lilianblum had become familiar with the writings of contemporary materialists and began to call for a more radical Enlightenment that would help improve the material aspect of Jewish existence through agricultural and other forms of vocational training. In the early 1880s he became one of the key figures in the Lovers of Zion Movement and was central in promoting the policy of emigration to the Land of Israel. For material in English on Lilianblum, see Eliezer Schweid, Jewish Thought in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction, trans. Amnon Hadary (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 292–297; and Irving Gesh, “Moshe Leib Lilienblum: An Intellectual Biography” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1968). 20 Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 112–123. 21 See Jonathan Frankel, Crisis, Revolution, and Russian Jews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); idem, “Modern Jewish Politics East and West (1840–1939): Utopia, Myth, Reality,” in The Quest for Utopia, ed. Zvi Gitelman (New York: Routledge,

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small towns of the Russian Pale of settlement was a part of a process of pauperization that affected many ethnic groups and social classes within the Russian Empire. But it was particularly harsh with regard to the Jewish community because of the legal restrictions placed upon it. The economic and social processes that preceded the radicalization of the Jewish youth included the emancipation of the serfs and breakup of those corporate aspects of Russian society from which the traditional Jewish community drew its stability in previous generations. This caused a noticeable weakening of the Jewish community structure and led to reduced earnings among Jewish traders and craftsmen, as well as to the creation of a Jewish proletariat in cities that had become industrialized. In his book Prophecy and Politics, Jonathan Frankel shows how this situation brought about the radicalization of much of the Jewish youth in the Russian Pale.22 Social and economic changes were accompanied by a growing interest in the Enlightenment literature among former yeshivah students.23 There was a correlative increase in revolutionary activity in Russian society, including a disproportionately large amount of Jewish revolutionaries. All of this is significant with respect to Gordon’s Enlightenment tendencies, for even though the combination of his affinity for tradition and cultural openness attests to his being a member of the older generation of maskilim (Enlighteners), his disapproval of his son’s Orthodoxy, based upon his celebration of individual autonomy,24 shows that Gordon valued the freedom of spirit characteristic of the radical youth. Initially, it was the promise of Jewish modernization through literature and education that linked Gordon to the East European Enlightenment. But it appears that at the end of Gordon’s stay in Mohilna, both the events in his personal life and those occurring on the national and historical plane, made it obvious to him that educational and literary endeavor were, by themselves, no 1992), 81–103; and Arcadius Kahan, Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986). 22 Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews 1862–1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 49–132. 23 Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 43–46, 112–123. 24 Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 58 and 63; Rose, The Life and Thought of A. D. Gordon, 38. This is a trait he shared with the Haskalah movement, and considering the breadth of his spirit it is highly probable that his personal difficulties became intertwined in his experience with the tension between “Torah and life” on the national plane.

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longer sufficient. The renewal of Jewish emigration, following the Kishinev massacre in 1903, apparently opened his eyes to the possibility of immigration as a new beginning both for himself and for the Jewish people, while the radical youth that turned toward the Land of Israel, directed his intention toward the revolutionary potential contained there. It is easy to imagine how the romantic promise for an open-ended future of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, combined with the enthusiasm of the radical youth dedicated to a recreation of the Jewish national self, could provide a deep existential outlet for Gordon’s own personal needs, of which the need for self-renewal was primary. The radical contingent of pioneer settlers of the Second Aliyah, who later coined the slogan: “we came to the Land in order to build and be built,” apparently ignited his imagination and provided a concrete opportunity to start afresh on both the personal and national planes.

The Pioneer Labor Community of the Second Aliyah The Second Aliyah started at the end of 1903 and the beginning of 1904, shortly after the death of Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Some scholars see this wave of Zionist immigration as a response to Herzl’s death or to the adoption of the Territorialist platform25 at the Sixth Zionist Congress shortly before his passing. Others see it as a response to Herzl’s failure in his ultimate goal: to establish a Jewish homeland through diplomacy.26 But the diplomatic efforts of securing a political state for Jews in the Land of Israel was never high on the list of ideological priorities in the Second Aliyah pioneer community. The vast majority of the 35,000 immigrants who entered the Land of Israel between 1904 and World War I settled in Jaffa (and after 1909, in its new suburb, Tel Aviv) as well as in other small cities in the country, or in the First Aliyah farming communities that had been established since the early 1880s.27 For the purposes of our discussions, the term “Second Aliyah” refers to the much smaller revolutionary-oriented pioneering 25 The Territorialist platform envisioned the possibility of establishing a Jewish homeland outside of the Land of Israel. At the 1903 Zionist Congress this program was temporarily adopted in the context of the Uganda Plan. 26 Bardin, Pioneer Youth, 22–23; Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 137. 27 Gur Alroi, Jewish Immigration to the Land of Israel at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century [Heb.] (Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 2004), 18 and 116; Dan Giladi, “Economy and Society in the Time of the Second Aliyah,” in The Second Aliyah:

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community that produced a distinct ethos of labor and many of the norms that characterized the Zionist settlement in the Land of Israel in the first half of the twentieth century.28 Used in this sense, the Second Aliyah was an avant-garde movement comprised mostly of young Jews from Eastern Europe who personally experienced the crises facing Jewish existence at the beginning of the twentieth century. All told, roughly 10,000 young Jews were a part of the Second Aliyah pioneer community at one time or another. But only between a thousand and two thousand remained in the Land of Israel, committed to its values and sharing in the failures and successes of this community over a prolonged period of time.29 The Second Aliyah pioneers believed that the redemption of the Jewish people from the severe problems facing the Jewish communities of Europe would be served better by the actual construction of a Jewish homeland through labor than through international diplomacy. Perhaps Herzl’s passing induced some of the Jewish youth that had been previously committed to the Herzlian program to search for an alternative in the form of Labor Zionism. But generally speaking, the attraction of the Second Aliyah pioneers to the construction, through labor, of a new Jewish society in the Land of Israel, beginning in 1904, is ultimately rooted in the particular experience of the Jewish youth in the Russian Pale of Settlement at the turn of the twentieth century.30 As during the First Aliyah (and the parallel mass emigration of Jews to the West from the early 1880s onward), many of those who immigrated to the land of Israel between 1904 and 1914 were motivated by hunger, unemployment, and anti-Semitism. But many within the pioneering community were motivated by what they saw as a general decay of the Jewish world from whence they came, particularly in regard to the Jewish community’s

Sources, Conclusions and Selected Events [Heb.], ed. Mordecai Naor (Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 1984), 4–5. 28 Yehudah Slotzky, Introduction to the History of the Israel Labor Movement [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1973), 146. 29 Zev Tzaḥor, “The Development of the Second Aliyah Leadership,” in Naor, The Second Aliyah, 27–28. 30 Rose, The Life and Thought of A. D. Gordon, 33–35; Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 367–370; Shmuel Ettinger, “The Ideology of the Second Aliyah on the Background of East European Jewish Social and Political Thought,” in Bartal, Tzaḥor, and Kniel, The Second Aliyah, vol. 1, 3–10.

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failure to adapt to new ideas or develop new strategies for survival in the face of its growing pauperization and anti-Semitic attacks.31 In the early days of the Second Aliyah, some immigrants came to the Land of Israel in order to escape the draft at the time of the Russo-Japanese War.32 Many came following the failed Russian revolution of 1905.33 This group included radicals who, after the failure of the revolution, turned toward the fulfillment of Zionism, while others immigrated to the Land of Israel in order to escape the Russian police as a result of their revolutionary activity. Eliezer Schweid is correct when he writes that “this group of immigrants did not hail from a single source but was a population comprised of individuals, each of whom already passed through a number of transformations prior to arriving in the Land of Israel.” As Schweid explains, “[t]his was not a group of people that would easily adopt a single well formulated ideology” but rather a movement that was “born in a period of great spiritual agitation, and was picked up and carried by different and antithetical spiritual directions,” including the national aspects of “traditional Judaism,” the “Haskalah,” and “socialism.” Writing for an Israeli audience, Schweid says that “the Second Aliyah, burdened with heritage and afflicted with tragic contradictions, was a transitional generation that brought about one of the decisive turning points in our history.”34 For the purpose of our discussion, it is important to emphasize that the various motivations that brought this contingent of the Jewish radical youth to the Land of Israel between 1904 and 1914 ultimately congealed into a common ethos of labor, reflecting differing degrees of emphasis on three shared values. These included rebellion against the traditional religiosity of Judaism’s past—which Gordon rejected; a profound sense of communal, national, and human solidarity—with which Gordon felt a strong affinity; 31 This sense of decay was shared by the Jewish-Socialist youth that remained in Europe as well. Many Second Aliyah pioneers had previously been connected with revolutionary politics in Russia. Similarly, Jewish revolutionary groups in Russia absorbed many of the young people who became disillusioned after having already made aliyah and returned to Europe. The major difference between these two groups was in their hierarchy of values and the solutions they envisioned with regard to the problems facing Jewish existence. 32 Ettinger, “The Ideology of the Second Aliyah,” 8; Tzaḥor, “The Development of the Second Aliyah Leadership,” 217. 33 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 365–370; Tzaḥor, “The Development of the Second Aliyah Leadership,” 217. 34 Eliezer Schweid, “The Heritage of the Second Alyiah,” in Naor, The Second Aliyah, 38.

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and a powerful creative energy—that Gordon will identify, within a few years, with an aspect of cosmic generation that he believed to be present in every individual, community, society, or people that finds itself blessed with the will to live. The temperament of the Second Aliyah was, in many ways, an extension of the radical ferment that characterized the Russian populist movement, which launched the revolution in 1905.35 Coming from the crumbling Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, many pioneers were well-read in the classical Jewish sources and in the previous generation’s Jewish enlightenment literature. Many had read contemporary world and particularly Russian philosophy.36 Some held to anarchistic and radically individualistic tendencies, whose sources can be traced to Nietzsche’s vitalism or to Tolstoy’s notion of personal redemption through a “return to nature.” Others held to the Marxist theories of historical determinism and class struggle.37 It was perhaps inevitable, in view of the traditional education received by many of the Second Aliyah community prior to their radicalization, that the above-mentioned tendencies were all interpreted at one time or another through the lens of biblical messianism.38 Indeed, like the socialist and more cosmopolitan branch of the radical Jewish youth that remained in Russia, the pioneer community in the Land of Israel was a response to poverty, anti-Semitic violence, and a sense of deep alienation from the communities and the traditions they grew up in. But more importantly for the self-perception of the Second Aliyah pioneer community, they transformed their condemnation of the anti-modernist trend of the contemporary religious leadership in the Jewish community of Eastern Europe into a broad ethic of life and commitment to the value of labor as the new force upon which their personal existence and the future existence of the Jewish people shall be secured. 35 See Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 367–368 and particularly 405–406: “The free man, it was felt, had not only the right but the duty to act and speak out in demonstratively non-conformist ways. To compromise was to betray. . . . Convinced that their values were those of the future . . . increasingly isolated and frustrated . . . they tended to adopt a prophetic stance, calling down fire and brimstone on the corrupt society around them.” 36 Hamutal Bar-Yosef, “Zionism Against the Background of Russian Culture,” in BarYosef, Qeriʾot Usheriqot (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2005), 99–111. 37 Ettinger, “The Ideology of the Second Aliyah,” 3–10; Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 329–363. 38 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 368.

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In connection with the emphasis placed on labor in the pioneer community, it is important to emphasize that the early pioneer immigrants did not only arrive in the Land of Israel in a state of extreme poverty. They were young and single and they left behind both family and community. Conditions were anything but sanitary. The climate was unfamiliar and particularly in the early years many fell ill. More than a few died after having succumbed to their illnesses. Lack of experience in manual labor made it very difficult to achieve even a moderate level of subsistence. In addition, the local Arab population, the old settlement Jewish ultra-Orthodox community, the First Aliyah farm owners, and even the official Zionist bureaucracy all related to the radicalized pioneering community of the Second Aliyah with varying degrees of hostility that at times became violent. On this background, the struggle for Jewish labor was a struggle for life itself. During the first five years of the community’s existence, the struggle for life was focused around the refusal of the First Aliyah’s farm owners to employ pioneer labor. When they first came to the land, the pioneers sought employment as hired laborers in the already established First Aliyah agricultural communities known as moshavot.39 But employment opportunities were scarce because of the undeveloped state of agriculture and industry, and particularly because of a general unwillingness on the part of First Aliyah farm owners to hire the new Second Aliyah pioneers. Most of the First Aliyah settlers were traditional Jews who found the anti-traditional behavior of the new pioneers unsettling. Their refusal to hire more than a few of the Second Aliyah pioneers to work on their farms was, however, mostly economically motivated. The First Aliyah farm communities had fallen on hard times after Baron Rothschild ended his control and financing of the First Aliyah settlements in 1899.40 The hiring of Arab workers was considered prudent because of their long-term experience with physical labor and their willingness to work for low wages. As a consequence, Arab workers were almost always preferred over the new Jewish labor pioneers. 41 39 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 457; Giladi, “Economy and Society,” 4–25. See also Daniel Ofir, “The Titanic Struggle between Laborers and Farmers, Petaḥ Tikva 1906,” in Naor, The Second Aliyah, 120–130. 40 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 372; Giladi, “Economy and Society,” 5. 41 Because of his advanced age, Gordon found the search for employment as a manual laborer particularly difficult. Upon arriving in the Land of Israel, he was offered a job as a clerk in an office, but because of his integrity and his commitment to working as a labor pioneer, he rejected that offer. He finally found work for a period of time in the farming community of Petaḥ Tikvah hoeing in the fields and orchards. During the

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Despair and disillusionment were constant during the early years of the Second Aliyah and returned periodically with every setback. Despair was particularly prominent during the economic depression of World War I when the immigration of new pioneers, seen as a source of hope, ceased entirely, and when even relatively established settlements were not able to support themselves. Had it not been for the sense of deep commitment, determination, and the courage to hope, that characterized those that persevered despite the objective reasons for disillusionment, this community would never have been able to achieve what it did. We shall see in later chapters that Gordon eventually ascribed the dialectic of hope and despair that characterized the community to a natural movement of life, thus adding to the pioneer ethos of labor a sense of tragic heroism.42 For the purpose of the present discussion, we shall follow one side of this dialectic; that is, the side of the pioneer project in which the confrontation with life-threatening challenges fortified the spirit and creativity of those who did not fall into a debilitating despair. In conjunction with this, I shall also relate to the question of ideology and its place in the development of the Second Aliyah community. In light of the First Aliyah farmers’ refusal to employ Second Aliyah pioneers, the urge for life became manifest in early forms of collective living that were established on an ad hoc basis. In the early days many individuals worked for different employers but pooled their income for food and at times a shared living space. Between 1904 and 1908 there were a small number of short-term attempts at this type of communal living, mostly in small rented premises around Jaffa and the moshavot in the coastal area. The appearance of these ad hoc collectives, and later on, the emergence of well-organized “conquest of labor” groups that ultimately turned to collective settlement,43 raise the question as to the role played by socialist ideology grape season, he took a job in the Rishon Letzion winery, but again, as a result of his deep sense of integrity, he soon found himself in a state of unemployment after sticking up for a fellow employee who was assaulted by the winery’s managers for arguing in public against their position on the question of Territorialism. Following this incident, Gordon felt that he could not continue work at the winery and quit. Shortly afterward he fell ill with malaria. After recuperating he moved from job to job in various First Aliyah moshavot, including Petaḥ Tikvah and Reḥovot, where he was sporadically employed during the year 1908. 42 See chapter 8 in this volume. 43 First in the communal kvutzah and then in the family-oriented collective known as the moshav ovdim.

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in the construction of the pioneer community. The popular view presumes that the trend to collectivism was the product of socialist ideologies that the pioneers brought with them from Europe, while a more sophisticated position maintains that it is a product of experimentation in the struggle for survival.44 I understand the collectivist character of the Second Aliyah as deriving from need and experimentation, wherein the socialist ideologies that many of the pioneers brought with them informed the decisions being made in the face of ever-changing challenges that arose throughout the entire process. Zev Tzaḥor eloquently described the spirit of the community, at the time of transition from its earlier struggle for the conquest of Jewish labor to the later lifestyle based on collective self-employment and permanent settlement, as the result of a pragmatism that stemmed from the community’s ideological pluralism and the pioneers’ willingness to compromise in order to make things work. The willingness to compromise on the part of young people whose very identity is charged with revolutionary fervor is no simple manner. According to Tzaḥor, it arose in a situation in which “everyone dreams of his own idea in this difficult Land [but] only he who is willing to give up on what makes his dream unique and find a common denominator with the dreams of others could take part in new initiatives.” It was only “the expression of the power of spirit” together with a “willingness to compromise with reality on the part of powerful and stubborn people” he writes, that ultimately made labor a “communal characteristic.”45 Zev Tzaḥor’s remarks concerning the combination of individualism, pragmatism and idealism in the spirit of the community is well illustrated by the fate of the two political parties established shortly after the beginning of the Second Aliyah. The Hapo’el Hatza’ir (The Young Worker) organization, established in 1905, was the first and more original, in comparison to the Jewish politics already going on in Europe. Many of its members were avowed socialists. But its primary commitment was to the Jewish nationalist orientation and constructionist character of the community. Hapo’el Hatza’ir’s primary goals were the advancement of Jewish labor and the Hebrew language. In the early years it saw as its most pressing mission the obligation to help new immigrants find work. It established soup kitchens and other early mechanisms for mutual support. 44 Tzaḥor, “The Development of the Second Aliyah Leadership,” 30–31. 45 Ibid.

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On the other hand, the rival Po’alei Tzion (Workers of Zion) party began in 1906 as the local branch of the Po’alei Tzion organization already active in Europe. Like Hapo’el Hatza’ir, it too was of a nationalist orientation. But Po’alei Tzion held to a relatively orthodox version of Ber Borochov’s doctrinally Marxist Zionism. This party demonstrated significant ambivalence with regard to the question as to whether the Second Aliyah community’s nationalist endeavor precedes its commitment to the World Union of Po’alei Tzion, and subsequently, to international socialism. Many of the members of this party maintained that the pioneer endeavor aimed at the rejuvenation of the Jewish people, indeed, constitutes a valuable goal, but is still only of secondary importance vis-à-vis the international proletarian revolution. The members of this party in Europe, and more than a few in the Land of Israel, favored Yiddish over Hebrew since it was the language of the Jewish proletariat. As a party that combined a commitment to the Jewish people with an equally strong commitment to the international working class, Po’alei Tzion encouraged the organization of workers in the cities and did not venerate agricultural labor to the same extent that Hapo’el Hatza’ir did, with its more nationalist and populist tendencies. Considering the centrality of the ethos of labor within this community, it is not surprising that the members of both Hapo’el Hatza’ir and Po’alei Tzion perceived the First Aliyah reliance on cheap Arab labor and its subsequent rejection of Jewish labor as an extension of Jewish life in exile. But Hapo’el Hatza’ir interpreted the actions taken by the First Aliyah farm owners as detrimental to the Second Aliyah goal of personal and national self-realization, while Po’alei Tzion tended to view this as a matter of class struggle between the local Jewish proletariat and an exploitative Jewish middle class. The point is that by 1908, the ideological differences between these parties became largely insignificant. This is as a result of various forms of experimentation, in which members of both parties influenced each other. The creation of roaming groups dedicated to the “conquest of [Jewish] labor” through short-term collective contracts with whatever private, public, and national employers there were in the area, and the later turn to permanent settlement, provide excellent examples. In the developments that led up to these, social solidarity was prominent both as a value and as a practical need. The roaming employment of labor groups affiliated with the “conquest of labor” ideology represent an advance over the previous subjugation of

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individual pioneers to the interests of the First Aliyah farm owners, in that group contracting enabled the negotiation of conditions with the employer that a single laborer would find difficult to achieve. The turn to permanent settlement on a collective basis further strengthened the independence of the pioneers and their ability to persevere. Let us therefore take a look at the process that led from the establishment of the “conquest of labor groups” to that of collective settlement. By 1909 and 1910, the Second Aliyah community had clearly begun to learn from its experience, and many realized that under given conditions new forms of community life were needed. This new phase of the community’s endeavor was accompanied by the move of a significant number of the highly aware and committed laborers to the north of the country, where they were less dependent upon employment by the First Aliyah farm owners. This is where the spirit of the Second Aliyah caught a second wind and returned with a particular zeal. In 1910 there was established a shortlived “Legion of Labor” that sought to organize various roaming groups of workers46 and mediate between their conflicting interests. In the Galilee, the wandering groups affiliated with the “conquest of labor” ideology were often employed directly by representatives of the World Zionist Organization for the construction of roads and training farms, as well as for the preparation of land intended for permanent settlement. In this way, pioneer labor became more directly tied to the actual building of the country’s infrastructure, with an eye toward the recreation of the Land of Israel as a modern Jewish homeland, rather than to the material gain of individual farmers or to the ideologically dictated development of a Jewish proletariat. The combination of practical experimentation and the strengthening of communal solidarity, identity, and autonomy worked, in this manner, to produce what many consider to be the most unique creation of the Second Aliyah: the farming commune first known as a kvutzah and later the kibbutz. The transition to permanent settlement begins in the Sejera agricultural farm, established in the Lower Galilee in 1907, and the Kinneret farm that was established in 1908 in the Jordan Valley, on the Southwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. 46 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 367, 396, 419–420; Henry Nir, “Toward Labor Settlement: Collective Organization in the Second Aliyah Labor Movement,” in Bartal, The Second Aliyah, 261–264.

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Toward the end of 1907, a “conquest of labor” group consisting of members of an underground communal watchmen society named Bar Giora came to Sejera. From the start, its members were oriented towards communal life. The significance of their presence in Sejera was tied to the fact that they were the first group of pioneer laborers, during the Second Aliyah, which was given sole responsibility for the success or failure of its labor without the involvement of an outside manager. This was seen as a test both by representatives of the Zionist organization and the pioneers themselves. The idea that pioneer labor can be successful and self-sufficient was strengthened at the end of that year when the Bar Giora group in Sejera showed a profit. One of the keys to its success was its communal character. But as with other “conquest of labor” groups, its stay in the Sejera training farm was only meant to be temporary. After a year it left Sejera and returned to its watchmen duties, wherein it retained its communal character without being involved in permanent group settlement.47 In the meantime, a different “conquest of labor” group came to work at the Kinneret farm48 in the Jordan Valley. Unlike the Sejera farm, the Kinneret farm was run along the lines of traditional managerial relations. But there, a dispute erupted between the manager who was employed by the Zionist Federation’s Land of Israel office, and the hired group of laborers. The dispute was caused by the manager’s way of running the farm, resentment of the grandiose house that the manager had built for himself (compared to the subhuman conditions of the laborers’ housing), and particularly by the manager’s decision to hire Arab labor to complete the harvest in 1909. The hostility surrounding the dispute turned into a labor strike, and as a result, both the manager and the striking workers were fired.49

47 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 394–95; Nir, “Toward Labor Settlement,” 237–39. 48 Gordon worked for a time at the Kinneret farm. In 1912 he moved to the northern part of the country and took an active part in the roaming work groups. He worked and lived in a number of different settlements (one of which was the Kinneret training farm) and took different kinds of jobs, until toward the end of that year he joined a group that returned south to prepare the land for the establishment of a new settlement called Kfar Ori’ah. A year later, some of the members of this group returned to the north of the country and took over the responsibility of preparing the Kinneret training farm for permanent settlement. This early communal settlement became known as Kvutzat Kinneret. Gordon himself finally settled in Degania, the first of the permanent communal settlements, in 1916. He lived and worked there until his death in 1922. 49 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 401–402, 424–425; Yehoshua ben Aryeh, “Settlement in the Jordan Valley during the Second Aliyah,” in Naor, The Second Aliyah, 58–61.

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The damage done to the cause of Jewish labor was soon reversed when, following these events, Arthur Ruppin, the Zionist federation’s local representative, designated a portion of the land adjacent to the Kinneret farm to be run in a manner similar to that of the earlier Sejera group. He turned over the land to a group of laborers, suggesting, once again, that they run the farm without the involvement of outside management.50 The idea was to promote the community’s self-sufficiency on a permanent basis. The group chosen for this experiment too had a successful harvest and showed a profit in the first year, strengthening the good impression already made by the Sejera collective. Again, it was shown that self-managing labor could succeed as an agricultural enterprise in the Land of Israel. But this group, too, saw itself as part of the wandering “conquest of labor” movement and had no plans to create a permanent settlement. In the autumn of 1910, it was therefore replaced by another group of laborers. This group included members who had previously been among the workers fired from the Kinneret farm at the time of the strike. They were fiercely determined and highly innovative. In the interim period they were joined by other workers and worked as a roaming commune in various locations in the vicinity of Ḥadera, and hence became known as the Ḥadera Commune.51 This is the group that eventually founded Degania, the first of the kevutzot and kibbutzim. The core of this group practiced communal living from 1907, when its original members came to the Land of Israel from Romania. However, its decision to form a permanent settlement on the shore of the Sea of Galilee was only made in 1911, following a fierce debate. At that meeting, the leader of the group, Yosef Bosel, was able to put together a majority vote for permanent settlement only by convincing his comrades to rethink the means through which the goals of the Second Aliyah labor community could be achieved. Bosel argued that it was not sufficient to continue to work the land on an ad hoc basis, and that under the present conditions the ethos of Jewish labor could only be realized through the self-sufficiency enabled by a more secure lifestyle.52

50 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 433–34; Ben Aryeh, “Settlement in the Jordan Valley,” 61. 51 Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 433–34. 52 Ben Halpern and Yehudah Reinholz, “Political Culture and Reality in the Second Aliyah,” in Bartal, The Second Aliyah, 31–32; Giladi, “Economy and Society,” 20; Nir, “Toward Labor Settlement,” 240.

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The debate and subsequent decision to form a permanent settlement demonstrates the role played by the combination of staunch ideological commitment and pragmatic realism in the development of the pioneer community, as the workers saw that many of the challenges to the community’s survival were simply not being solved through contracted labor. The founding members of Degania explicitly stated that there was no preexisting plan to establish a consistent communal lifestyle and that its establishment as a permanent settlement was a product “of life itself.”53 This is to say that it was forged as a response to the challenges that its founders faced. Significantly, even after the establishment of Degania as a permanent communal settlement, the ad hoc character of experimentation continued in order to meet the needs of life. Despite its overall communal character, the founders of Degania were fiercely individualistic. The individuals carried the onus of opinion and initiative that drove the arduous process of community decision-making. It took a long period of debate and a pragmatic process of trial and error before the actual character of this new communal settlement was formed. For example, only after the first child was born there began a discussion as to the relative involvement of the parents and broader community in the child’s education. The debates concerning the desired balance between individual autonomy and group decisions in other area as well were ongoing.54

Gordon and the Second Aliyah Gordon’s personal experience of the developments discussed above are expressed in his writings on the ethos of labor, which he understands to be an ethos that obligates constant renewal and creativity.55 But we should note that Gordon’s thought did not only reflect the values and ideals of the pioneer community, but was also a key influence in forming them. On the national and historical plane, Gordon understood the ethos of labor in the same way as his Second Aliyah comrades. Like them, he felt that the Jewish people have too long been dependent upon the material infrastructures produced by others, so that in order to achieve the desired 53 Nir, “Toward Labor Settlement,” 269. 54 Ibid., 241. 55 Part Three in the present volume (on Life and Praxis) is dedicated to a delineation of the manner in which Gordon expected the values of renewal and creativity to be reflected in the practical life of the pioneer community.

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rejuvenation of Jewish life, it was necessary for the people to turn to a life of labor in which they will construct the contours of their own existence. In so doing, it was presumed, the labor pioneers would serve as an avant-garde for the entire Jewish people in the process of social, cultural, communal, and existential rejuvenation. But Gordon also ascribed a level of philosophical depth to the role played by the Second Aliyah pioneer community and its ethos of labor that was beyond the comprehension of most of his young comrades. One of his early philosophical intuitions, already present in the first section of “Man and Nature,” presumes an ethical imperative that requires of human beings to provide a solid basis for their existence, as other natural creatures do, by drawing from what is already “found in the source of life”, and by each individual and each group “partaking [only] of that which it has prepared for itself ” in response to the fundamental needs of life.56 Ultimately, labor is a central to Gordon’s thought because through it he links the process of self-creation in the community, and the people, with the infinite regeneration of the cosmos. In this context, the quest for life that intuitively drove him to leave the Russian Pale of Settlement and join the Second Aliyah ultimately found philosophical expression in his conception of nature, as a cosmic process of creation that he believed the Jewish people must become a part of in order to survive, after being cut off from it throughout the generations of exile. On this basis Gordon idealized the Second Aliyah community as the embodiment of a society that not only lived from its own labor but that also placed the labor for life and its rejuvenation as the highest of human ideals.57

56 Gordon, The Writings of A. D. Gordon in Five Volumes [Heb.], ed. Yosef Aharonovitch (Tel Aviv: Hapo’el Hatza’ir, 5685–5689), vol. 1, 52. 57 Gordon, Selected Writings, 47, 50; idem, Selected Essays, 181.

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The next two sections of this work will describe the overall structure and content of Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature. The present section, entitled “Philosophy and Life,” takes a look at the logic of Gordon’s thought when viewed retrospectively; that is, by subjecting the various philosophical intuitions, which Gordon developed in his writing over the years, to the panorama of interconnections that characterize his writing toward the end of his life, when his thought achieved the character of a relatively complete methodical whole. In this manner, I intend to trace the inner consistency of Gordon’s thought from his most fundamental philosophical intuitions concerning the rootedness of the human self in the natural cosmos, to his critique of Western society and culture, and analyze the complexities of his later thinking concerning the religious sensibility, ethics, and society. The following section, entitled “Life and Praxis,” shall then demonstrate how Gordon translated the depth of his philosophical understanding into a pedagogical dialogue that he carried on with the community, concerning some the issues on the community’s ever-changing agenda. Generally speaking, we shall find that Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature draws much of its content from the dialectic of spirit and nature in modern philosophy, following the Enlightenment. But the European Enlightenment, in his opinion, wrongly encouraged the sanctification of the human being based on the differences that raised man above nature, rather than on the basis of what roots him in nature.

Chapter III

Gordon’s Philosophy as a Response to Kant, Nietzsche, and Marx

We begin with Gordon’s understanding of the self. Though Gordon does not generally note his sources, from the substance of his writing it is fairly certain that he developed his understanding of the human self from within an active dialogue with Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and, particularly, Kant. Although Gordon’s debt to Darwin is the least substantial, it will provide a useful starting point for our exploration of Gordon’s ideas, as it helps delineate the contours of Gordon’s thought as a philosophy of man in nature. Similarly to Darwin, Gordon states that the human self is rooted in the natural process of evolutionary development. Even though he agreed that what distinguished human existence, for good and for bad, from all that precedes it is derived from the humans’ cognitive abilities, the human being, for Gordon, is first and foremost a being that grows from nature and not from the a priori logic of an idea. The relation between man and nature is something new. It is not found among the other creatures. We presume that this new relation arose with the dawn of human thought. Until then man’s life, like the lives of other living creatures, was enveloped by nature; it flowed with the rise and fall of the life of nature . . . leaving no impression as a special phenomenon or world unto itself.1 1 Gordon, Selected Writings, 76; idem, Selected Essays, 209–210.

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Gordon implicitly rejects Darwin’s biological reductionism, and with it he rejects all forms of natural determinism. Yet, he clearly agrees with Darwin when he says that the “inner forces” that distinguish human existence are “the same as in the other living forms” even if “on a higher plane of development,” and adds that the difference between the character of human and animal life is but a result of “a peculiar influence rising out of social conditions;” that is, from the conditions of group life, with respect to the struggle for survival, through which the social abilities “became more concentrated and purified in the human self.”2 The evolution of human existence includes, for Gordon, such spiritual phenomena as wonder, ethical idealization, and other sorts of reflection not developed in the animal kingdom beyond the level of instinct, and which therefore have no place in Darwin’s theory concerning the origins of the species. This is to say that Gordon understands nature from the start as an organic manifold of matter and spirit,3 and he thus could not view the evolution of human subjectivity as a mere function of inherent material lawfulness. And yet, for him, the material and spiritual aspects of natural occurrence are so deeply intertwined that he presumed that there is something of the earlier instinctual aspects of animal life that continues to drive the human spirit even after the creation of an organized civilization. And he therefore opposes the reduction of human existence not only to forms of biological lawfulness, but also to the lawfulness of universal reason presumed by philosophical idealism. Ultimately, Gordon does not search for the origin of the human species, as Darwin does, through the empirical investigation of natural law and its involvement in the struggle for survival. But, he certainly appreciated the philosophical intuition discernible behind Darwinian theory, namely, that the development of human existence is a manifestation of the struggle for life in all of nature, and that the human spirit is but one aspect of life in nature. He opposes Darwin because, for him, there are aspects of life in nature that precede lawfulness; the self, for example. Significantly, Gordon does not discuss Darwinian theory per se, and if he relates to the concept of biological lawfulness at all, it is indirectly, as with the concept of lawfulness in all nineteenth-century science; that is, as an inheritance of

2 Ibid. 3 Note 5 in chapter 4 below.

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Enlightenment philosophy. For this reason, I maintain, Gordon’s primary philosophical nemesis is Kant, and not Darwin, Nietzsche, or Marx. Gordon’s dialogue with Nietzsche was crucial in the development of his thinking concerning the value of labor as a means of self-transcendence in the construction of the pioneer community. His interaction with Marx is seen in his social philosophy and his position on labor relations and settlements. But, as we shall find, Gordon’s critique of Nietzsche and Marx draws from a fundamental conception of man in nature that he apparently developed as a response to Kant’s conception of the human being in terms of an a priori idea of humanity founded in reason. Kant’s critical philosophy influenced the West’s perception of the relation of self and the world, in two major ways. One way involves the concept of the universal mind as defined in his Critique of Pure Reason and its influence on the scientific development of the modern West. The other involves the role played by Kantian ethics in the formation of modern liberalism. Concerning Gordon’s conception of human existence, Kant’s legacy in the realm of ethics is paramount. This is because Kant’s categorical imperative requires that human beings rise above their given nature in order to realize the dictates of the ethical command, which has its source in a reason common to all. For the sake of ethics, according to Kant, one must presume that the human will is sufficiently independent of natural law as to be able to fulfill the command as duty alone requires.4 For Gordon, however, nature, in and of itself, and not reason, is the “source of a higher freedom” insofar as it is the “source of life and creativity.”5 “Basing morality . . . on the demands of a higher reason,” he wrote, “. . . runs counter to the inclinations and demands of the human heart.” Consequently, he reduced the value of Kant’s philosophical ethics to a consequence of the mistaken Enlightenment idea that the “destiny of man is to serve as the crown of creation . . . by rising above one’s simple human nature.”6 But after Kant, as mentioned, Gordon’s main intellectual engagements are with Nietzsche and Marx. A main reason for this is the influence of Nietzsche’s and Marx’s legacies on the early pioneer community in the Land of Israel. Gordon was particularly sensitive to this influence because these two philosophers represent a break with the Enlightenment tradition that 4 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 26–28. 5 Gordon, Selected Writings, 163. 6 Ibid., 22.

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occurred in the social and philosophical development of the West as the nineteenth century progressed; a break that stands at the root of many of the social and cultural challenges of Gordon’s time. For Gordon, the symptoms of this break include, on the one hand, an increased philosophical subjectivism, and on the other, an over-systematization of society through the impact of empirical science, technology, and the growth of bureaucracy. Initially, Gordon is interested in Marx and Nietzsche with respect to their unique characters and personalities, which he described as two distinct “drops of water” in an infinite flow, rather than because of the content of their thought. For Gordon, Marx and Nietzsche are two examples of strong creative personalities. As all human beings, they are rooted in—but also oblivious to—the “unknowable . . . side” of their individual selves as it stands in nature “beyond cognition.” Whether you are a proponent of either or an antagonist to both—you will not presume that the huge differences in their world views result from one being more intelligent, logical or knowledgeable than the other.  .  . . The difference between them is not a matter of their cognitive understanding but rather of their character . . . [of] the roots of their soul within . . . the unknown . . . as it flows into their soul.7

“Nietzsche’s strength,” says Gordon, “is not in his teachings but in his self ”: Through his self, Nietzsche taught . . . the way in which the individual raises up his selfhood to a higher stage. He proved . . . that the foundation of the individual’s world is in himself [and that] from here he must begin to build his world so that it may be a construction that fits its [own] foundation. . . .8

The quest for self, with which Gordon identified the Second Aliyah, was for him a struggle for empowerment, wherein the self becomes rooted in the vitality of its own life, as Nietzsche suggested. But Gordon is not Nietzsche, and despite his identification with Nietzsche’s celebration of the vitality and power of life with respect to the self, Gordon believed that Nietzsche did not correctly understand the human situation in nature.9 He referred to Nietzsche’s thought as “turtle-like”10 insofar as it considered the 7 Ibid., 51–52. 8 Ibid., 153–154. 9 Compare Schweid, Foundations and Sources, 84. 10 Gordon, Selected Writings, 152, 238–240; Schweid, Foundations and Sources, 64.

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rootedness of human existence within nature only in terms of the individual self—and more specifically, in terms of Nietzsche’s own self—without reference to nature as the shared origin of a plurality of selves. As a result, Gordon believed that Nietzsche’s focus on the individual only in terms of a self-contained “will to power” was a form of “individuality [that] contracts itself within its shell, just as a turtle contracts itself in its ‘armor.’”11 Gordon was probably unaware of Husserl’s thought, and certainly had no idea of the development of phenomenology that came about with Heidegger. And yet, it was clear to Gordon, as it was to Husserl, Heidegger, and, in their wake, to contemporary Western consciousness, that the relation of human subjects with the world in which they live is not something separate from the self, but a part of what makes up the self. To continue his metaphor concerning Nietzsche and Marx, as representative of two distinct drops of water in a shared and infinite flow, Gordon’s self seems to have been rooted in a particular drop of water, or life, that for some reason inspired an ethical concern for other individuals and for the manner in which each of them is uniquely rooted in the infinite generation of nature. Sensing the primordial connectedness of all human beings, Gordon absolutely rejects Nietzsche’s idealization of the Übermensch as a human ideal, and accuses Nietzsche of transforming his own “will to power” into a general law.12 It appears that Gordon perceived Nietzsche’s worship of the “will to power” as the antithesis of an ethical urge that he believed could be ascertained already in natural life, and which points in the direction of love, empathy, and human solidarity. What can one say regarding the Übermensch .  .  . for whom others’ .  .  . weakness provides the ladder upon which he climbs high? What can one say about the raising of the human type while sacrificing . . . empathy and love to 11 Gordon, Selected Writings, 239. 12 A comparison of Gordon’s position regarding Nietzsche with Aḥad Ha’am’s opinion may be of some interest, since Aḥad Ha’am also took exception to Nietzsche’s veneration of the Übermensch, even though he agreed with Nietzsche’s celebration of the uniqueness of the capable individual, as one whose role it is to further the progress of humanity. (The Complete Writings of Aḥad Ha’am [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 5725, 154–158. English translation: Selected Essays of Ahad Ha-Am, trans. Leon Simon [New York: Atheneum, 1970], 217–241). The difference between Aḥad Ha’am and Gordon, on this point, is that Aḥad Ha’am sees the moral failure of Nietzsche’s position as the product of Nietzsche’s “Aryan” spirit, and therefore foreign to Jewish culture, while Gordon understands the problem in a universal key; that is, Gordon claims that Nietzsche worked with a fallacious understanding of the origin of self in nature.

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all human beings and to all that is alive . . . ? Nietzsche’s soul is rooted in the sphere of power, and he truly must be a genius in order to raise such a self to the higher rungs of selfhood . . . , but his Übermensch is in no way the higher being that humanity yearns for.13

Marx’s analysis of the function of labor in human society reflects, on the other hand, the broad relation to the world that Gordon found absent in Nietzsche’s consideration of the self. For Marx, like Gordon, human beings are defined by their place in nature, and most specifically, by their need to labor in order to survive, and only subsequently by the value of that labor in class society. However, Gordon was extremely critical of Marx, because Marxist ideology depreciates the individual self in comparison to society. For Gordon, Marx’s thinking is, therefore, also “turtle-like.” Like Nietzsche, Marx mistakes the shell of his own subjectivity for the outer casing of all existence. Marx constructed a conception of the human being whose self is functionally determined by thinking through the empirical movement of nature and history. But according to Gordon, Marx, like Nietzsche, mistook the cognitive reflection of nature in the experience of his own “single drop” of life as characteristic of life in toto. Even though Gordon implicitly follows Marx in viewing human labor as the activity that links human existence to the larger occurrence of world being,14 he follows Nietzsche in viewing the vitality of life in the individual self as a necessary focus for a philosophical discussion concerning human existence. In a later chapter, we shall see that Gordon calls Marxism, like capitalism, a “mechanical” system that damages the organic quality of human existence.15 In his post-World War I, anti-Marxist polemic, Gordon bemoans the fact that “according to [Marxist] socialism the collective nullifies the individual,” and that “at its center lay the class and not individual awareness.”16 Because of this, he criticizes Marx and the Marxists for their attempt “to renew human life through the renewal of the social order without rejuvenating the human spirit from its source.”17 The “source of human 13 Gordon, Selected Writings, 153–154. 14 See below at the end of chapter 4. 15 See the discussion on Gordon’s critique of modernity below. 16 Gordon, Selected Writings, 240. 17 Ibid. For a more developed discussion on Gordon’s attitude toward Marxism on the backdrop of the Second and particularly the beginning of the Third Aliyah, see Schweid, Foundations and Sources, 30–34, 59–61.

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life,” for Gordon, is nature as lived by both the individual and the collective, and not, at least not in the first instance, nature as the embodiment of economic and social laws. Generally speaking, Gordon’s critique of Nietzsche and Marx already contains elements of a social philosophy that presumes an interdependence of the individual and the group. On the basis of this interdependence, he will formulate his take on the value of the pioneer settlement in the overall context of human existence. We shall consider this aspect of Gordon’s philosophy a little later in this section. Presently, we are interested in the manner in which he developed his over-all trajectory of thought from his engagement with the dominant trends of modern philosophy until his time. Before we move further in the presentation of his thought, let us therefore consider Gordon’s critique of Marx and Nietzsche in relation to his understanding of Kant. It was already mentioned that Gordon’s philosophy is a response to the trajectory of Western philosophical thought that developed following Kant’s consideration of reason as the criterion for all human existence. The aspects of Nietzschean and Marxist philosophy that Gordon incorporated into his own thought reflect the points at which he felt it necessary to criticize Kant. From the positive side of his critique, Marx and Nietzsche represent, for Gordon, aspects of human existence in terms of natural occurrence that Kant understood to be beyond the realm of philosophical consideration, as Kant’s concept of a priori reason limited the parameters of natural experience to cognitive discourse. Does this mean that Gordon felt closer to Marx or Nietzsche than he did to Kant? Certainly not. Put simply, Nietzsche and Marx represent, for Gordon, a dialectical turn in the Kant-inspired discussion of human freedom. We already mentioned Gordon’s deep antagonism for Nietzsche’s ethical orientation and his focus on the Übermensch. Nietzsche’s celebration of the Übermensch involved a reworking of the modern notion of human freedom in a manner that remains relevant only for those whose drive for personal power outweighs all other ethical values. Gordon’s difficulty with Marx, on the other hand, was centered around Marx’s attitude toward the question of philosophy as science. While Kant identified the self with the free human spirit at work in the context of scientific investigation and the ideal of an ethical humanity, Marx understood the spirit as nothing but a function of the objective lawfulness of material phenomena as it affects society. In this, Marx succeeded in turning his philosophy into a positive

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science in ways that Kant could not have imagined. But it is precisely because of Kant’s overt rejection of natural (and by extension, historical) determinism in favor of the freedom of spirit, that Gordon would probably appreciate in Kant what he could not in Marx. Gordon, like Kant, was a modern humanist who rejected natural and historical determinism as the defining principle of human existence because of an emphasis on spiritual freedom, even though he rejected Kant’s philosophical methodology with regard to uncovering the origins of human subjectivity. Therefore, Gordon could appreciate Kant as a great humanist philosopher, while Marx must necessarily represent for him, a betrayal of modern humanism, because of his subordination of the human spirit to natural and historical laws. Marx’s commitment to truth is impressive and there is certainly something true about his contention that competition over natural resources and the means of production determine the historical development of society. It is also true that there is a close connection, in the formation of society, between the interdependence of human beings and their responses to technological innovation. But whereas for Gordon these truths as well must be understood from the perspective of the formation of individual human selves within the hidden aspects of natural experience, Marx’s objectivist understanding of material determinism denies the individual any and all significance when distinguished from that of the collective. We might, therefore, suggest that despite his severe criticism of both Marx and Nietzsche, Gordon utilizes the partial truths that he found in their thought as a means to re-root Kant’s humanistic philosophy of spirit in the vitality of natural experience. Nietzsche’s celebration of the vitality of life in the free individual is, for Gordon, a celebration of the creative abilities through which nature makes life possible. Gordon also shares Marx’s starting point in the understanding of humanity as a species whose dependence upon labor is a fundamental fact of the struggle for life. He is somewhat closer to Kant, however, where he appears to be suggesting that there already is an ethical urge to nature that must be developed by the human spirit.

Chapter IV

The Foundations of A. D. Gordon’s Philosophy of Man in Nature: Life, Self, and Experience

The question at hand is, what are the foundations of Gordon’s philosophy that he developed from within his critique of Kant, Nietzsche and Marx. Although Gordon’s most important philosophical writings were published under the title “Man and Nature,” the substance of his philosophical thought is a consideration of human existence as an aspect of nature; that is, not of “man and nature” but of “man in nature.”1 The difference is significant because Gordon’s ultimate understanding of human existence presumes a continuous reality that combines the human being with his or her world. Gordon admits to human uniqueness when compared with the rest of the natural world as a result of the human ability for conceptual reflection. Nonetheless, for Gordon, it is not human cognition but the creative force of life that joins the human being to the rest of the natural cosmos; and it is the power of life that arises from within the infinite natural process that provides the basis for Gordon’s understanding of human existence and the diverse forms of human activity. 1 See note 4 in chapter 1 above for an explanation of my usage of “man” throughout the book, despite its gender prejudice.

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Considering Gordon’s traditional Jewish background and the time many of the Second Aliyah pioneers spent in East European institutions of Torah learning before joining the radical youth, it is not surprising that he attempted to engage his comrades in discussions concerning spheres of existence that in the past would have been considered religious. We have already mentioned Avraham Shapira’s work on Gordon’s use of Kabbalistic language.2 Schweid suggested that Gordon made the concept of “man in nature” the starting point of his philosophy as part of his attempt to ascertain the meaning of the community’s existence from a point of departure common to all its members.3 But if Schweid is correct, it would mean that this common point of departure was formulated, in Gordon’s writings, by combining the critical character of modern philosophy with the premodern understanding of existence in terms of an all-encompassing divinity. As we shall now see, Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature replaces the meeting between God and Israel and the religious language of the past with a self-critical view of the origins of humanity in the vast and ever-growing self-creation of nature.

Nature as a Cosmic Manifold When Gordon speaks of nature, and of man-in-nature, he does not mean nature as perceived through the intellectual constructions of natural science, but rather nature as the occurrence of life and the infinite renewal of all that is.4 In addition, as we saw above, the life of nature does not refer here to a material reality alone. In one of his later essays, Gordon says explicitly: “Life . . . is both matter and spirit.”5 But this is intuitively implicit from the beginning. As he says already in the earliest section of “Man and Nature,” life is: something more than the parts [or even] the totality of the parts combined which make up . . . the body. . . . Life belongs to the unending creation that flows from nature. . . . It is something whose existence can only be proved 2 See note 13 in the introduction to the present work. 3 Schweid, “The Philosophical-Educational Structure of the Thought of A. D. Gordon,” 98. 4 This statement is supported by virtually every passage in “Man and Nature.” For a few examples, see Gordon, Selected Writings, 52–53, 59–60, 106, 108, 121; idem, Selected Essays, 175, 181, 189–190, 192–193, 252. 5 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 218, 236–238; idem, Selected Essays, 29–35. Compare Selected Writings, 52.

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through itself. . . . If you have loved . . . if you have been filled with compassion . . . if you have sought truth and righteousness, if you have devoted yourself . . . to the search for a new world, for a new human being6 . . . you be may rest assured . . . that in this body there is a spark . . . a spirit. It contains life . . . and what can a person ask for . . . that is more sacred than the purity of life.7

For Gordon, all life—material and spiritual—is cosmic. Life is a natural occurrence. For him, nature and the cosmos are one and the same. There may be detected, in Gordon’s writings, an inclination to use the term “nature” when he is referring to particular phenomena or to the organic relations between them, while the term “cosmos” generally relates to nature as the macrocosm organically constituted by these smaller phenomena and their occurrences. From both sides, nature is a manifold of body and spirit, and spirit, as much as the material body, is rooted in the all-embracing life of the natural cosmos. “Whatever is alive in the human soul .  .  . all that is original and illumined by the . . . light of the human soul, what we call spiritual flight, “holy spirit,” and even “creation” . . . follow from the infinite depths and border-lessness”8 of the natural cosmos. An obvious Kabbalistic influence appears when he says that “nature . . . is the source of life in the human soul” insofar as the soul has an “immediate and continuous connection to” and a “drawing of sustenance . . . from the infinite.”9 For Gordon, the human being is meant to take part—physically and psychologically—in the infinite self-creation of the cosmos. This is to say that one is expected, through his or her uniquely human qualities, to renew the power of creation in self, society, and culture. In Gordon’s later writings, this early intuition was formulated in terms of a “new creation.”10 But for him, even a “new creation” does not occur ex 6 Until this point the text is still included in the edition of “Man and Nature” edited by Bergman and Shohat (Selected Writings, 55; Selected Essays, 178–179). The following sentences, however, were edited out of this later, enlarged version of “Man and Nature.” 7 This is the addition from The Writings of A. D. Gordon in Five Volumes, vol. 1, 46–47, that was later edited. 8 Gordon, Selected Writings, 52. 9 Ibid. See also idem, Selected Essays, 174–75. 10 The English term “creation” is a suitable translation for two Hebrew words used fairly often by Gordon: bri’ah and yetzirah. This generalization is permissible, as the two terms are closely identified with each other in Gordon’s writings: he often speaks of bri’ah ḥadasha as well as yetzirah ḥadasha. Gordon appears to follow the kabbalistic use of the terms so that the word bri’ah (referring in the writings of Isaac Luria to a primordial act of divinity) is a more emphatic term than yetzirah (which for Luria refers

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nihilo, but only out of the natural phenomena that preceded it. As such, Gordon views all meaningful human endeavor as a process that continues the infinite self-creation of the natural cosmos. The biological aspects of human existence are, of course, already rooted in the processes of nature in a manner that does not require any particular orientation of human consciousness or will. It is different, however, for matters concerning the human being as a self or spirit that creates civilization and culture. We shall soon see how Gordon’s perception of the human beings’ relation to natural creation forms the basis of his social philosophy, with respect to ethics, the notion of justice and the religious sensibility. But we must first note that, while Gordon’s is a naturalist philosophy, it is not reductionist. The relation of subjectivity to the natural world from which it arose is enigmatic and constitutes, for Gordon, the fundamental problem that needs to be considered philosophically, before it is possible to explain what constitutes a healthy human life, and subsequently—to diagnose the problems confronting Jewish and human existence in his time.

A Matter of Perspective: Cognitive Understanding vs. Natural Experience The key question, through which Gordon formulates the philosophical problematic involved in comprehending the nature of human existence, is that of the relation between human understanding and life-experience. He believed that whatever it means to be human is manifest in this relation. The problem is first expressed through Gordon’s analysis of the Hebrew terms used to describe life, being, understanding, and experience. The contemporary Hebrew word for experience (ḥavayah) is a term that Gordon himself created. His rationale for creating the word was epistemic. Hebrew was, at the time, a language that had not been used in day-to-day life for centuries, and there was no existing Hebrew word to signify experience in a manner that combined “life” and “being” in the way Gordon needed. He contends, in opposition to the general trend of Western metaphysics, that there is no being other than life, and therefore “one cannot grasp being (havayah) except through life (ḥayim).” This means, for Gordon, that experience is life as lived from the perspective of the human subject. We often use the to a subsequent and lower level act of creation). Still, for Gordon bri’ah ḥadasha as well as yetzirah ḥadasha mean “new creation.”

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term “life-experience,” or even just the word “experience,” to signify our own life as we know it through the totality of non-cognitive, pre-cognitive, and post-cognitive perceptions, or simply as we live it from within. Hence, the Hebrew word Gordon invented for “experience” was ḥavayah, which is literally comprised by joining the Hebrew word for “life”—ḥayim—with the word for “being”—havayah. The meaning of ḥavayah, as experience, is therefore close to that of the German Erlebnis,11 that is, life as lived. Gordon maintains that even human experience, when seen from the side of nature, is a part of pre-cognitive natural occurrence. This suggests that the regenerative power of life, in nature, is the ground for all that occurs and is known. In this manner, Gordon erases the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena and is quick to note that human experience is not only a real ontic occurrence that connects the human being with nature, but also a form of perception that stands in powerful tension with the cognitive understanding. Experience (ḥavayah) . . . as the substance of life parallels the notion of being (havayah), which we understand as the substance of reality. But on the other hand, it stands in the middle between .  .  . being (havayah) and cognitive understanding (hakarah) . . . [meaning that] experience (ḥavayah) mediates between being (havayah) and understanding (hakarah).12

This is to say, first off, that Gordon conceives life experience as the reception of being that precedes cognitive understanding. Experience is a precondition of cognitive understanding, because understanding is only able to grasp the substance of reality, in the partial but definitive way that it does, because it is, like all of nature, already a product of cosmic generation. Put differently, the cognitive understanding is able to function as a sharp conceptual delineation of reality, for example, in philosophy and science, because it abstracts its content from the broader and deeper perceptions of natural experience. Even though traditional Western philosophy imagines a cognitive faculty that is able to perceive the essential nature of being, for Gordon, life-experience (ḥavayah) is the source of all understanding and a condition for all true knowledge. For the purpose of our discussion, we need to stress 11 I thank my close friend and colleague Yehoyada Amir for sharing this insight with me. 12 Gordon, Selected Writings, 5; idem, Selected Essays, 186–187. Ratzabi aptly refers to life-experience in Gordon’s thought as the mode of “existence within being” (Ratzabi, Anarchy in Zion, 204).

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that life-experience, or ḥavayah, according to Gordon, not only precedes the cognitive understanding from the standpoint of cosmic generation, but is also more ontically expansive and therefore more cosmically significant than the cognitive understanding alone. Put in the proper proportions, ḥavayah, as life-experience, denotes an intuitive and all-embracing impression of one’s own being within the intertwined physical, social, and cultural connections that comprise the individual’s surroundings. “Experience (ḥavayah) is more than cognitive understanding (hakarah)” because the “cognitive understanding is only a part” while “experience is everything.” Whereas the “cognitive understanding” is “limited by permanent borders and grasps that which it knows as a fixed ordinance,” Gordon writes, “experience is infinite.”13 Because of the priority he gives to life and experience over cognitive understanding, Gordon has been compared to Tolstoy. But their philosophies differ greatly, because Gordon opposes Tolstoy’s dismissal of science as useless for humanity: “It is in the cognitive understanding,” Gordon says, “that man builds” his higher world of spirit, of beauty, morality, and religion. There is no room for “doubt regarding the right and obligation of cognitive understanding to define . . . its own parameters.”14 He does not criticize scientific endeavor as such, but only calls for an appreciation of the value of science, like the value of cognitive understanding in general, in the context of the organic experience of the broader natural life. In his own words, the creative power of nature is such that the “separation of cognition from life” means the “removal of the soul from cognition.”15

Ecology and the Question of Metaphysical Transcendence From the perspective of phenomenological reflection, human subjectivity may indeed be posited as a new beginning within the natural cosmos. But, as Gordon points out, this is only because cognition posits a fictitious void between itself and nature. In reality, he maintains, “world-being is the infinity of nature” that “flows into the human soul” and “into human feeling and human cognition from two sides: from that side in which one feels and

13 Gordon, Selected Writings, 94; idem, Selected Essays, 186. 14 Gordon, Selected Writings, 94; idem, Selected Essays, 186. 15 Gordon, Selected Writings, 94; idem, Selected Essays, 186.

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conceives as well as from that side in which it [world-being] is not conceived or felt but [rather] lived.”16 When the cognitive understanding divorces itself from life experience, it is as “a mirror darkened on one side.” In this situation aspects of nature’s inner dynamic are hidden from the cognitive understanding. This results in the impression that what is reflected on its “clear side,” is reality as such, though it is still only a partial and second-degree reflection. Similarly, Gordon compares the cognitive understanding, when oblivious to the broad parameters of life experience that feeds it, to a magnifying glass that unknowingly abstracts and sharpens this or that particular facet of experience. 17 When, on the other hand, human cognition appreciates its dependence on experience through which it is impressed by the infinite life of the natural cosmos, Gordon likens it to the flame of an oil-lamp. The lamp’s flame enlightens all that surrounds it, but it is only able to do so because at its other end it is fed by the flow of oil that comes from a source that precedes it. In a similar way, human cognition is supported by the life of the cosmos that gives rise to human beings, their general experience, and their unique cognitive abilities.18 When one presumes, along with Gordon, that the human and natural phenomena that are given to cognitive understanding are indeed rooted in pre-cognitive occurrences—a possibility left open by Kant, though deemed by him to be unknowable—the question of certitude becomes a secondary consideration for the understanding of the breadths and depths of human existence. Mystery is a part of the reality being lived and thought. As mentioned, Gordon does not deny the value of cognitive understanding in science and philosophy. He does, however, demand that these be integrated in what I suggest we call a comprehensively ecological approach to the cosmos. Gordon often used the term “organic.” The term “ecology,” referring to the interconnectedness of all natural phenomena, would be just as good. “Ecology” is understood, in our own day, precisely as denoting the interconnectedness of all things, including human life, in the vast reaches of the cosmos. For Gordon, all is interconnected, and the “organic” character of existence is always and everywhere dependent upon the impulse of cosmic life. 16 Gordon, Selected Writings, 96. 17 Ibid., 51. 18 Ibid., 51, 59, 96; Gordon, Selected Essays, 174, 179, 187.

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Apparently, his fundamental philosophical intuition works like this: just as the existence of a leaf cannot be experienced without the organic quality of relations between its cells and the leaf as a whole, so it is regarding every single phenomenon in the real world. Nothing can be experienced except by virtue of the organic relations between natural entities and the parts that comprise them. But the words “entity” and “parts” are necessarily misleading, insofar as they suggest a separation between objects. Indeed, in the natural world we find gradations that can be distinguished by the mind, and on the basis of such cognitively initiated distinctions our minds are capable of formulating different types of quality. But we do not, according to Gordon, experience ontological separation except through the input of our cognitive faculties. Ultimately, Gordon rejects the possibility of ontological separation from the organic whole of the natural cosmos, and therefore his philosophy contradicts not only the notion of metaphysical transcendence on the part of the human being, but of divine transcendence as well.19 Gordon considers the human being to be an immanent aspect of cosmic nature because he or she is an integral part of its ongoing cosmic creation. As with other natural phenomena, the human being is a microcosm of the natural cosmos within which the infinite occurrence of nature, as life, continues. But Gordon also identifies God with the immanent phenomenon of infinite creation, implicitly rejecting the traditional religious view that describes God as the transcendent creator of all. The difference between the divine and the human, for Gordon, is that the human is only an aspect of the infinite self-creation of natural occurrence, while God is the occurrence of the natural cosmos in its entirety. This intuition provides the basis for humility in human life. Paraphrasing the Jewish liturgical reference to God as He “who renews the works of creation each and every day,” it 19 The priority that Gordon gives to life-experience over the cognitive understanding parallels similar epistemological moves made by German Jewish thinkers of the same generation, such as Martin Buber and particularly Franz Rosenzweig. But there is a certain radical originality that characterizes Gordon’s thinking, which is not present in Buber’s and Rosenzweig’s writings because of their commitment to the religious language fostered by the Judaeo-Christian heritage, still held in high esteem in the West of their time. Because Gordon felt a need to partake in acts of creation in the present moment, and he believed that this need was rooted in a quest for life that is intrinsic to the ecological character of nature, without recourse to the dictates of previous philosophical traditions, he was able to construct a pantheistic philosophy in the context of a dialogue with his youthful comrades in the Land of Israel, who rebelled against the religious dogma of the past.

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may be said that for Gordon, nature itself constantly renews the work of its own creation, with God understood as the infinite act of natural self-generation in and of itself, and the human being seen as one of the unique organic moments comprising it.20 This is the reason why Gordon always speaks of the human being in terms of man-in-nature. Nature is not limited to rocks, trees, plants, animals, and the like. Human beings, too, are an aspect of the infinite self-creation of nature, and therefore, according to Gordon, the European Enlightenment understanding that reduces human existence to an idea, or to a particular ideational logic, ultimately results in an unhealthy way of life and leads to self-destruction. The modern Enlightenment involved a return of human life to nature from the abstract spiritual realms of medieval religious speculation and the world to come, but in Gordon’s view it did not actually complete the return to nature. Because of the way in which it understood human reason, Enlightenment philosophy rather grounded the idea of human existence in an ideational lawfulness that it presumed to be already imbedded in nature, but which is actually a cognitive construction.

A New Categorical Imperative: Live Nature The foundations of Gordon’s thought, as discussed above, can be summed up by the following passage from “Man and Nature”: The human being, as human being, must always be within nature: for nature is to the feeling thinking human being what water is to the fish. The human being does not only require a reflected silhouette of nature within his soul. He requires the sphere of nature, the pressing and unifying contact that nature, that infinite being, presses upon his body and soul forcing him to live and to be human as a living individual.21

This view of man-in-nature forms the basis of what I shall describe as a new categorical imperative that is quite different from Kant’s ethical

20 Compare with Emerson: “Standing on the bare ground . . . I become a transparent eyeball . . . I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lectures and Essays (New York: Library of America, 1983), 10. 21 Gordon, Selected Writings, 52; idem, Selected Essays, 174–175.

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imperative, as well as from the romantic approach of love and admiration for nature. The absolute command of human nature [and] of [the] human spirit is … not that which hovers over the contemporary world of culture, [to] know nature and love it. Rather it is . . . to live nature!22

In the next section of this work, we will see what it means, for Gordon, to live nature. For now, we shall only note that no later than five years after he entered the Land of Israel, Gordon clearly portrays the Second Aliyah ethos of labor as a call for the realization of the imperative to live nature, insofar as labor “makes the self-conscious human being into a partner with nature in the creation of life,” and insofar as “life” in nature is “creation, perpetual renewal and ever-recurring formation.” This appeared to be just what was needed in order to rejuvenate the life of an exiled people, divorced from labor for almost two centuries. More significantly, for our discussion, this means that Gordon stood at the center of the struggle for Jewish labor in the Land of Israel at the time of the Second Aliyah not only because labor was, for him, equivalent to the reconstruction of the individual’s, the community’s, and the people’s life, but also because it was the primary affirmation of Gordon’s categorical imperative “to live” as a “natural creature,” and because only as a natural creature was the reconstruction of life possible for him.

22 Gordon, Selected Writings, 57.

Chapter V

Critique of Society and Civilization

Ultimately, Gordon’s concept of man-in-nature is a response to the mechanization of Western society following the industrial revolution. Though the industrial revolution was a largely material occurrence, for Gordon it was the historical embodiment of the cognitive understanding, whose science produced it. In effect, the meeting of technology and modern economics in the industrial revolution transformed, for Gordon, the logic of spiritual subjectivity, which nineteenth-century science inherited from the Enlightenment, into the mechanics of material civilization.1 In recent generations, as science ascended and brought to the world a technology that was previously not even dreamed of: capitalism, the progeny of advanced technology and alienation from nature, arrived and subjugated the natural to the mechanical. It concluded the process of destroying the human group . . . whose cosmic infrastructure was taken from it and thus became a mechanical construction without any spirit of life in the cosmic sense.2

In the next chapter, we will see that Gordon’s lament over the “destruction of the human group” refers to the fate of family life and the traditional cultures of preindustrial society. For the present discussion, it is important to mention that Gordon strongly believed that the social and economic 1 Ratzabi, Anarchy in Zion, 210. 2 Gordon, Selected Writings, 239.

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effects of industrialization on traditional family and community experience played a significant role in the transformation that humanity underwent in the modern West. Had the modern faith in reason remained tied to the speculative search for truth, Gordon’s dispute with Kant as to where one should search for the origins of the human spirit—in the idea of reason or in the concrete processes constituting the natural cosmos—would have remained a matter of theoretical speculation. Following the industrial revolution, however, the development of the physical sciences that made industrialization possible, along with the empirical methodology that it bequeathed to the social sciences, replaced the ideal of speculative reason with that of functional reason as the principle through which human society must be understood and mastered. More importantly, for him, this epistemological turn ultimately transformed the way in which consciousness relates to nature. As a result, in the industrialized world: nature receives the character of a general store .  .  . [or] a warehouse .  .  . rather than that of the source of life. . . . The planted field and the forest . . . are assessed in terms of the quantity of wheat or wood for such and such amounts of money [while] animals, domesticated and wild, as well as fowl [are assessed] for the weight of their meat and the price of their leather, wool and work-power.3

The most disastrous effect of modern technology and discourse following the industrial revolution concerns the human being. As modern philosophy began to perceive human existence in terms of natural law, modern economics and industrialization distanced the concrete human being from those forms of natural existence, such as the family and the ethnic community, which still permeated the preindustrial society.4 This transition claimed a high cost in terms of human dignity and social justice. On this matter, Gordon’s critique is close to that of Marx. But for Gordon, the source of poverty, alienation, and exploitation in modern society is not a result of the class struggle but of the mechanization of human consciousness, of which Marx’s theory of class struggle is but a part. Thus, he writes in his post-World War I polemic against Marxism:

3 Ibid., 125. 4 See next chapter.

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Critique of Society and Civilization    CHAPTER V

There is a reason socialism was understood in terms of materialism and the class struggle. The lone fact that the founders of socialism understood all . . . the struggles of human life in terms of only one side shows the presence here of mechanical thinking.5

Herein, for Gordon, lay the problem of modernity. The centrality of the “idea,” which in Kant may be seen as no more than an over-conceptualization of life, has been transformed into a logic of technology that through capitalism turned all of nature, including the human being, into a commodity. However, as opposed to animal and plant life, the human being has become in the modern period not only an object of exploitation but also the exploiter of all others. Implicitly recalling his earlier exhortation that human beings consume only what they themselves prepare out of need, Gordon laments that in the modern day humanity has become a “parasitic growth unable to find sustenance in the light rays of the sun and the gusts of wind that pass over the Earth.”6 Both as one who exploits and as one who is exploited, he writes, the human being has become “distanced . . . from nature . . . ignores it . . . and builds a thick . . . wall of separation between himself and nature.”7 The wall separating society from nature in the modern period is a product of the advances in the cognitive understanding in the realm of science and technology, and a corresponding reduction of influence on the part of peoples’ individual and shared life experience. The advance of science and technology dictates the character of civilization. So, while Gordon did not envision a form of life that would reject cognitive understanding or its civilizational embodiment, he was deeply concerned about the balance of life-experience and rational cognition in the formation of society. In contrast to the atomization of human existence that came along with the expansion of technology, Gordon paradoxically maintained that the broader a person’s or a civilization’s scientific understanding, the more and not the less, they are in need of close contact with the forces of natural creation that precede them. To the extent that one’s thought and feelings are broadened and deepened and his knowledge enrichened, to that extent he is in need of directly embracing

5 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 236; idem, Selected Essays, 33. 6 Gordon, Selected Writings, 125. 7 Ibid., 52–53; Gordon, Selected Essays, 175.

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nature. . . . [But] what we see is the opposite. . . . The more humanity takes from nature the more it distances itself and ignores nature.8

Here, of course, two important questions arise. First, presuming that Gordon does not subscribe to the modern philosophical explications of human ethics that presuppose the hegemony of reason, but looks toward a reason whose content and power stem from nature as experienced in the depth of one’s self, how does he understand the notion of ethical responsibility? And second, considering Gordon’s overall philosophy of “man in nature,” what does he think should be done in order to mitigate the ever-growing disassociation of humanity from the natural cosmos as a practical matter? The answer to these questions, as we shall now see, is found in the epistemological orientation that Gordon ascribes to the religious sensibility and the role it plays with regard to the mystery of life in the context of ethics and ethnicity. Though the relations between these topics are never completely worked out, in Gordon’s writings, he frequently discusses them together with respect to the question of ethical responsibility and the disassociation of humanity from nature.

8 Gordon, Selected Writings, 52–53.

Chapter VI

Religion, Family, and the Ethic of Ecological Responsibility

Though Gordon describes modernity as involving a severe crisis in human existence, the potential for that crisis is already found, for him, in that moment of natural evolution in which human consciousness was initially formed. This, he believed, was the beginning of the “rupture between man and nature.” Recalling the pantheistic conflation of nature and divinity, in his thought, he further maintained that the biblical story of the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden is a mythical representation of that moment. The fable repeated in different ways by all the ancient peoples tells . . . that in the beginning the human walked with God and only later, after he ate from the Tree of Knowledge . . . was he banished from the Garden of Eden.1

From his critique of modernity, it is clear that Gordon saw the vices of modern civilization as symptoms of this rift. Most importantly, however, he understood religion, or more precisely, the religious sensibility, as both a product of this break and an opportunity to transcend it. Ultimately, Gordon founds the possibility of fixing what is wrong with culture and society in the present upon a revitalization of the religious sensibility. I maintain that the religious sensibility is present in all the dimensions of Gordon’s writing. And yet, it must be clear that while he envisions the possibility of bridging the gap between humanity and nature, through the religious sensibility, 1 Ibid., 79.

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Gordon did not idolize the institutional representations of Jewish or any other form of religious life.2 Much of the scholarship on Gordon already views its religious elements as crucial for understanding various facets of his thought.3 It is, therefore, surprising that the fact that he discussed the religious aspect of human life from two distinct vantage points, as I will now show, has gone largely unnoticed. From one of these vantage points, Gordon talked of the religious sensibility in the context of life-experience that is attributable to the individual. From the other, he was concerned with the religio-cultural heritage4 that, as in the case of the Jewish people, constitutes much of the collective culture. Most of the scholarly literature on this topic refers only to one or the other aspect in Gordon’s thought, so that the inner connection between these two vantage points is often missed. This is unfortunate because, as I shall argue, the connection between the individual’s religious sensibility and the shared religio-cultural heritage carries deep import for Gordon’s understanding of society and the ethical development of humanity. 2 The question of Gordon’s attitude toward religious observance remains an unsolved issue to this day. Aharonovitch recalls that despite his deep antagonism toward the First Aliyah farm owners’ boycott of the Second Aliyah laborers, he sided with them in thinking that the pioneers’ public disavowal of religious tradition was in poor taste, adding that when he arrived in the Land, Gordon was still a traditionally observant Jew and only later on stopped observing the positive commandments though he continued to observe the negative ones. (Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 67–79). Building upon Aharonovitch’s observations, Schweid maintained that the change in Gordan’s level of observance was a price he was willing to pay, in terms of acclimation to the lifestyle of his heretical comrades, in order to be able to influence the character of their pioneer endeavor from within the religious orientation of his (philosophical) spirit. (Eliezer Schweid, A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy, vol. 4 [Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2006], 27) Ramon maintained, correctly, that despite the change in Gordon’s level of observance the sense of sanctity that was associated with religious observance in the past continued to be present in Gordon’s attitude to labor and to the secularly oriented pioneer enterprise as a whole. (Ramon, New Life, 195–197, 208–209) 3 Nathan Rottenstreich, Jewish Thought in the Modern Period [Heb.], vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 5710), 278–281; Bergman, Men and Ways, 331–333, 338–343; Schweid, Individual, 149–155, idem, A History, 47–55; Avraham Shapira, “Organic Nationality, Cosmopolitanism and Universalism in the Thought of A. D. Gordon,” Hatzionut [Heb.] 21 (5754): 47–65 (see especially 49–52); Ramon, New Life, 15–17, 91–100, 138–167, 193–201; Ratzabi, Anarchy in Zion, 197, 226–228, 231. 4 Gordon did not use this term. I chose it as one that accurately reflects all that Gordon has to say concerning the religious sensibility in the context of the people’s collective experience. See shortly what he has to say, for example, concerning the past experience of the Jewish people on the Day of Atonement.

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Religion as the Experience of Cosmic Unity and its Ethical Implications We shall begin with Gordon’s description of the religious sensibility as applicable to individual experience. Like all feelings and sensibilities, the religious sensibility includes important cognitive aspects. Primarily, however, it is a glimmer of the pre-cognitive state of existence. The religious sensibility, for Gordon, is a “higher intuition” that acts “as though the wall separating the contracted individual life from the life of the cosmos is removed.”5 He identifies the religious sensibility with “the feeling of absolute unity and interweaving of all being.”6 As such, the religious sensibility provides the metaphysical grounds for ethical behavior and artistic creation. The three major senses that distinguish the human being from all other creatures: the religious sense, the moral sense and the esthetic sense are three sides of the same thing . . . with the religious sense . . . the foundation of the other two.7

The moral sense is “the very same religious sense of supernal unity” when it is experienced as “ultimate responsibility.” It infuses human life with the “sense of responsibility for all life and all creation” that arises from the religious experience of cosmic unity.8 This, again, is closely linked to the imperative to live life and its realization in labor. Labor is a product of the sense of responsibility that arises from the needs of concrete existence, as it stems from the infinite life of the cosmos. The goal of labor is “to rejuvenate life” and, as such, it too is an expression of the sense of responsibility aroused in the context of religious experience. As with many of Gordon’s philosophical discussions, he does not delineate precisely how the religious sensibility brings about ethical behavior. But he hints at the logic of his thinking, on this matter. If for Kant human freedom is manifest in the autonomy of the reasonable human will to choose the proper ethical act in each and every situation, for Gordon, “the highest freedom . . . is the freedom to choose a way of life in general.” 5 Gordon, Selected Writings, 98, 120. 6 Ibid., 120. 7 Ibid., 122. 8 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 242. This statement testifies to what Einat Ramon calls Gordon’s non-Orthodox form of Jewish religiosity (Ramon, New Life, 154). For a further development of this idea, see the discussions in the next part of this work concerning the relationship between labor, self-realization, and self-education in Gordon’s thought.

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Freedom is a necessary condition for the acceptance of one’s responsibility for the life of the cosmos. This presumption is expressed in his saying that the highest freedom is to choose between the “mechanical culture” that is characteristic of the contemporary period and which “necessarily brings about an unethical life” and “a natural culture” that he deems a “more worthy” form of life.9

Religious Enlightenment as a Condition of Freedom and an Ethical Life We have already seen what he means by a mechanical culture. A mechanical culture represents a way of life produced through the domination of human constructs that result from the meeting of the modern celebration of the cognitive self with the material processes of industrialization and modern economics. But what is a natural culture, and in what way can a natural culture be seen as a more worthy or a more ethical culture? From the following text, we can presume that its naturalness derives from the processes that root human experience in natural creation, in a manner that can already be observed within the animal kingdom: The highest morality stands on the complete naturalness of human nature, on the feeling of the highest unity, as when a human being gives his entire self to what is obligated from an inner necessity . . . as, for example, the mother in the animal kingdom that gives herself in order to save her offspring. Here there is a necessity that immediately comes forth from the mother’s soul. It is a part of herself that is endangered, the dearest part of herself. Here there is no duty, no morality in the human sense, but it is of the highest level.10

While he does not say so explicitly, Gordon’s depiction of the mother’s dedication to her young in the animal world suggests that there is an ethical urge already present in natural occurrence. This urge is manifest as an instinct for life that still exists among human beings, though it is increasingly diminished by the cognitive understanding and subsequent mechanistic qualities of modern society. Put differently, the ethical urge that Gordon associated with the infinite self-generation of nature is identical with the constant drive toward the realization of life already at work 9 Gordon, Selected Writings, 122. 10 Ibid., 122–123.

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in the cosmos. The instinct of motherly devotion and love is, therefore, understood by Gordon to be a primary expression of the cosmic ethical urge for life, while providing the model for social solidarity and ethical relations in the realm of humanity as well.11 Of course, following Darwin, one would be tempted to say that the instinct of motherly love is a matter of natural law, gradually bred through the biological mechanisms of mutation and adaptation, designed to guarantee the survival of the species amidst changing environments. For Gordon, however, even this should not be considered a matter of lawfulness already inherent in nature. Nature constantly expresses the impulse for life that runs through it, while natural law is but a formulation of the cognitive understanding concerning that which is already experienced in the impulse for life. The question then that needs to be asked is, how does the ethical urge that Gordon believed to be present in the natural occurrences of the creaturely world become realized in the complex realities of human society? “All moral renewal and betterment,” he says in 1920, “is . . . a healing of body and soul in the highest sense.”12 Since human beings are cognitively reflective, ethical motivation can never be a matter of instinct alone. Rather, individual human beings must draw from their experience an awareness of the structure of natural existence that they share with others, so as to develop feelings of shared responsibility and realize the degree of solidarity already present in the maternal instinct characteristic of the animal kingdom. The difficulty inherent to this position is that in the purely biological context of plant and animal life there is no room for moral judgement. There is no place for abstract ideals. There, the ethical urge toward the realization of life is part of the given processes of life itself. If it is at all possible to speak of a moral or ethical ideal with respect to plant and animal life, it is as a metaphorical “telos” already inherent within the process of natural creation. But because of the way in which cognitive reflection reconstructs natural experience in human society, moral ideals almost never appear, for human beings, as a mere extension of nature as given. A great distance generally appears between nature as given and the flighty freedom of the ought. Taking Gordon’s perspective, it would appear that precisely because of this 11 This association of the mother’s absolute commitment to the safety of her young with social solidarity is the basis upon which Einat Ramon ascribes to Gordon a feminine ethics (see Ramon, New Life, 109–123, 138–167). 12 Gordon, Selected Writings, 256; idem, Selected Essays, 11.

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distance, in the human realm, ideologies develop that are at odds with the ethical urge already present in nature. The actual realization of the sense of “responsibility for all life and all creation,” embedded within the religious sensibility, is therefore dependent upon the ethical urge, that he implicitly ascribes to nature, becoming an integral part of the social and cultural consciousness. But this can only happen as a result of what I refer to as the religio-cultural heritage of the different peoples and nations.

Family, People,13 and the Religio-Cultural Heritage By religio-cultural heritage I mean the spiritual legacies that are found in the family and community experience of traditional ethnic cultures. Gordon presumes that the various facets of the religious sensibility discussed above appear as a central aspect of a shared consciousness in family groups and ethnic communities. This is where the instinctual urge for life is translated into the social dynamic of human existence. The ethnic people or nation, he says, is “a funnel that draws from its wide end the infinity of being . . . introducing it [the infinity of being] at its narrow end into the soul of the individual.”14 The aspect of peoplehood that ties the experience of the individual to the being of the cosmos is actualized in the shared holidays, myths and religious celebrations. One may call to mind, as an example, the sanctification of the Sabbath over wine and bread (symbolizing the transition from natural growth to agriculture) and other rituals that recall, in Judaism, the divine act of creation. The most concrete testimony to the role played by the religio-cultural heritage in the formation of an ethical consciousness, in Gordon’s thought, is found in a short text he wrote toward the end of his life. There, he exhorts his radical comrades not to go so far in their rebellion against the past as to abolish the Day of Atonement. This is because Gordon understood the Day of Atonement as “a special day set aside for the people . . . [and] its offspring,” a day “for soul-searching obsessed with the highest demands of the human spirit.” On this day, he wrote: 13 For an explanation of my usage of the terms “people” and “nation” see note 11 in the introduction to the present work. 14 Gordon, Selected Writings, 237.

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The greatest national, human, and cosmic issues arise. . . . The individuals experience themselves as the limbs of a shared supernal personality as it gives its accounting of itself, its world and life.15

The picture of the Jewish people as a “shared personality” in this text reflects the past experience of the Day of Atonement in the synagogue, in which the individual is present with his or her immediate family and local community. The synagogue service was experienced, on that day, as something that joins each individual, family and community with other individuals, families and communities, around the world, taking part in the same service. It is not merely a coincidence, for Gordon, that the urge for life in the cosmos that fosters the mutually dependent relations of organic phenomena, including those that characterize the life of a people, is also is expressed through the people’s religio-cultural heritage. The service itself was designed to create an experience of standing before the ultimate while giving an accounting of one’s behavior and actions. What is crucial for the present discussion is that the concrete experience of the individual as part of the Jewish people—and through the people—as a part of humanity and the divine cosmos, is but one aspect of the individual’s experience that begins within the immediate and extended family. The individual, for Gordon, is the creative force in society, and therefore “there can be no renewal of humanity without a renewal of the individual.”16 And, yet, the creative free will of the individual is tied, by Gordon’s own account, to life in a particular family and, as a result, in a particular people or nation. In this way, the religio-cultural heritage is clearly not a religion of pure reason, as Hermann Cohen would have it, nor is it a glorification of kinship. It is, rather, the language and culture of families and ethnic groups, which carry deep existential and moral import, necessary for their grappling with the cosmic mystery and obligations of life. All this, for Gordon, is possible because the religio-cultural heritage is rooted in the sense of solidarity between members of the people in the past, present, and future. As such it joins the natural sense of belonging and responsibility that already exists within a particular ethnic people along with its interpretations of infinite cosmic occurrence through which meaning is ascribed to the interweaving of life in time and space.

15 Ibid., 408–409; Gordon, Selected Essays, 284–286. 16 Gordon, Selected Writings, 248–249; idem, Selected Essays, 9.

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“All the great ideals,” says Gordon, “were only created so that we may know what we should be asking for in life.”17 Like the individual’s religious sensibility, the religio-cultural heritage carries with it a form of religious guidance that helps to orientate human life. It constitutes a potential way of seeing and experiencing the world. Through the people’s religio-cultural heritage, the religious sensibility gives focus to the life needs of the individual, the community, and the people, while expanding the sense of cosmic responsibility “for all life and all creation.” In this context, it does not appear that the actual motivation to act toward another human being as a brother stems from the broad experience of cosmic interconnectedness alone. Rather, it arises from the presence of that experience in the concrete relations and interdependence that constitute immediate and extended family life. The fact that Gordon begins his discussions concerning Jewish peoplehood with his consideration of the family is important when considering the Second Aliyah ideal of national rejuvenation. At least until the middle of the twentieth century, being a part of the Jewish people and sharing in the historicity of Jewish existence was most immediately experienced in the context of the family. The Jewish individual first comes into contact with Jewish traditions, beliefs, values, and lifestyles in the family setting. From here arises a great question that Gordon was only able to get a glimpse of in his time: what is to become of the Jewish people and its culture, and what is to become of the ethical orientation of humanity, as family life becomes more and more disrupted by the long-term effects of advanced technology? Ultimately, the question of family life is, for Gordon, of supreme philosophical significance, because family plays an important role in the transition from the instinctual realm of animal life to the consciously constituted institutions of human society. The fact that family life is generally characterized by a sense of belonging and solidarity reminiscent of the herd is particularly significant. But so is the fact that in the human family instinct is given cognitive expression, and the experience of group solidarity is conditioned by modes of consciousness that are unique to human existence. If Gordon’s philosophy actually contains a consistent ethical theory, and I think it does, it can be located here where the instinctual need for group solidarity and the cognitive constructs of the human spirit converge. Because of the cognitive dimension of human life, the familial sense among 17 Gordon, Selected Writings, 69.

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human beings transforms the instinct for group survival already found in the animal kingdom into a shared religious, cultural, and ethical language. This language first develops, for the individual, within the context of organic relations binding the individuals to their immediate family, and subsequently to the larger community or people. In both physiological and spiritual terms, the family is a natural phenomenon from which the individual human being grows.18 It constitutes one of the central topics in Gordon’s writings because the family is, at the same time, a natural and a social entity. Just as nature is comprised by the dynamic of relations between individual cells, and between these cells and the organisms they constitute, so it is with the family unit. Individual members of the family contribute to the shared character of their family just as much as the shared character of the family is present in, and contributes to, the individual character of its members. In addition, Gordon recalls, the family is not only constituted by “relations that . . . bind together the individuals of the present generation.” It also binds these individuals to “those of previous and future generations.” As a result of the inter-generational dialogue that occurs with the experience and learning of one’s heritage and the impact of its cosmic orientation in the formation of one’s personality, Gordon says that the experience of the individual in his or her particular family is capable of: raising the individual above his contracted individuality, while placing upon him concerns and obligations that originate beyond his own physical life, broadening the realm of things that fill his thoughts and feelings.19

What is important, for us, in order to understand Gordon correctly and to consider, at the end of the present work, the implications of Gordon’s thought for the contemporary West, is that for him family is also the focus of national existence or peoplehood. At the foundations of all human group life—as in all other forms of lifestands the family, and from there, from the nuclear family, the larger family, the nation, the people developed.20

The nation or people, for Gordon, is an ethnic community comprised by a plurality of families sharing the same religio-cultural heritage. I mentioned 18 Compare Ratzabi, Anarchy in Zion, 233–224. 19 Gordon, Selected Writings, 309. 20 Ibid., 229; Gordon, Selected Essays, 4.

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above that for Gordon, the religio-cultural heritage of the people has its roots in the spiritual character of the families comprising it, because the individual first experiences this heritage and the community’s shared language as a result of personal interactions within the family. But from a more abstract and comprehensive perspective, the opposite is true as well. The lives of individual families and their members are, to a large extent, constituted by a particular language and religio-cultural heritage, because these lives partake, through the community, in the collective life of the people.

The Expansion and Contraction of Natural Experience as a Religio-Ethical Occurrence From yet another vantage point, Gordon describes the manner in which the religious sensibility affects the choice of lifestyle through the terms “expansion” and “contraction” that he takes from the Lurianic Kabbalah. As with Rabbi Issac Luria’s mystical constructions, in Gordon’s thought as well, we are speaking of the expansion and contraction of divinity. But more specifically, we are speaking in Gordon’s case of the expansion and contraction of divinity within human perception; that is, of the expansion and contraction of natural experience, presuming that this experience already involves an intuitive perception of the expansiveness and divinity of nature. From the perspective of the divinity of nature, “the infinity of world-being is as one life . . . a life of infinite expansion,” while from the perspective of the cognitively finite human being, it “is that very same . . . [world-]being infinitely contracted.”21 The self-healing and self-generation of human existence, for Gordon, involves this dialectic of expansion and contraction. As such, it is fundamental to the ethical aspect of human experience. According to Gordon, extreme egotism is a manifestation of the contraction of natural experience. But, surprisingly, so is altruism. Both are a result of the contraction of natural experience when driven by the synthetic, and therefore illusory, cognitive understanding. Gordon demonstrates this by emphasizing the different ways in which the survival instinct works in the creaturely world and in human society. In the animal kingdom, says Gordon, “satisfaction in regard to one’s bodily desires [and] attainment of .  .  . power” facilitate procreation, 21 Gordon, Selected Writings, 96–97, 144–151, and 244–246. Compare with Amir, “Towards a Life of Expansion,” 19–63; Shapira, Ḥassidic and Kabbalistic Sources, 166–190; Ramon, New Life, 109–121; and Schweid, Foundations and Sources, 83–90.

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nourishment, and the struggle against material threats. The contraction of experience in order to focus on a life-threatening situation is part and parcel of the instinct for survival. It heightens the senses in the face of danger and activates sources of power that are necessary for survival. Paradoxically, in the animal kingdom, the contraction of experience in order to focus is therefore a necessary condition for the further expansion of life. It is different, however, for human society because of the already exaggerated presence of the cognitive understanding, which distorts the natural instinct. Human cognition fosters an illusion that one’s existence begins and ends with the effects of one’s consciousness on the world. As we saw in Gordon’s critique of Nietzsche’s quest for power, the distancing of human subjectivity from the organic character of nature causes a development of the spiritual potential found in the instinct that goes way beyond the needs of survival and results in excessive egocentrism. While this development may be incorrectly perceived by the cognitive understanding as an expression of the drive for personal expansion and fulfillment, it is, for Gordon, a severe contraction of natural experience; a contraction which makes the concern for individual self the goal of life while disrupting the overall sense of solidarity that stems from a more expansive life experience. Gordon’s philosophy therefore criticizes excessive egotism, even though it is also opposed to ethical positions that present altruism as an ideal. The opposite of excessive egotism, for Gordon, is not the denial of self in favor of another, but love. Absolute altruism, like one-sided egotism, is already a contraction of natural experience because it is rooted, like excessive egotism, in the illusion that one’s individual self is not interdependent with the life of all creatures and with nature as a whole. Love, on the other hand, is an expanded version of the instinctual concern for one’s self through inter-action with another, thus making the origin of the plurality of selves in a shared cosmos a source of personal fulfillment. Indeed, we may ask: what remains, for Gordon, to determine the ethical direction of society after having rejected one-sided egotism and onesided altruism? The answer is the sense of “responsibility for all life and all creation” that arises from the religious awareness of the unity and organic character of creation as a whole. This awareness is expressed existentially through love, and the ethos of responsibility derived from the religious sense is subsequently manifest as love. Biologically speaking, love is probably a remnant of the instinct for life that brings about procreation as well as the sense of group solidarity that is already characteristic of nest, herd, and

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flock. The turn to another in love therefore includes the instinctual drive for the satisfaction of one’s needs and desires, but together with this drive it establishes a consciousness that stretches beyond the limits of one’s own existence. Love, like all expansive activity on the part of the human subject, belongs to the “higher spheres of human existence.” This is because when a person loves and experiences love, his or her self is reconfigured as it is “interwoven” on a higher plane “with the life of world-being,” even though this experience always begins in the context of relations with another individual.22 The human soul yearns for love. . . . The desire to be in love ultimately derives from the urge to love.  .  . . But to the extent that love becomes distanced from the higher source,23 to that extent it becomes contracted .  .  . [and] utilitarian.24

For Gordon, the expansion and contraction of natural experience, vis-à-vis the cognitive understanding, not only determine proper and improper behavior but distinguish between good and bad art as well. Good art is “expansive,” while poor art is “contractive.” Good or expansive art is that in which the artist’s depiction of any particular object communicates something of his or her own experience in a dialogue with the observer from within their shared universe. Bad art expresses the experience of the artist’s self in a purely solipsistic or turtle-like manner. So it is, for Gordon, with all of human culture and society. To the extent to which culture and society are determined through a contraction of natural experience, they will necessarily become mechanical, unhealthy, and unethical. The way out of this dead end is shown by the religious sensibility and the potential it contains for bridging the gap between the world of cognitive construction and the organic unity of the pre-cognitive cosmos. This, as we shall see in the coming chapters, provides the framework for the practically oriented positions that Gordon took on a number of issues that appeared on the agenda of the pioneer community.

22 Gordon, Selected Writings, 245. 23 That is, from the source of life in nature. 24 Gordon, Selected Writings, 151.

In one of his later essays, Gordon writes: This is the historic, human, and cosmic idea of our national renaissance[:] . . . to revive . . . the national spirit . . . to create it afresh as a new creation in the higher . . . human-cosmic spirit. This means . . . to establish a new collective life . . . on the basis of labor and creativity . . . together with world nature . . . on the foundations of justice.1

In the previous section, we discussed the overall character of Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature, considered its place in the modern philosophical tradition and presented its implicit critique of Western civilization, while outlining the foundations of Gordon’s thought concerning religious, social, and ethical matters. In the following two sections of this work, we shall take a look at the ways in which Gordon translated various aspects of his philosophical worldview into practical positions on a number of specific topics. When we opened the previous section with the location of Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature in a dialogue with the European philosophical heritages that preceded him, we very naturally associated the question of relation between nature and spirit in modern philosophy, with Gordon’s search for the origins of self in nature. This is an obvious association because Western philosophy generally identifies the self with spirit. However, as we turn to the more practical side of Gordon’s writings, the justification of this association becomes more immediate. Gordon himself very often uses the terms self and spirit interchangeably, with regard to the individual, the community and the people, in order to signify the telos of the pioneer community’s practical endeavor. Let us therefore note that Gordon’s thinking not only draws dialectically from the major philosophies of the modern West, but also partakes 1 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 224.

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in a discourse begun two decades earlier by Aḥad Ha’am, who posited the need for a renaissance in the Jewish national spirit as the ultimate goal of Zionism. The invaluable contribution that Gordon made to this discourse is found in his emphasis on labor as a symbol of human participation in cosmic creation. Gordon’s position in this discourse is reflected in the quote placed at the head of this section. The quote shows how Gordon translates the religious orientation discussed in the previous section into an imperative of labor in order to create a life-giving and just community. The next and final section of the present work will show how Gordon’s approach to the concept of national individuality figures in his conception of a universal humanity. But in the meantime, because of the weight that he gives to the emergence of self from the natural process of creation, on the one hand, and the importance of labor as the continuation of natural creation in the realm of human praxis, on the other, we turn in the present section to a consideration of Gordon’s particular conception of the Jewish people’s self or spirit, to be followed by a delineation of his positions on such issues as community, education, and settlement that reflect the role he assigned to the shared self of the community in the process of cosmic self-generation. More specifically, we begin the present phase of our discussion by situating Gordon’s understanding of the Jewish national self between Aḥad Ha’am’s cultural Zionism and the more existentialist and Nietzsche-oriented labor Zionism of his friend, Yosef Hayyim Brenner. This analysis will help us determine Gordon’s understanding of education, settlement, and physical labor as instruments for the rejuvenation of the collective Jewish self and the shared local self of the Second Aliyah pioneer community.

Chapter VII

The National Self in Ah.ad Ha’am, Brenner, and Gordon

Without necessarily subscribing to the one-sidedness of the following statement, we may learn something about the difference between Gordon’s and Aḥad Ha’am’s concepts of Jewish peoplehood through a critique of Aḥad Ha’am’s position that Avi Sagi ascribed to Brenner. According to this depiction, Brenner criticizes Aḥad Ha’am for treating “Judaism” as though it “exists in and of itself without being dependent upon real Jews [as though] Jews are Jews only because there is an entity called Judaism.”1 In one of his earlier essays, Aḥad Ha’am sounds as if he understands the people as a biological organism whose fate is dependent upon a Darwinianlike survival instinct.2 But when compared with other essays in which he considers the nature of the people’s collective existence, it becomes apparent that the language of biology Aḥad Ha’am sometimes used was meant in an entirely metaphorical way.3 This can clearly be seen in his essay “Past and Future,”4 where Aḥad Ha’am adopts the Hegelian approach of Rav Naḥman

1 Avi Sagi, To Be a Jew: Brenner—An Existentialist Jew [Heb.] (Bnei Berak: Hakibbutz Hameuḥad, 2007), 151–152. 2 Aḥad Ha’am, Complete Writings, 61–63. For a discussion on Aḥad Ha’am’s life and thought in English see Steven J. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha-Am and the Origins of Zionism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 3 Compare Rena Havlin, Coping with Jewish Identity: a Study of Aḥad Ha-Am’s Thought [Heb.] (Bnei Berak: Hakibbutz Hameuḥad, 2001), 145. 4 Aḥad Ha’am, Complete Writings, 81–83.

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Kroḥmal.5 According to Krohmal, a nation’s existence depends upon the constitution of a national spirit determined by shared historical memories and expectations.6 Here, too, the will to live is central, but it is not a simple biological urge, since it derives from the continuity of spirit and culture. Though the differences between Aḥad Ha’am’s secularly oriented conception of the cultural spirit and Gordon’s religio-cultural orientation are significant, Gordon’s and Aḥad Ha’am’s understanding of Jewish peoplehood are similar in that both presumed that being Jewish somehow involves a national Jewish spirit and for both, the shared national spirit provides the basis for continuity with the past. In his 1897 polemic against Herzl’s political Zionism, Aḥad Ha’am cited the dissolution of the collective Jewish spirit following emancipation, the rise of European nationalism, and a powerfully attractive modern European culture as the proper explanation of the need for Zionism. Zionism is meant to fight assimilation. In our time culture expresses itself everywhere through the form of the national spirit, and the stranger who becomes part of culture must drown his individuality in the dominant environment. In exile, Judaism cannot . . . develop its individuality in its own way.7

In another essay, Aḥad Ha’am discusses the threat of assimilation through an analysis of what happens when two distinct cultural communities meet. “If they are more or less equal in strength . . . ,” he says, “one will learn from the other new ways of expressing its spirit, and will strive to pass the other in those ways. But . . . if one is . . . much smaller and weaker than the other . . . as to feel its lack of vitality . . . the result will be a self-effacing imitation.”8 For Aḥad Ha’am, knowledge of and identification with Jewish sources provide the basis for a strong national self or spirit. In a large part, this is made possible by the social emphasis on learning and maintaining Judaism’s For the most thorough treatment of Krochmal’s work to date see Yehoyada Amir, Renewal of Jewish life in Nachman Krochmal’s Philosophy [Heb.] (Ra’anana: Ha’universitah Hapetuḥah, 2018). 6 Aḥad Ha’am, Complete Writings, 81–83. See also Ahad Ha-Am, Selected Essays, 81–83. 7 Aḥad Ha’am, Complete Writings, 137. See also Ahad Ha-Am, “The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem,” in The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, ed. Arthur Hertzberg (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 267. 8 Aḥad Ha’am, Complete Writings, Ibid. 87. See also Ahad Ha-Am, Selected Essays, p. 112–13. 5

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literary sources since these vitalize the collective memory and the shared expectations of the future, from generation to generation. According to this approach, so long as the Jewish people remained relatively separate from the surrounding cultures, as in the premodern era, the strength of the Jewish national spirit was sufficient to guarantee the continued existence of the people. Therefore, in his polemic against Herzl, Aḥad Ha’am said that the goal of Zionism was not to build a state, but rather to reconstruct the Jewish national culture and spirit as a means for the reconstruction of the Jewish people: Judaism is in a quandary: It can no longer tolerate the galut . . . so it seeks a return to its historical center, where it will be able to live a life that develops naturally, to bring its powers to play in every department of human culture from agriculture and handicrafts to science and literature.9

This is the goal: cultural autonomy as a condition for national reconstruction. Cultural autonomy stands at the center of Aḥad Ha’am’s vision of the Land of Israel as a spiritual center for the Jewish people. But in order for this center to fulfill its role in the rejuvenation of the national spirit, according to Aḥad Ha’am, it must be populated by a society with an emphasis on professions that includes the entire arc of human endeavor. “For this purpose,” he says: Judaism can content itself with . . . the creation in its native land of . . . a good sized settlement of Hebrews working without hindrance in every branch of civilization. . . . This settlement, which will be [achieved by] gradual growth will become in the course of time the center of the nation. . . .10

Had Aḥad Ha’am related to each of the professions mentioned with equal reverence, and had labor not taken, for him, a back seat to literature, Gordon could certainly identify with the need to construct, in the Land of Israel, a “settlement of Hebrews working . . . in every branch of civilization.” But the logic of Aḥad Ha’am’s position suggests that rather than consider each of the professions mentioned above as having important intrinsic value, he viewed them functionally as necessary for the maintenance of a culturally independent society or community. In this context, a dominant place was given to literary activity, particularly with respect to 9 Aḥad Ha’am, Complete Writings, 138. See also Ahad Ha-Am, Selected Essays, 267. 10 Aḥad Ha’am, Complete Writings, 138. For Aḥad Ha’am, like Gordon, nation refers primarily to the ethnic form of peoplehood.

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the traditional sources of Judaism, as the raison d’être of the spiritual center he envisioned in the Land of Israel. As a secularist, Aḥad Ha’am did not view Judaism as a divinely revealed religion but rather as a creation of the Jewish national spirit. What made this spirit “Jewish,” for him, was its development through an intimate relationship with previously existing Jewish sources. In contrast, Yosef Hayyim Brenner, in Sagi’s analysis, “rejects Aḥad Ha’am’s position, according to which the relation between past and present is a continuum in which the past determines . . . identity.” As opposed to Aḥad Ha’am, Sagi accurately portrays Brenner as thinking that “Judaism is Judaism” only “because it is a cultural product of the Jews themselves.”11 I personally see Aḥad Ha’am as ambivalent to the question whether Judaism is a product of the Jews or whether the Jewish people is a product of Judaism What is clear, I believe, is that Gordon’s vision of the pioneer society in the Land of Israel adopts many facets of Ahad Ha’am’s approach. This is particularly true with regard to his perception concerning the contemporary weakness of the collective Jewish self and his view of Zionism and the people’s return to the Land as the best context for a viable solution. But at the same time, we know that Gordon considered Aḥad Ha’am’s thinking on these matters shallow. From various statements he made throughout the years, some of them implicit and some explicit, it is possible to piece together the precise nature of his relation to Aḥad Ha’am.12 Let us begin with the reasons why Gordon might be attracted to Aḥad Ha’am’s discourse. Already in 1890, in his first published essay, “This is Not the Way,”13 Aḥad Ha’am criticized the dependence of the First Aliyah farmers upon others, including cheap Arab labor and Jewish philanthropy, as detrimental to the pioneering spirit required in order to create a new beginning for the Jewish people. This critique became the starting point for the overall development of his position regarding the collective Jewish self and his vision of the Land of Israel as a spiritual center for the Jewish people. But it is important to recall that there is a difference between what was essentially a critique from afar, by Aḥad Ha’am, of the European-based national movement in the context of the Land of Israel First Aliyah farm communities, and the battle for Jewish labor waged by Gordon and his comrades a decade and a half later. 11 Sagi, To Be a Jew, 152. 12 For a consideration of the ambivalence with which Gordon related to Aḥad Ha’am even before his immigration see Aharonovitch, “Biographical Notes,” 60–62. 13 Aḥad Ha’am, Complete Writings, 11–14.

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The National Self in Ah.ad Ha’am, Brenner, and Gordon    CHAPTER VII

In a letter that he wrote shortly after arriving in the Land of Israel, Gordon connected labor to the fate of the Jewish people and its collective spirit, in a manner that would characterize his position regarding Jewish labor in the context of the Second Aliyah until his death eighteen years later. In this letter, an echo of Aḥad Ha’am’s earlier criticism of the First Aliyah can still be heard. “The Land of Israel,” he wrote, “is not important because it is . . . a Land of Milk and Honey.” It clearly is not. It is rather important “because it gives hope; a hope of labor, of a great and important labor . . . that prepares the way for renewed vitality. . . .”14 In this vein, he also wrote: At times I feel ashamed before our homeland and the shame is great particularly because not many others feel it. Everywhere you go others do our work for us and we do not work for ourselves. Almost everything that is done and created is the work of others. . . . And the question arises . . . how shall we, the Hebrew people, achieve a moral [and] national right to the . . . Land of Israel . . . [if not by our own labor]?15

The importance of labor is here explicitly tied to the question of the nation’s vitality, echoing Brenner’s Nietzschean approach. But labor is performed in service of the national spirit, in a manner that parallels the rejuvenation of the national spirit through Zionism according to Aḥad Ha’am. Also, in an essay Gordon wrote in 1909, an echo of Aḥad Ha’am’s call for settlers who work in “every branch of civilization” can still be heard, as Gordon says in that essay that there “is a place” within the Second Aliyah “for all strengths and abilities, for every thought and every activity.”16 The fusion of spirit (or self) and labor that Gordon is trying to forge is also manifest in this essay, as he writes: if “we desire a movement that is truly alive . . . the [focus of attraction] must be . . . the national self [and] the creative power of the Jewish people that has now been awakened through its first contact with the land.”17 Primarily, Gordon agreed with Aḥad Ha’am that something was not right in the collective Jewish self, saying that “what we call today national self is but a dim awareness on the part of one who is ill; an unnatural . . . admixture of the exilic self and [the self] of others.”18 Even “in the Land of Israel,” he continues, “everything proceeds as it was in exile” insofar as “rejuvenation remains an abstract ideal” and “the most important 14 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 78–79, 81. 15 Ibid., 82. 16 Gordon, Selected Writings, 184. 17 Ibid., 181–182. 18 Ibid.

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thing—the self—is [still] missing.”19 But then Gordon alludes to Aḥad Ha’am, without mentioning him explicitly, suggesting that the founder of cultural Zionism must be included among those who confuse the collective Jewish self with an illusory form of “self ” that is primarily “found in books.”20 Here, Gordon interprets the problematic of the collective Jewish self, which is so central for Aḥad Ha’am, in the terms of Nietzschean vitality, adopted by his good friend Yosef Hayyim Brenner. Gordon agrees with Aḥad Ha’am when he says that “we must . . . not search” for the self of our rebirth “outside of Judaism.” But he also confronts Aḥad Ha’am when he adds that our “search for self ” must not be limited to “the Judaism of the past,” and that we need to look toward the “future” since the people’s self “will be revealed in the future in and through our rebirth.”21 “The weakness” of Aḥad Ha’am’s “idea concerning the ‘spiritual center,’” Gordon wrote in 1913, “is not that it isn’t broad enough but that it doesn’t go deep enough.”22 Though Gordon is also beholden to the idea of a national spirit and believes in the need for a revival of that spirit, he maintains that this is not an “idea that sustains itself ” as a “source of life”23 unless it is rooted in the material world, in the struggle for existence and therefore, in labor. “The idea of labor requires . . . the creation of a new [spiritual] culture.”24 But a bourgeois spiritual center that primarily emphasizes the literary activity of the past will not suffice. Gordon’s double commitment to material as well as spiritual creativity is expressed through a revolutionary consideration of the relation between spirit and matter that merges Brenner’s emphasis on creative freedom in the present with a commitment to the Jewish past as emphasized by Aḥad Ha’am. This approach is enabled by his contention that the people’s religio-ethnic identity is but a particular expression of the broad material and spiritual revolution in Jewish life, pursued in the Second Aliyah. Thus, Gordon writes in 1916, that although “we understand that our rejuvenation entails a revolution”:

19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 173. 23 Ibid., 174. 24 Ibid., 447.

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. . . we tend to think that this is [only] a revolution in the Jewishness of the Jew, and we do not allow ourselves the thought that this is to be a revolution in the [broad] humanness of the Jew.  .  . . If we are willing to sacrifice so much for Judaism, it must be clear that Judaism is one of the foundations of our self (just as a person’s nationality is always a foundation of his self. . .). [But] every one of us, as he looks for the wholeness of the people is primarily concerned with the human within him.25

As opposed to Aḥad Ha’am’s metaphorical use of the Darwinian concept of the survival instinct, Gordon takes the material struggle for life in nature as the starting point for a healthy spiritual culture. In the spiritual or cultural realm, the importance of the past is determined, for him, by the manner in which it becomes a part of the re-creation of the community’s self as it turns toward the future. In this context, Gordon thought that the pioneer community, in opposition to the Jewish community in the Pale of Settlement and most other area of the Jewish Diaspora, could broaden the collective life of the Jewish people so as to include all aspects of human economic, social, and cultural endeavor. In short: Aḥad Ha’am was interested in a rejuvenation of the Jewish self on the cultural or spiritual plane, as a way to renew the people’s commitment to the Jewish heritage in a modern secular context. Aḥad Ha’am was a Jewish traditionalist but his thought was thoroughly secular. The national spirit simply replaced, for him, the notion of divine authority as the focus of Jewish creativity. A reaffirmation of the national self, for Aḥad Ha’am, was necessary in order to reconstruct the sense of familial solidarity among the Jewish people in the face of assimilation, and in order to broaden Jewish culture so as to include modern and secular ways of life without being eaten up by them. But Aḥad Ha’am had no need to reject the traditional Jewish lifestyle, as for him, it was the primary creation of the national Jewish spirit, and he certainly saw no reason to replace the centrality of traditional Jewish book learning with that of physical labor. As a Jewish representative of the European middle class, Aḥad Ha’am presumed that a strongly cultured elite was sufficient to reinvigorate the broader culture in all layers of society. Despite the many aspects his thought that he took from Aḥad Ha’am, this was definitely not the case with Gordon.

25 Ibid., 365–366.

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Chapter VIII

Self-Realization as Self-Education

As we saw in the previous section, Gordon’s philosophy of Jewish existence cannot be described as a simple synthesis of Aḥad Ha’am’s understanding of the national self or spirit, and the Nietzschean-like vitality of the individual self, endorsed by Brenner. Rather, these two directions of thought join the neo-Kabbalistic aspects of Gordon’s thinking on “man and nature” that were described above, in terms of the expansion and contraction of life-experience in society and culture. Through the joining of these three influences Gordon developed his thought about the educational direction that the pioneer community ought to take; a direction that he described as “self-education” and “self-realization.” An explication of these ideas in the context of the real-life challenges that the Second Aliyah pioneers faced is pertinent to our discussion of Gordon’s position on practical issues. For in the end, Gordon’s practical involvement in the debates of the community was not that of one who came with a set program and now wanted to convince others to accept it. He was a visionary, blessed, as we already saw in the days before his aliyah, with powerful pedagogical inclinations. His part in these debates was to inspire, while encouraging his comrades to expand their visions and their understanding of themselves, as well as their relations to the Land, to the Jewish people, and to humanity. The breadth and depth of his endeavor are expressed through his understanding of labor as an activity aimed at “self-realization” and “self-education,” as mentioned above.

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Both Eliezer Schweid1 and Shalom Ratzabi2 discussed the notion of self-realization in Gordon’s social philosophy, demonstrating that this term represents the realization of creative forces from within, in a manner that would enable the creation of a worthy society. Ratzabi opposed the value of self-realization in Gordon’s thought with the predominant identification of society with the forms of life created by the state. This opposition, he explains, stems from Gordon’s conviction that the social order established by the state derives from “the striving for domination and power” and reflects “a lack of faith” in the immediate relations among the individuals or groups that comprise society, on the one hand, and the nation or ethnic people, on the other. “Self-realization” functions here as the means through which individuals create and maintain a society based upon the inner needs and creative contributions of each and every individual self. In Schweid’s most recent book on Gordon, The Foundations and Sources of A. D. Gordon’s Philosophy, the discussion of self-realization begins with the same point, but in the context of Gordon’s anti-Marxist polemic. While “Gordon agreed with Marx that society develops . . . from within the relations of labor” and that “the problem of labor relations” is the “fundamental problem of social organization,” Schweid maintained that these relations, for Gordon, are not primarily a matter of material lawfulness. They are, rather, “a religious [and] cosmic gesture” directed at “a human goal” which he understands as an “inter-personal telos.”3 To this conversation, I add that self-realization is central to Gordon’s practical writings because through the personal and community dynamic associated with this term labor becomes a process of self-creation in connection with the practical issues debated in the community. Let’s clarify, first, what this means with reference to the plight of the individual pioneer. We mentioned above that frustration, despair, depression, and resignation were the fate of many young pioneers who initially arrived in the Land of Israel with great optimism. Now, we need to emphasize that the sense of hope and despair in the Second Aliyah was not only a matter of the individual pioneer’s mental health, but also a deep practical challenge. The very success and survival of the community depended upon the practical (as opposed to philosophical) idealism of its members. In fact, and not only in theory, the existence of the pioneer community was only 1 Schweid, “Philosophical-Educational Structure.” 2 Ratzabi, Anarchy in Zion, 215–216. 3 Schweid, Foundations and Sources, 54.

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possible because a sufficient portion of the community members believed that they had what it took to prevail against the life-and-death challenges of their daily existence. Hence the relevance of Gordon’s preaching an ethos of self-realization. His young friend, Brenner, was one of those whom depression visited regularly. Both Gordon and Brenner looked at the difficulties, which were experienced by the pioneers in the Land of Israel and by the Jewish people more generally, and saw great cause for despair. In 1912, Gordon therefore writes to Brenner saying that the difference between them “is not in their relation to [objective] reality,” adding: “When I see you paint reality in darkness . . . I add a bit of darkness of my own.” But, he continued, there is a big difference between them insofar as Brenner “does not expect great things” while Gordon did.4 Three years earlier, when hunger and frustration reigned, and the encouraging achievements that were later to characterize the Second Aliyah community had not yet been realized, Gordon wrote: “We need not only physical labor, but a great and ongoing inner labor [of the spirit]” as well. In 1918, when after World War I, things were looking up, he wrote an essay attempting to define the challenges facing the community at that time. In this essay, Gordon stated: “The worker must do good work. But good work refers to work that leaves its mark on the worker no less than it does on the land.”5 Gordon, I maintain, was able to influence the fate and character of the Second Aliyah community because of his faith in the strength of the human spirit even in the face of impending tragedy, and more specifically, because of the faith he had in the potential for self-realization within the tragic situation. What was the nature of this potential? In one of his earliest essays, “Eternity and the Moment,” written in 1909, Gordon stressed the importance of seeing one’s life, and every particular moment of it, both as an aspect of the infinite self-creation of nature and as a new and original creation unique to the present. This is reflected in his attitude toward labor in the Second Aliyah, according to which the meaning of any act performed by individual pioneers is derived from its significance in the present moment as well as from its place in the long-term movement of life. From an existential perspective, the threat of tragedy can indeed cause a paralyzing 4 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 158. 5 Ibid., 247.

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depression, but it can also fuel the creative impulse for life. This realization becomes possible when human beings see that their selves are joined to the infinite self-regeneration of the natural cosmos, which is embodied in the life-story of the present-day individual and his or her community. “Providence,”6 Gordon says to Brenner in the 1912 letter quoted above, “does not dwell . . . except in great sorrow,” provided that we speak of “a pure and healthy sorrow and not a choked, shattered or poisoned sorrow.”7 The pioneer community, he continues, is in need of sorrowful and even “desperate” people “who invest their desperation in building” and who “do not flee the struggle.”8 Elsewhere, Gordon asks his readers to imagine two different individuals in financial distress as a result of external circumstance. Of these one “does not forget his former greatness,” “refuses to acquiesce” and his “self-value does not lessen in his own eyes.” For the other, the bad fortune becomes “rot in his bones.” This second individual considers himself “only in terms of weakness, emptiness and demise.” “Which of the two,” Gordon asks, “has a better chance of persistence. . . . Which spirit . . . has a better chance of encouraging the power of youth in the labor of life?”9 Of course, it is the one who has a stronger sense of self, or, in Gordon’s terms, one who sees the tasks at hand as necessary for the process of his or her self-realization. Put differently, he says: 6 Gordon’s use of the term “providence” illustrates his overall hermeneutic, in which the past provides the origin from which the freedom and growth of the present is possible. He maintains the original meaning of this term as a meta-historical dynamic that determines the fateful existence of the present. However, for Gordon, “providence” is not the product of a transcendent will, but of the particular consciousness and attitudes of concrete human beings that derive from the manner in which they deal with their existential plight. The continuity of usage, despite this change in meaning, is enabled by virtue of Gordon’s identification of divinity with nature. In the Medieval period, divine will and activity were understood in terms of a comprehensive lawfulness, forever present in the metaphysical infrastructure of creation. For Gordon, there is no metaphysical structure of natural existence, rather, the dynamic self-creation of nature constitutes its own infrastructure. In this context, the term “providence” refers to the manner in which the cosmic urge for life affects the world through the human situation. It is a continuation of the traditional notion of providence in that it speaks of the effects of divine activity on the course of worldly phenomena. Yet, these effects do not follow from a divine will and activity that precede existence, but from the ethical urge for life of which all existence is already a part. 7 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 286. 8 Ibid., 160. 9 Ibid., 356–357. See also Gordon, Selected Essays, 67–68.

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A great spirit makes the smallest and most material activity great. It raises it to that of a spiritual value just as a petty spirit makes the greatest and most spiritual act into something small.10

Clearly, Gordon was concerned about the long-term fortitude of the Second Aliyah community, and therefore, often found himself preaching to encourage their spirit. His voice, however, was never one to console, but rather to educate and challenge. Hence his attitude toward education as a form of self-realization, and of self-realization as the goal of education. “This educational side,” he says in a debate concerning the establishment of a General Labor Federation in the Land of Israel, “is no less central for us than the idea of labor itself,”11 for education, too, is the “labor of self-renewal.” “All education,” says Gordon, “is self-education.” It is a form of self-realization that stands in relation to the totality of one’s self and one’s experience. Because of its spiritual aspect, self-realization ultimately proves to be an act of self-education expressed through the expansion of one’s experience in the struggle for existence. Thus, Gordon says in a debate concerning the establishment of a Hebrew University in the Land of Israel that: The job of a teacher, as educator, is very difficult but also very great, greater even than giving over knowledge. An educator . . . must first be a philosopher who has an expansive world-view even before he comes to educate [others]. He has to know [what it means to be] human; but no one knows what it means to be human except through one’s self, from the world he carries in his heart. . . . The one being educated must see, without additional comments from the educator, what the educator has created and continues to create from within his soul, so that the he will know that he too is capable of creating something from within himself.12

In light of the discussions in the previous section concerning Gordon’s perception of the religious sensibility and the dialectic of expansion and contraction, it is obvious that self-realization, for him, also requires the depths of insight into the individual’s and the community’s self-in-nature that is enabled by the religious sensibility. Therefore, while considering the plague of disillusionment within the community, Gordon complains that:

10 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 582. 11 Ibid., 442. 12 Ibid., 177. See also Gordon, Selected Essays, 95

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We [still] lack a religious relation to our national work . . . and we therefore lack a religious faith in all that [we are doing]. . . . Who will fill the lack? Who will give us strength? I do not expect nor am I searching for a prophet. [Rather] prophecy must hover over the people as a whole, upon each individual.13

Paraphrasing a well-known Talmudic statement claiming that the holy Torah is a source of both life and death, Gordon, in his 1912 letter to Brenner, directs the impetus of this statement to his search for the missing religious attitude to labor. . . . If he [the worker] is meritorious it [labor] becomes for him a medicine of life, if not, a deadly poison. Meritorious—[he becomes] a partner in the works of creation and the life of the universe; not meritorious—a miserable slave to the Earth.14

Indeed, so long as Gordon is considering the immediate threats to individual existence within the community, his emphasis is upon the self-realization and self-education of the individual pioneer. But Gordon also uses these terms to describe the meaning of labor in the context of the pioneer community as a whole and of the entire Jewish people, as well. Thus, in the middle of World War I, when the community was once again in a state of deep economic depression, he wrote: “We forget that our goal is to heal ourselves and to heal the people, whose soul is the root of all our souls, and whose life is the source of all our lives.”15 For all these concentric circles of Jewish and human life, the point is one and the same: labor has become the “process of self-realization,”16 and “the object of labor” is to actualize individual and collective self-education as self-creation.17 In 13 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 289. See also Gordon, Selected Essays, 102–103. My comment on Gordon’s hermeneutic regarding the term “Providence” in note 6 of the present chapter, is relevant with reference to his use of the term prophecy in this quote. His use of the term prophecy, like his use of the term Providence constitutes a re-evaluation of older conceptions. Providence, in Gordon’s context, as in the past, reflects a promise and hope, even as, for him, this hope is not based upon the beliefs of the past, but rather on the effects of the quest for life on the course of life; while prophecy refers, for him, to the consciousness forged by the religious sensibility, as a condition for the successful struggle with the difficulties impeding the pursuit of life. It is the power that faith in one’s ability to persist in self-creation has on the course of life. 14 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 163. (And see Babylonian Talmud Yoma 72b, Ta’anith 7a.) 15 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 328. 16 Ibid., 353–354. 17 Ibid., 274–275.

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this context, the turn toward labor constitutes a revolution in Jewish life because it requires a struggle for self-realization that goes beyond the study of books and ritual observance. We already touched upon the role Gordon expected to be played by the Jewish religious heritage in the formation of the future Jewish society. In the present context, the ancient language through which the people have come to view their place in the cosmos provides additional vantage points for the pursuit of self-realization. This is because self-realization, as self-education, refers to both the existential struggle for life amidst adversity, and the struggle for self-realization in the cultural and spiritual sphere of the collective self. The role played by self-realization in the construction of the community and national selves is clearly manifest in the position Gordon took in 1913 regarding the educational significance of the decision of the World Zionist Congress to develop plans for the establishment of a Hebrew University in the Land. Many, if not most, of the Second Aliyah pioneers opposed the plan because they saw the university as a reflection of bourgeois European values that would only distance the community from a life of labor. Gordon, as we saw, insisted, along with Brenner, on the primacy of freedom for self-creation. But he also maintained that since “our future culture and all that it entails must grow from the ground” of our past, he further believed that the establishment of a Hebrew University could become an important educational enterprise aimed at the rejuvenation of the natural heritage bequeathed by past generations. We must remember . . . that the Jewish people is not a newly born nation that began its material and spiritual development this very day and that must begin everything afresh. [We are] not a new seed but an [old] tree with many roots and branches that is about to be transplanted in [its own] orchard in order to grow and live once more. Our renewal requires that we accept Labor as a new value in our lives and as a new foundation in all the spiritual treasures that we shall acquire in the future, but not to abandon those treasures that we’ve already acquired.18

Gordon understood his comrades’ hesitancy with regard to university education. For him, too, book knowledge was worthless unless it advances the self-creation and self-realization of the community and its members. 18 Ibid., 170. See also Gordon, Selected Essays, 94.

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But since, for him, the labor of self-realization draws not only from the individual’s experience of his or her own rootedness in the natural occurrences of the infinite cosmos, but also from the people’s experience of the cosmos through its collective self, he felt that scholarship can be helpful in reconstructing the various forms of life already created in the past. This fundamental attitude will be expressed five years later, when Gordon again speaks of self-education as a labor of the spirit which combines the forms of cultural and spiritual life handed down from previous generations with the new creations of the present community as a revelation of the “living connection between ethnic-human culture, nature and labor.”19

19 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 249.

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Chapter IX

Freedom and Equality in Gordon’s Ideas on the Founding of a Workers’ Settlement

It is, of course, not surprising that some of Gordon’s most systematic writing appears toward the end of his life, following World War I. He was always wise beyond his years, and yet there is no doubt that the powers of reflection he acquired with age and the looking back upon the many changes that went on in the pioneer community for the better part of two decades contributed, toward the end of his life, a somewhat systematic completeness to his thoughts. As in the earlier periods, Gordon writes as a member of the community in dialogue with his comrades. But the overall conjunction of things that he has to say acquires a level of consistency and comprehensiveness that was not possible earlier in his life. The beginning of new immigration and settlement following the stagnation of the community during the war aroused new challenges, and, for Gordon, new philosophical intuitions. In his later years, Gordon focuses on two new issues. He notes the increasing influence (Gordon called it “hypnosis”) of Marxist ideology within the pioneer community following the beginning of the militantly communal and Marxist-oriented Third Aliyah. And, what ultimately amounts to the same concern, he reflects on the means necessary in order to ensure that the Second Aliyah’s commitment to life

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and experimentation will be continued in the next generation of pioneer immigrants. Both Schweid’s The Foundation and Sources of A. D. Gordon’s Philosophy and Ratzabi’s Anarchy in Zion show the extent to which Gordon’s anti-Marxist stance is rooted in his overall philosophy of man in nature, and particularly in the relations he sought between individual, family, community, and people. Drawing from the agricultural focus of the pioneer community, Gordon now defined labor as the process of self-realization in and of itself. Therefore, as shown by Schweid and Ratzabi, he opposed Marxism first because of its content, and second because it was a doctrine, pure and simple. Gordon did not believe that whatever it means to be human could be stated in terms of a doctrine, because a theoretical formulation would negate the generative character of life and experience. Similarly, Gordon criticized the Marxist subordination of the individual to society. Were Marxist doctrine to become a reality in the Land of Israel, he believed, it would mean the annihilation of organic relations between the individual and the community wherein the self-realization of the people was made possible. In this sense, we might say that Gordan’s attitude toward Marxism is a negative reflection of the principles embedded in his philosophy of “man in nature,” just as the general suggestions he made for the social and cultural construction of the first moshav ovdim (a small shareholders’ settlement) reflect those same principles positively. Fifteen years after coming to the Land of Israel, after working and living as a day laborer and a watchman, and after he participated in a number of experimental farming cooperatives, Gordon joined the first permanent collective farming community established by the Second Aliyah pioneer-community, Kvutzat Degania, in 1916. He remained a member of the kvutzah until the end of his life in 1922. In 1921, a number of Degania’s early settlers left to join the members of other local settlements in forming a different kind of cooperative agricultural community, this time in the Jezreel Valley. This new settlement, named Nahalal, was called a moshav ovdim. Nahalal differed from Degania in that its focus of policy and development was not the collective as such, but rather the family unit. This already must have been of interest to Gordon. Like the kvutzah (and later the kibbutz, which also has its beginning in this period of time), the moshav ovdim emphasized social solidarity and cooperative responsibility. Through the years the policies set included collective ownership of heavy farming

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machinery, cooperative education and mutual support in financing, buying and marketing. And yet, the individual and the family maintained, in the moshav ovdim, a degree of autonomy that did not exist in the kvutzah and the kibbutz. In the moshav ovdim, each family was responsible for its own wages. In this way, the moshav ovdim was also different from the more communally oriented moshav known as a moshav shitufi.1 The move to permanent settlement, it should be recalled, began only in the final years preceding World War I. Like the rest of the Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel, the communally oriented kvutzot went through hard times during the war, but had since evolved and became a model for additional permanent settlements. At the time of the establishment of Nahalal, the Degania model was in the process of being adopted by the new labor immigrants of the Marxist Third Aliyah, who transformed it into the larger and more doctrinaire structure of the later kibbutz. In this context, it should not be surprising that when the founders of Nahalal turned to Gordon (who remained in Degania) and requested that he commit to writing those ideas in his philosophy that he felt could best serve as a basis for the bylaws of the moshav, he gave primary focus to the relations between the individual and the community. This is because of his belief that only in the context of these relations, would the possibilities of self-creation and self-realization persist. So he writes, in the text that he sent to the founders of Nahalal that: Human life . . . derives from continuous interaction of the individual and the community. . . . What is therefore required is not the strengthening of society 1 The first settlement of this type was Merḥavia established in the Jezreel valley. This settlement began with preparation of national land and settlement by one of the “conquest of labor” groups. With its establishment, the farming and economic development of the community was to be directed by an outside manager, as was done in other experimental projects prior to the establishment of Degania. But here, each family labored to the degree necessary for the maintenance of the community, and also had a private garden for an additional source of income. Since the first phase of settlement in Merḥavia actually preceded the permanent settlement in Degania by a year, it could have been considered the first permanent settlement created by the Second Aliyah, but as in the Kinneret farm, here too the relations between workers and management quickly soured. In 1914 the manager was fired and the community reformed with new settlers adopting the Degania model of communal living. See Frankel, Prophecy and Politics, 437, 447; Tzvi Shiloni, “Phases in the Development of Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel during the Second Aliyah,” in Bartal, Second Aliyah, 129–130; Nir, “Toward Labor Settlement,” 241; and Margalit Shiloh, “Arthur Ruppin and the Zionist Settlement in the Second Aliyah,” in Naor, The Second Aliyah, 52.

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at the expense of the individual to the point of subjugating the individual to society, but rather the building of a . . . complimentary relationship. . . . Public life must not nullify or diminish but only broaden the personality of the individual.2

A close reading of Gordon’s suggestions to the founders of Nahalal reveals a fascinating juxtaposition of many elements that came to characterize his thinking over the years. The text is divided into sections on family, labor, education, and the desired relationship with those living outside the moshav. According to Gordon, the fundamental principles of life in the moshav were to be cooperation and solidarity based upon a sense of belonging that arises from the mutual relations between the individual and the community. These relations were to be structured in a manner similar to those of the individual and the family and to the overall organic character of nature as discussed above. This point is of ontological significance because, as we saw, the interdependence of human beings is a given in the struggle for existence just as the interdependence of creatures in a herd or flock is vital for life in the animal kingdom. As such interdependence constitutes a condition for survival and creativity. But the need to realize the fundamental interdependence of human beings, in this new social context, is also of great ethical import for Gordon, because it points to the telos of the new society from the perspective of natural creation. As in the kvutzah, the kibbutz, and the moshav shitufi, in the moshav ovdim the principle of equality was fundamental. But, in accordance with his anti-Marxist stance, Gordon’s concept of equality is not primarily economic or political. It is rather equality in the potential for self-creation. It is said that human beings are not equal. But this depends upon that to which the idea of equality is applied. In stature, form, physical strength, beauty . . . of course there is no equality. But here equality refers to something quite different. If every member [of the moshav] has the opportunity to completely realize his own selfhood and to create his life and world in accordance with his self, then his freedom is absolute.3

We’ve previously seen Gordon speak of freedom as freedom to choose a healthy and expansive life and experience of the cosmos. Now, freedom is understood as the freedom to create, through labor, in correspondence with 2 Gordon, Selected Writings, 304–305. 3 Ibid., 306.

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the unique place given to the individual in the cosmos. The unique features of an individual, developed from the origin of his or her self in nature, are a prerequisite for material and spiritual growth, just as we shall see (in the next section) that the people’s individuality is, for him, a pre-requisite for the growth of the people through interaction with other peoples. The interaction of the particular and the general is, once again, for Gordon, what forms the structure of living organisms. The relation between the individual and the group, now being proposed in the context of the moshav ovdim, is therefore suggested as a necessary condition for creating and maintaining a shared community. Gordon’s affinity for small collective settlements, like the moshav and the kvutzah—as opposed to the larger Third Aliyah kibbutz—involved the hope that in such a small familial context, the individual’s experience of life in the cosmos can be more easily made into a fundamental aspect of the shared social and cultural realities. Hence his take on education, as self-education, in the concrete context of the moshav. In consonance with Gordon’s understanding of the relationship between self-education and self-realization that we discussed above, he reminds the founders of this new community that “the education of the child does not begin” only when the child is mature enough to attend school, work in the fields, or even “on the day of his birth, but is rather a continuation of the self-education of the parents.”4 This means that education, as a form of self-realization, is both personal and inter-generational. The act of self-education, in regard to the younger generation, requires that each individual find or create his or her own self within and in addition to the already existing collective self. On the material plane, this means that the young are not only expected to learn techniques of manual labor from a natural dialogue with their parents’ generation, but that this dialogue is meant to broaden the spirit of the younger generation with respect to the material aspects of the natural cosmos. By learning through the dialogical experience of material labor together with their parents, the young will develop their sensibilities in regard to the seasons and measures of light, minerals and water within the cycles of natural growth. In a similar manner, learning the inner language and contents of the Jewish heritage through a dialogue with the parents’ generation provides for spiritual and cultural growth with respect to a wide 4 Ibid., 311.

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variety of themes and topics essential to life in the cosmos more generally. This form of education, of course, must not be one of indoctrination, but only of a dialogue in which the value of creativity is formed from within a consciousness that is familiar with the teachings and values of the past. The parallel that he draws between work in the fields, as a form of material labor, and education in the cultural realm, as a form of spiritual labor, is obvious. Both constitute the process of self-creation. Just as we found in the earliest part of “Man and Nature” that was published in 1909, that Gordon admonished the community to disentangle itself from the parasitic character of exile, and partake only from that in whose preparation it actively participated, so he says to the founders of Nahalal in 1921 that the problem which they, as a new community-settlement, need to contend with is the “passivity of self ” that comes from “living at the expense of others.”5 The struggle against parasitism and exploitation is common to Gordon and Marx. But for Gordon, this struggle extends from the sense of human solidarity already rooted in the human nature of the individual and his or her familial and community relations. As such it too should be seen as a part of the struggle for self-creation. “The foundational point is that . . . the person will be able to live all of his self and his entire world” through the conditions established by the moshav. In the text Gordon prepared for the establishment of Nahalal, he warns the founders not to follow the general trend in modern society, where people look for enjoyment and pleasure in the work done by others. Equality of the potential for self-realization means equality in the potential to be human. But self-realization, as we saw, is dependent upon the natural relations that exist between the individual and the family within the community. Therefore, Gordon advised the founders of the moshav to consciously resist the tendency of modern society to reform “family life” in accordance with “the public spirit” and set their sights instead on making “the family spirit” the basis of “public life.”6 Here, social responsibility and the quest for equality in self-realization meet. In Nahalal, as in any farming village, there was of course a need for “farmers, craftsmen, teachers, a physician, and the like.” But what is important for Gordon is that “every individual should find, through his laborious and creative activity . . . the content and meaning of his life.” By 5 Ibid., 306–307. 6 Ibid.

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this he meant that the individual member of the moshav must be permitted to choose work in which he or she might grow as an individual personality. Where capitalism presumes the profit motive, and Marxism presumed social and economic lawfulness deriving from the struggle over the means of production, Gordon taught that “through the work in which” he “creates his [own] life,” the member of the moshav “assists in the creation of life in the moshav as a whole” and to “the extent that one broadens, deepens, and enriches his own life he will be broadening and enriching the life of the entire moshav.”7 In this context, respect and encouragement of each other’s individuality joins the cosmic sense of social responsibility within the collective self, in the production of social and cultural norms. The point is that in order for the self-education of the community to be successful, the “meaning of life and happiness” must be found “in one’s own physical and spiritual activity, in doing and creating just as a plant . . . lives . . . from nature . . . [and] creates cells of life from the air and light absorbed in its leaves.”8 As we saw in his critique of capitalism, industrialization and Marxism, Gordon did not ignore economics as an important factor in the realization of humanity within society. He could not ignore these since the economic system determines the character of social relations in ways that either promote or prevent the self-realization of the individual and society. But the goal of society is not, or, at least, ought not be that of economic gain, nor of economic equality per se. Rather, society should aim to ensure, to whatever extent possible, the health and the cosmic dignity of the individual and community selves.9 In his 1920 philosophical anti-Marxist article “On the Clarification of our Idea From its Foundations,” Gordon wrote that “the goal” of the pioneer community “is the renewal of human nature from within world-nature” and “the renewal of world-nature through human nature.” Similarly, he says to the founders of Nahalal that the goal of the moshav is the renewal of public life based on the renewal of the individual and the family, just as the renewal of the individual and the family is contingent upon the renewal of the life of the community. As in many of his other discussions, here too Gordon refrains from suggesting a step-by-step explanation as to how he derives his ideas and 7 Ibid., 307. See also Gordon, Selected Essays, 264–265. 8 Gordon, Selected Writings, 307. 9 Ibid., 247–248.

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positions. Nonetheless, from the gestalt of his writings one can clearly re-construct the manner in which these arise simultaneously from previous philosophical intuitions. Gordon’s early philosophical intuitions already allude to an understanding that each individual and each community are endowed by the infinite self-creation of nature with the right and the obligation to strive for self-realization. These intuitions further presumed that the self-realization of the individual and the self-realization of society are inter-dependent. His later writings simply translated the direction already taken by these intuitions into the practical language necessary for the construction of this new form of settlement, in the context of his anti-Marxist polemic.

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We have seen throughout the discussions of the present book, that the parameters of Gordon’s philosophical understanding are determined by the interface of the expansiveness of nature, as infinite regeneration, with the question of personal and collective self. In the previous section, on “Praxis and Life,” we traced the interface of these in Gordon’s response to a number of practical challenges particular to the pioneer community in his time. This response inevitably disclosed aspects of Gordon’s thinking regarding Jewish peoplehood and the role the pioneer community was meant to play in the sought-after rejuvenation of the Jewish people. In the present section, we shall continue our examination of the manner in which Gordon’s overall philosophy of man in nature informs his positions on two other questions of a practical nature. We shall consider his vision of the desired relationship between the pioneer community and the broader Jewish people as well as between the pioneer community and the local Arab community. These topics are important for the discussion of Gordon’s thought in and of themselves. But, in addition, my aim is to determine the role played by his position regarding Diaspora Jewry and the Arab community in the Land of Israel in his thinking on the Jewish people and concept of a universal humanity.

Chapter X

Zionism and Diaspora Jewry

In 1921, Gordon published an essay entitled “The Work of Revival in the Lands of the Diaspora.” The essay appeared in the Hebrew-language journal Ha’ivri,1 published in New York City. The fact that Hebrew periodicals appeared in the United States and were read by members of the Jewish immigrant society, and the fact that Gordon, a central figure in the Land of Israel pioneer community, saw fit to publish in this journal, reflect a degree of intimacy between the two communities (and with other communities that comprised the Jewish world of that time) that has long since been forgotten. As justification for publishing his ideas in the American Jewish Diaspora, Gordon cites two points. First, as opposed to most European and Land of Israel Zionists at that time, who considered the Land of Israel the only acceptable focus for national rejuvenation, Gordon writes that “we are not able to return the entire people to the Land of Israel in one shot” and wonders “how much time it will take” and “if the entire people will ever make the return.”2 Second, considering the degree of identification of so many Jews of that time with international socialism, not only in the Land of Israel but within the American Jewish immigrant community as well, and considering the drive for success in America on the part of the immigrant community, he believed that unless the telos of labor, as a telos of material and spiritual creativity that extends from the depth of the national 1 The Hebrew periodical Ha’ivri originally appeared in Germany, and was then published in New York between the years 1916–1921. It was affiliated with the religious Zionist Mizraḥi movement and was edited by Meir Berlin (Bar Ilan). 2 Gordon, Selected Writings, 274–275.

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self becomes a part of Jewish life outside of the Land of Israel, the new American Jews will in time “be absorbed more and more by the social life and ideals of the people among whom they live, and become more and more assimilated.”3 The first of these statements explains why Gordon felt that his particular brand of Zionist thought requires realization in the Diaspora, while the second explains why that realization must come from the direction already begun by the Jewish labor movement in the Land of Israel. The ideology that joins these two considerations in the Ha’ivri article, is essentially the same as the one he developed for the rejuvenation of Jewish life in the Land of Israel. The tearing [of our people] from our .  .  . natural ground in the Land of Israel [and] the persecutions that cut us off from . . . all natural life and . . . productive labor made us into a parasitic people . . . with respect to body, soul and spirit. Our national .  .  . self has been nourished throughout the exile only from fragments of our past . . . and from tables . . . already set by others. . . . Now that we seek national, human and personal rejuvenation we must fix all this and create everything afresh. We must return to nature, to self-labor and to our own language.4

It is clear from these passages that Gordon is speaking to a generation of Jews whose affiliation with the Jewish people worldwide was still stronger than their experience as Americans. The text also demonstrates that while the Land of Israel was for him emotionally and ideologically sacrosanct, he saw Zionism as a movement for the rejuvenation of the Jewish people even before it is a movement that calls for immigration to the Land of Israel. As such it demands the active involvement of all Jews. From a long-term historical perspective, Gordon’s loyalty to the Land of Israel follows from the special place held in the hearts of Jews for this Land around the world, and from the role played by the Land of Israel in the development of “our national spirit” in antiquity.5 Philosophically, it is derived from the empirical fact that the expected revolution of Jewish life through labor has already begun in the new Jewish society that was being built in the Land of Israel at that time. Thus, he writes: “We must strive, first and foremost, for a return to our home-land and to strike roots in the Land 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.

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of Israel through self-labor and a renaissance of the Hebrew language.” But that does not mean that Zionism cannot, or ought not, be realized in the Diaspora. Quite the opposite: Gordon believed that by extending the people’s return to the spiritual and material creation of labor, so as to include the Jewish communities in the Diaspora, Jewish life in the lands of the Diaspora will no longer be lands of exile. They will rather be part of the national redemption to which Zionism is directed—albeit in other peoples’ lands. There is no doubt that when he wrote this statement, he was thinking particularly of the Jews in the United States where constitutional freedoms make such a move on the part of Jews possible. From the moment that our self-awareness expands, our national feeling is deepened among the people and . . . the labor of renewal in the Land of Israel progresses [to the lands of exile] . . . from that moment—and to that extent— the lands of the nations among whom our people dwell will no longer be for us exile but places where Jews [happen to] live just like the children of other peoples live in countries outside of their homeland. From then on the Jews of those lands will no longer be moved and influenced only by what they receive from others. . . but will also act and influence from within their . . . [Jewish[ self . . . in accordance with the power of life and self-creation that is found in people of spirit, thought and creative ability.6

It would be much more difficult to make such a statement today, when the Western world has all but obliterated the plurality of ethnic and national communities through physical violence, the onslaught of civil society, and digital communication. The question to be asked is if the loss of group life that once existed within ethnic communities has already led to the loss of some important aspects of what it means to be human. This question involves the fate of humanity, and not only of ethnic or national communities such as the Jewish people. As we saw in the discussion on the structure and content of Gordon’s philosophical method, the ethical responsibility necessary for the realization of such universal human values as social justice can only be derived, for him, from the natural dynamic inherent in the group life of family, community and people. As a demonstration of this point, we turn now to Gordon’s consideration of the relations between the Jewish and Arab communities in the Land of Israel in his time. 6 Ibid., 276.

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Chapter XI

Jews and Arabs

Gordon’s consideration of the relations between Jews and Arabs is important on a historical plane because of its implications regarding the present conflict between Israel as a Jewish state and the Palestinian Arabs. Philosophically, it also illustrates the ever-present tension in Gordon’s thought between the concepts of a universal humanity and national or ethnic individuality. The connection between Jewish–Arab relations and the concept of a universal humanity arises in an essay Gordon published in 1918. There, he joins the question of “our relations with the Arabs, who, like it or not . . . [are in] association with us in politics and society,” to the question of the community’s reason for being. It is, apparently, the success of the Bolshevik revolution prior to the end of World War I that brought him to raise both questions in the context of an attempt to delineate, as the title of the essay suggests, the direction of “Our Labor from Now On.” In the context of this essay, he asks: What are we searching for in our national labor, and why in the Land of Israel? Why are we distancing ourselves from the peoples we lived among and from the lands we were born in. . . . Why don’t we join directly in other peoples’ work for the future of humanity? Why don’t we assimilate entirely within the other peoples?1

Gordon’s complete answer to this question will be taken up shortly in a discussion that will deal directly with his approach to the question of 1 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 238.

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national individuality and universal humanity. At present, I shall say that the perceptions of social justice and human solidarity advanced by the 1917 Russian revolution apparently encouraged Gordon to sharpen his own anti-Marxist views concerning these values. As we shall see, Gordon’s views concerning the question of human solidarity are closely tied, in the present essay, to his use of the term “cosmic moment.” He first uses this term to clarify the concept of “selfhood” with reference to his understanding of labor as creative self-expression in the context of the Jewish people. But in this essay, his references to the “cosmic moment” also provide the focus for his understanding as to the desired solution to the tension between Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel. I believe that every member of the Jewish people, were he to reflect in utter solitude without being influenced from without .  .  . would have no trouble admitting that there is something special about him, something of his self that struggles for the opportunity to be manifest in its own way. This is the selfhood of our people, its “cosmic moment”, which constitutes a foundational element in the personal self of every one of us.2

Let’s note that Gordon does not specifically address here the functional need on the part of the Jewish people for a homeland as a remedy against anti-Semitism and poverty. Instead he speaks of the “cosmic moment” as a potentially motivating factor in the life of the individual pioneer. The “cosmic moment” is that which joins the individual, through his or her people, to the infinite regeneration of nature. The “cosmic moment,” in this sense, constitutes the “natural” root from which the collective self grows and expands.3 It therefore refers also to the sense of ethnic or national affiliation that explains, for Gordon, why many pioneers remained in the Land of Israel rather than join the revolution abroad. In Europe, they were foreigners. There was no inner connection between the “cosmic moment” that determined their self-identity and the lands in which they lived. Their turn to the Land of Israel, on the other hand, was seen as a return to a land with which they were always familiar, because it was once their people’s homeland; a land with which they hoped to rekindle an intimate relationship so that it might become their home, once again. 2 Ibid., 239. 3 Compare to Gordon, Nation and Labor, 234: “There is a “cosmic moment” in nationality . . . and this is the most important. This is the source of life and creation . . . [and] of the people.”

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The central point in the first part of the essay is that participation in another people’s revolution rather than in the rebuilding of one’s own people is tantamount to disconnecting one’s self from the “cosmic moment” that makes the individual who he or she is. This rupture results in a “mechanical” and even a “hypnotic” obedience to ideological authority. The relevance of this statement for our present discussion is to be found in Gordon’s idea that it is not only the Jewish people that has its own unique self and therefore its own “cosmic moment,” but the Arab people living in the Land of Israel, as well, and by implication—all peoples. This is the context in which Gordon considers the conflicting claims of Jews and Arabs to the Land of Israel. He begins his considerations in response to the move made by his early friend and disciple, Berl Katznelson, to unite the entire Land of Israel labor movement in a new political party called Aḥdut Ha’avodah (United Labor). Gordon, and in his wake Hapo’el Hatza’ir, opposed the union because of their overall fear of party institutionalization and the uncompromising drive for domination on the part of the Marxist parties that were to be included in the new party. The question of the pioneer community’s relationship with the local Arabs enters the discussion almost as an aside. But the notion of a people’s “cosmic moment” plays a central role here as well. “And what about our relation with the Arabs. . . ,” he asked. “Now that politics has arrived and demands . . . unification, we’re ready to unite, but on what basis?”4 Gordon, clearly did not reject the idea of a unified society. But he opposed the idea that social unity can come about through institutional politics. Consistent with his conviction that the implementation of Marxist ideology destroys the community solidarity derived from the self and its “cosmic moment,” Gordon maintained that respect and affinity for the self of the other is a prerequisite for finding a solution to the growing tension between the two peoples living on the land. For him, such an affinity was only possible when viewing the other as one who must labor for his or her livelihood, as every self must, including my own. We have become familiar with the statement that rights to the land are acquired through blood and fire . . . [but this is] an agreed upon falsehood. In blood and fire one steals the freedom of the people [living] on the land and temporarily enslaves the people, as well as the land, until [the act of enslavement] makes the one [perpetuating it] weak. In practice the land 4 Ibid., 242.

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remains . . . with those who work it and live it. . . . This is the criterion for our relation to the Arabs. The Arabs live on the Land and we may not diminish their rights nor reject them. But they also may not diminish our rights to the land that we live and work on with our self-labor.5

For Gordon, the establishment of human relations must precede the constructed realities of institutional politics. This position was echoed three years later in the suggestions he sent to the founders of Nahalal. At the time Gordon sent his suggestions for the construction of the new farming community, a decision had already been made to cede some of the lands that had been bought for the use of the moshav to the local Arab community.6 The historical background of this decision is significant because of the manner in which it involved the value of labor in the context of the struggle for survival. The Zionist movement was, at the time, buying up lands that it hoped would eventually meet the minimal requirement for the establishment of a Jewish national home. The lands that were given to Nahalal were bought from an absentee landlord who lived in Lebanon. The Jews payed a high price and the local Arabs that worked as tenant-farmers paid an even higher one. The lands that the absentee landlord sold for the use of the moshav comprised about half of the lands upon which the local Arab community worked and from which it drew its livelihood. The knowledge of this travesty motivated Gordon to make the following statement. The moshav must not be concerned only with its own well being but with the well being of the Arabs as well. . . . It must come to their aid without regard to whether their relation to the moshav is positive or not. In this manner and not through bourgeois or proletarian politics . . . will there be healthy and worthy relations between us and them.7

Already in his 1916 essay, Gordon said of the Jewish–Arab conflict: Whoever labors more, creates more, gives more of his soul, the greater his moral right.  .  . . We are speaking here of peaceful competition.  .  . . Our historical right [to the Land of Israel only] provides us with the right to join in a peaceful rivalry [for creation, life and growth upon the Land].8 5 Ibid., 243–244. 6 Gordon, Selected Writings, 313. 7 Ibid. 8 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 244.

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The issue implicit in these texts is no less than that which Gordon was referring to when he wrote that the “cosmic idea of our national renaissance” was “to revive . . . the national spirit” as part of the broader “human-cosmic spirit . . . together with world nature . . . on the foundations of justice.” He posits the same ethical principle as the basis for Jewish well-being and for peace with the Arab population. Justice presumes the right of all individuals and all peoples to sustenance, growth, and creative self-realization. The present discussion therefore provides another example of the way in which Gordon organically links the instinctual solidarity that humanity inherited from the animal kingdom to the feelings of responsibility for the life of the cosmos, drawn from the religious sensibility. By joining the two, Gordon developed a concept of humanity in which the universal presumes a depth of existence that originates in the particular.9 The origin of humanity is found in the particular peoples and the individuals and communities that comprise them. This is because, for Gordon, there is no humanity unless it is linked to the “cosmic moment” of the individual peoples. It is true, for him, that “the more a people [lives] itself and is concerned with the depths and breadth of its own life and [with making] the life of all its children healthier and more complete, the more it is alive and creative - without living at the expense of others.”10 But it is also true that “just as the individual must be honest and see in his neighbor a brother and act toward him in loyal fellowship . . . so each people must maintain a fellowship with other peoples and see them as brothers.” This is because, in his mind, every human being and every people “is worthy in the higher spheres of life and responsible to them.” 11 To be “worthy in” and “responsible to the higher spheres of life” means to be privileged by one’s own “cosmic moment” as an authentic self and to be obligated by the manner in which one’s self is rooted, along with all other cosmic-selves, in a shared natural cosmos. His position is that human existence is founded on the facts of life, and not derived from abstract conceptions of humanity. He is saying, with respect to relations between peoples, what he previously had to say about love. The relation between 9

Buber does something very similar when he sees a moral relationship with the Arab residents of the Land of Israel as an obligation rooted in the very nature of the collective Jewish self. Martin Buber, “Hebrew Humanism,” in Buber, Israel and the World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 240–252. 10 In Hebrew, the adverb used to connote “one’s self ”—as in being or living one’s self, is atzmi, which also implies autonomy and independence. 11 Ibid., 237.

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peoples should not be expected to be altruistic, but rather one of mutual concern rooted in the shared struggle for life. The foundations of human existence are already given in the various “cosmic moments” that root the particular collective selves of the peoples in a shared natural universe. As a result, Gordon is able to write that “so long as we strive to be more human and more alive, we will find the proper relation to other human beings, to the [other] nations and particularly to the [local Land of Israel] Arabs.”12 Though our understanding of what Gordon precisely meant by this could use a little more detail than he supplied, it most definitely points in the direction of positive relations based upon commitment and respect for each other’s needs in light of their shared dependence upon labor in order to survive and grow.

12 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 245.

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Chapter XII

National Individuality as a Condition of Universal Humanity

As we saw, for Gordon, the natural origin of humanity is found not only in the natural cosmos, when perceived by the cognitive understanding as preceding human existence, but also in the cosmic aspects of existence that are present in the family, the community, the people and their shared spiritual heritage. These serve as a condition from which the telos of self-creation and self-expression on the part of all individuals and all communities can be realized. From this we may understand that when Gordon identifies justice with equality of opportunity for the individual “to realize the totality of his self-hood,” or with the equality of conditions that enable the individual “to create his life and his world in his own way,” his intention is not only with respect to the individual human being, as in the case of Western liberalism, but also with respect to the self-hood of particular cultural communities, peoples and nations. The point is that since, for him, the organic or ecological character of nature provides the origin of both, it is not sufficient that the “individual personality . . . merge its life with the life of the community and the life of the people.” “The people,” for Gordon, “must [also] merge its life in the life of humanity and the world,” as well.1

1 Gordon, Selected Writings, 305.

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National Individuality as a Condition of Universal Humanity    CHAPTER XII

From these discussions it has become obvious how Gordon’s rejection of Nietzsche’s translation of the vitality of life as the power or might of the “superior” individual in the social and political spheres infuses his entire understanding of justice, morality and the desired relations between individuals and peoples. The mature individual, for Gordon, is one who attaches the freedom of his or her own spirit to the shared existential situation of the many. From this, one might say that Gordon was both an ethnic particularist and a universal humanist. He was, indeed, a humanist in the deepest sense of the word, because of his faith in the free human spirit. But he reversed the direction modern humanism took since the period of enlightenment by predicating the existence of humanity on the occurrence of national individuality. In and of itself, he says, “there is no single human collective and there is no such thing as a universal human life.” There are “only nations.” “Humanity is [but] an abstraction, the sum total of all the peoples” of the world.2 This position too is dictated by the logic of Gordon’s understanding of man and nature. Humanity in general is nothing but an idea. It contains no inherent creative power, not even the power to be, unless it is derived from the creative abilities inherent within various peoples from the time of their birth. Avraham Shapira was therefore correct when he wrote that “the transnational horizon” is an “indispensable part” of “the infrastructure of Gordon’s nationalism.”3 But this is provided that we understand that for him the particular is a condition of the universal and not the opposite.4 This means that even the ethical ideal of a universal humanity is ultimately a reflection of the urge for life embedded in creation. Creation is experienced in the creative dynamic of life, as found in the concrete existences of family, community and people. The continuation of natural creation, as the dynamic realization of the fundamental urge for life in the context of family, community and people, contains the potential for a universal humanity insofar as it is a given that is accessible to all through the various national individualities. Through these, creation provides the basis for a universal humanity in the broad parameters of the human spirit as well as the criterion for determining the character of the good in each particular culture. 2 Ibid., 127. 3 Shapira, “Nationality, Cosmopolitanism and Universalism,” 63. 4 Compare with the similar but unconcise and philosophically shallow position expressed by Aḥad Ha’am. (Complete Writings, 48–51).

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Because religio-cultural heritages are formed by the life experience of each individual people, the particular spirit of each is necessary for the education of humanity. This prioritizing of the particular over the universal, however, does not result in moral relativism. It is fortuitous that the national or ethnic character of spirit carries the concept of a universal humanity within it, insofar as it carries within it the principle of “responsibility for all life and all creation.” The national spirit alone is able concretize the ideal of a universal humanity by adding to the concrete experience of the individual the feeling that a universally oriented ethical ideal obligates from within one’s own particular experience of self. As if to say, the ethical command to respect humanity is nothing if it is not invoked through the values and traditions of the community that support the individual and help form his or her self. Even as an ideal, the concept of a universal humanity is therefore dependent upon ethnic or national individuality. It is dependent upon the voice that locates the people’s place in the cosmos, from within the depths of its collective self. We may conclude that Gordon’s inspiration for creating a concept of universal humanity is not derived from the universal principles of reason as found in the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and certainly not from Nietzsche’s celebration a of the powerful gifted individual above all others, nor from the lawfulness of Marx’s historical determinism. Rather, Gordon echoes the perception of humanity as expressed by the Hebrew prophets and their perceptions concerning the “cosmic moment” of their people. The extent to which individualism, nationalism and universalism are tied to each other can be seen in the prophets of old. None compare to them in their individualism. None compare to them in their nationalism. And none compare to them in their universalism.5

In a nutshell, for Gordon, humanity does not exist except on the basis of the power of life and its various expressions within laborious acts of creation in particular peoples. As such national individuality is, for him, the ultimate condition for the concrete development of a universal humanity as it is for the realization of ethics and justice in the world. The return of the Jewish people to a life of material and spiritual creativity through labor is seen, in this context, as necessary both for the rejuvenation of the Jewish

5 Gordon, Nation and Labor, 237.

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people and for the participation of Jewish human beings in the betterment of humanity. What therefore began with Gordon’s own quest for life, after throwing in his lot with the radical Jewish youth who created the Second Aliyah pioneer community, became through his life in the community and his systematic reflection on that life, a philosophy dedicated to the quest of life in a broad civilizational context.

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Conclusion

The above investigation into Aharon David Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature was constructed in accordance with three primary theses. The first is that the structure and content of Gordon’s philosophy reflects his own deep, personal, and relatively methodical grappling with the fundamental questions of human existence in the concrete situation of the second, labor-oriented, wave of Zionist immigration into the Land of Israel that began in 1904. Second, that Gordon’s motivation for the development of his philosophy is his personal quest for life joined with a similar quest on the part of his fellow Second Aliyah pioneers and world Jewry in a period of trial and tribulation. Third, that the freedom of creative speculation afforded to Gordon’s philosophy in the context of a community built “from scratch,” its particularly Jewish perspective and its geographical and existential distance from the civilizational centers of the modern West, provide a unique perspective for a critique of the development of Western civilization from Gordon’s time to our own. The claim that Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature reflects a multi-dimensional quest for life was similarly substantiated by the juxtaposition of three distinct phenomena. These include the juxtaposition of personal and national issues that were tied to the state of Jewish life in the Russian Pale of Settlement at the time of his decision to emigrate to the Land of Israel; the close correspondence of his emphasis on the pursual of life, in the practically oriented side of his writings, with the experimental character of the pioneer community in which he lived and worked; and the centrality of the urge for life in natural creation in the purely philosophical side of his writings. This multi-dimensional quest for life was already apparent in his 1904 letter, in which he saw the entire significance of the return to labor in the pioneer community as a potential for hope with respect to the desired rejuvenation of the people and the individual pioneer. Already at that time,

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Gordon understood labor to be an expression of self-reliance and an antidote to what he often referred to as the “parasitic” character of Jewish life in the lands of exile. In the early version of “Man and Nature,” published in 1909, Gordon enunciated this sentiment through the quasi-ethical imperative to consume only “in accordance with one’s need” and to “partake [only] of that which” the community “has prepared for itself.” This version of Gordon’s ethical imperative foreshadows the sense of cosmic responsibility that he developed later on in the context of the religious sensibility. In addition, we find in this early version of “Man and Nature,” an expression of the early intuitions that constitute the origin of his primary philosophical concepts regarding the rootedness of the human self in natural creation, and the identification of labor as the act through which human beings continue to realize their involvement in the self-creation of the cosmos. The philosophical intuitions that he developed through the years into a more methodical and comprehensive discourse were expressed at the beginning of this early essay through his description of the human being’s relation to, and dependence upon, nature as similar to the fish’s relation to the water in which it lives, and the additional formulation of his ethical imperative “to live nature” (rather than contemplate or admire it) toward its conclusion. As we mentioned in the course of our discussions, it is not possible, on the basis of current scholarship, to enunciate a precise chronology of the development of Gordon’s philosophical methodology. It is, nonetheless, clear that his epistemological position regarding the proper relationship between the cognitive understanding and life-experience that appears in the expanded version of “Man and Nature” (immediately following the earlier section that Gordon himself published), provides a key for the comprehension of his overall philosophical method. Gordon’s understanding of nature as an organic manifold of matter and spirit provides the ontological ground for his attempt to re-orientate Western consciousness by prioritizing life-experience over the cognitive understanding, even as he affirms the importance of the cognitive understanding in the realm of reflection. Cognition is necessary in those areas of human life that require reflection as a part of the pursuit of life. It is certainly necessary in science and technology and is inevitably present in the construction of society and civilization. The key philosophical question, for Gordon, was, what happens when the type of constructive reflection necessary for the establishment of society and civilization is seen as the basis for human life in general.

Conclusion

As we saw in his critique of society and culture, when these are developed on the basis of the cognitive understanding alone and are no longer guided by the pre-cognitive urge for life that is always present in natural experience, they result in the transformation of humanity into an unhealthy mechanism devoid of a fundamental sense of human solidarity, empathy and the ethical drive for justice. Similarly, as we saw, Gordon believed that a disproportional emphasis upon the cognitive understanding in the construction of society and civilization invariably results in a shallow and non-creative spirit. It is, perhaps, disappointing that Gordon did not actually formulate the precise manner in which a proper consideration of the urge for life within natural experience should impact the use of science and technology. Rather, he limited himself to a very general critique of civilization and culture. This is almost certainly a result of the connection between philosophy and praxis in his own life. Gordon’s pantheistic worldview, epistemology, and critique of civilization were all developed in service of his commitment to his local community. As a result, his formulation of the impact of life-experience upon the cognitive understanding is limited to questions that immediately concerned the pioneer community. Of course, we must note, that even though his emphasis is upon the urge for life that he saw as inherent to both the natural cosmos and immediate human experience, his consideration of these is itself a matter of cognitive reflection. So it must be, in order for his thought to be communicative and to have the pedagogical affect in the context of the Second Aliyah that he intended. As a result, the style of his writing is extremely ambivalent in that it must use cognitive reflection and delineation in order to be communicative, while the thrust of its content emphasizes the priority of experience over understanding, and often used poetic and metaphorical language to that end. One may criticize his philosophical writing for letting the experiential side of his pedagogical tendencies get in the way of the need for philosophical clarity and completion. Subsequently, the methodical character of his thought can only be ascertained after the reader applies his or her own analytic abilities to the consistency of themes and orientations in his writing, and subsequently translate these into the language of his or her own experience. We should note, however, that this problem is insoluble. As I mentioned in the introduction to this work, the very nature of Gordon’s thought, as a philosophy of “man in nature,” requires reflection upon those

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aspects of life that cannot be enunciated in rational terms, including the sense of mystery that is always present in human life. Mystery, we must emphasize, can never be treated in a purely analytic manner without losing sight of what makes it mystery, and what can therefore only be presented in expressive forms conducive to the pre-cognitive perceptions of experience. Though the substance of Gordon’s philosophy of man and nature could be developed analytically, and at times Gordon engages in analytical thinking (at least to the extent that enables the reader to reconstruct his philosophical methodology), I believe that in the end Gordon may have “erred” on the side of experience because his over-all philosophy consists, among other things, in its being a polemic that was directed against the overly rationalistic, ideational and mechanical character of philosophy and consciousness in the modern West. The point is that for all his dedication to life and the character of his philosophy as a quest for life, Gordon was a philosopher who thinks of life in the most expanded as well as in the most concrete and immediate terms. This is an inevitable result of his being a philosopher whose cognitive understanding is guided by the impulse for life present in his own every day experience. For Gordon, the impulse for life that runs through all of nature enters human experience through the rootedness of self in the infinite process of natural creation. The self ’s rootedness in nature is the origin from which the urge for life extends beyond the instinctual behavior that human biology shares with the animal kingdom, into the development of the human spirit. Initially, labor is the material expression of the rootedness of human life in the infinite regeneration of the cosmos, just as the religious sensibility is a spiritual expression of that rootedness. It is probably for this reason that Gordon allowed himself to broaden the meaning of labor to include spiritual, and not only material creation. In the most methodically mature stage in the development of his thought, this term implies the manner in which the natural impulse for life becomes part of a shared world, and is translated into a sense of practical responsibility, in so far as it reflects the growth of the human self from within the “cosmic moment” of particular individuals, families and peoples. As the act through which human beings renew the process of creation in society and civilization, labor provides the foundations of his concepts of national individuality, social justice and universal humanity. The sense of responsibility, empathy, and solidarity for each other’s lives, which thrives in the context of the family is, for him, an expression of the impulse for life

Conclusion

already present in nature, and which must continue to act in all forms of human life. Labor is necessary for the rejuvenation of the Jewish people, and thus provides the ethos of the community, because of the very same urge for life. All of these, for Gordon, are part and parcel of the shared struggle for life that reflects the origins of self within natural process. Of course, the quest for social justice within non-ethnic civil society and in relations between peoples requires more of an effort on the part of the cognitive understanding than the achievement of empathy and group solidarity within the family and ethnic group. This is because the interdependence of individuals in these contexts is not as immediate as in the context of close familial relations. But for Gordon it is essentially the same. The ideals of human solidarity and social justice presume the sense of responsibility “for all life and all existence” that arises from a cosmically oriented recognition of the shared struggle for life. What are the repercussions of Gordon’s philosophy for contemporary civilization? To answer this question it is, of course, necessary to take into account the changes in the world and in the Jewish people that have occurred since his time. With regard to the utopian character of Gordon’s thought, we must not ignore the difference between the unique freedom of the pioneer community as a community being built from scratch. It would be silly to think that, in our own times, it is possible to reconstruct society through a family-oriented settlement of small shareholders or the early kvutzah. It would be silly to think that we could somehow harness the natural impulse toward life as a key to solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, as Gordon suggested in the early days of the twentieth century, without addressing the complexity of economic, political, and social issues that remained beyond the parameters of life in the pioneer community of his time. In addition, we must not ignore the fact that the type of national or ethnic identity that Gordon presumed as a given no longer exists in most of the centers of contemporary Western civilization. Nonetheless, I submit that there is something contemporary society would do well to learn from in Gordon’s philosophy. I am referring to his perception of the dependence of human life on the organic, or ecological, character of nature, his emphasis upon the quest for life as that which joins human existence to the natural world, and his position regarding the rootedness of self in natural process, as represented by his emphasis on labor as a way of taking responsibility for one’s life in the cosmos.

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When Gordon joined the Second Aliyah in 1904, the long-term effects of the industrial revolution on the world he left behind were still minimal. And yet, when he wrote the passages pertaining to his critique of society and civilization in “Man and Nature,” and certainly when he published “A Clarification of our Fundamental Idea” following World War I, he was sufficiently aware of the impact of industrialization on life in the West, as to construct his critique of contemporary civilization in correspondence with the impressions left upon group life and consciousness by the process of mechanization that formed the industrialized world. The fundamental claim of this postscript is that the contemporary period suffers from an exacerbation of the same difficulties Gordon confronted in his time. To use Gordon’s language, the contemporary world suffers from a severe “contraction” of the human spirit that threatens the very existence of humanity and severely challenges the capability of Jews around the world to go on living as a people. This is to say that in the present, the existence of humanity is even more challenged by the impact of technology and by a technology-inspired discourse on human life than it was in Gordon’s time, and that the continued existence of the Jewish people as a people is threatened by the very same problems that threaten humanity at large. I shall claim that in the present, even more than in the past, humanity is being challenged by the shallowing of its “cosmic” horizons and that this results in the fragmentation of consciousness and the atomization of the individual self vis-à-vis his or her relation to community and society. Finally, I’d like to explicate some of the important keys that I think Gordon’s thought contains for the understanding of contemporary problems.

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The Malaise of Modernity: Durkheim and Taylor vs. Dewey Like Gordon, both Emil Durkheim, at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Charles Taylor, toward the end of that century, described the period of time in which they lived as one stricken by illness. Like Gordon, these Western thinkers also ascribed this illness to a change that occurred in the structure of the human self in the period of modernity. Of course, the critique of the modern West by these two thinkers necessarily differs from Gordon’s critique, insofar as Durkheim and Taylor developed their thought under the direct influence of the reality they were describing, rather than from the distance as Gordon had done. Durkheim used the term anomie to describe the problematic state of modern society, in which the earlier forms of collective consciousness that functioned to create a shared social ethos are no longer able to fill the role that they did in the past. He believed the collective consciousness to be, in pre-modern times, the product of religious symbols active in the formation and organization of group life,1 while the illness of modernity was manifest, for him, in a growing sense of anxiety that stood in a correlative relation to a high suicide rate and moral relativism. These, he believed, expressed a subjective loss of meaning that resulted from the disruption of the collective consciousness in the modern period. In his early writings, the anomie of modern society is a result of the increased social differentiation characteristic of modernity, following industrialization, and derives from the process of individualization and the weakening of pre-modern community and family structures. But Durkheim was also an optimist insofar as he believed that the malaise confronting Western society, in his time, could be cured through the formation of a new collective consciousness that would be compatible with the social freedom and liberal principles characteristic of modernity. The shared consciousness based on liberal values that he hoped for, however, never really took hold and at the end of the twentieth century it was 1 He first used the term anomie in his book Suicide (Emile Durkheim, Suicide: a Study in Sociology, trans. John A. Spaulding and George Simpson [London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1952]). The concept of the “collective consciousness,” on the other hand, already appears in his early work on the Division of Labor in Society (Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. George Simpson [New York: Free Press, 1964]), but it also holds a central place in later works including Suicide and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain [New York: Free Press, 1965]).

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replaced, at least according to Charles Taylor, by a rather narcissistic drive for personal gratification that was far more extensive than the individual concern for self in earlier times. This is the problem that Charles Taylor confronts in his 1991 publication, The Malaise of Modernity.2 Taylor claimed that the discourse of self-fulfillment upon which contemporary narcissism stands relates to a true and deep human value that was characteristic of earlier phases in the development of modern humanism, but which has since deteriorated. More specifically, Taylor understood late twentieth-century narcissism as a bastardization of the earlier humanistic value of self-fulfillment from the time of the enlightenment. The earlier humanistic value of self-fulfillment presumed that the individual is always tied to other individuals through universal reason, so that individual self-fuflfillment, or self-realization, as we have been calling it in the context of Gordon’s thought, necessarily involved a certain shared self-realization of the community, and even humanity. Like Durkheim, Taylor presumed that human self-fulfillment, in its ideal sense, could only be derived from a shared subjectivity or consciousness. In order for the ethos of self-fulfillment to be non-narcissistic, according to Taylor, it must be rooted in the epistemic horizon of an “inter-subjectivity” that appears to no longer exist. While vastly different in character, these two positions dovetail with Gordon’s critique of society and culture. The collective consciousness and intersubjectivity that they invoked as the basis of hope for a healthy society can be historically located, according to Gordon, within the family and early modern ethnic community.3 Like Durkheim, Gordon too placed the blame for the deterioration of the ethnic family and community on the civilizational changes occurring in the wake of the industrial revolution. His image of “turtle-like” individuals, who live the illusion that their particular selves provide the origin of their own existence, without being party to a community of selves, clearly fits, on the other hand, Taylor’s depiction of the narcissistic individual, and perhaps what we might expect from an individual divorced from Durkheim’s collective consciousness. 2 Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). 3 Although at times he gets carried away with the consistency of his own argument, the central problematic of Alan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987) is similar to that emphasized by Gordon, Durkheim, and Taylor. There is a striking resemblance between Bloom’s and Gordon’s opinions concerning the fate of the family and its literary, ethical, and religious heritages (see Bloom, Closing, 57–58).

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Gordon’s view of the origin of consciousness, and its implications with respect to the role of science, technology and economics in the formation of the human self and society are, however, unique when compared with the other two. Durkheim as a founder of twentieth-century sociology places the origin of the shared consciousness in the context of symbols created within the social relations themselves, and has no reason to consider the possibility of natural experience as something that precedes social organization in the development of subjectivity. Taylor, on the other hand, treats the entire issue as an analytical diagnostician, whose goal is to prescribe the reconstruction of “inter-subjectivity” as the cure for the illness as diagnosed. Consequently, he does not consider the deep ontic origin of subjectivity, at least not “from its foundations” as Gordon might say. I will suggest, a little later in this post-script, that the natural origins of the human spirit in Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature can help deepen our understanding of the fate of humanity, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in ways that Durkheim’s sociology and Taylor’s analytical philosophy cannot. But before we embark upon this course, a comment on John Dewey’s pragmatic approach to modern society is in order, insofar it replaces Durkheim’s, Taylor’s and Gordon’s focus on the malaise of modernity with a faith in science and democracy. Dewey, like Gordon, emphasized the organic relationship between individuals and their natural and social surroundings, appreciated the value of experimentation as a condition for creativity, and placed his overall evaluation of social, cultural, and intellectual problems in the context of relations between experience and understanding. Many of Dewey’s statements could have been made by Gordon, had Gordon chosen to express his views with the analytical terms of scientific understanding rather than using the language of his own organically oriented experiential philosophy of life. This, however, is where Gordon’s path, based upon the mysterious rooting of the human self in natural creation, and Dewey’s naturalistic empiricism part ways. The mainstay of Dewey’s social and educational philosophy is found in his belief in human progress and his conflation of democracy with the advance of intelligence as exhibited in scientific method. Rather than recognize the manner in which the scientific method reshapes human consciousness in its own image, as Gordon claimed with reference to the cognitive understanding, Dewey was convinced that the scientific method, could be applied to social problems for the purpose of securing human

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progress. More specifically, he identified the central aspects of scientific method: hypothesis, experimentation, verification, and further hypothesis, in the realm of society and politics, with the democratic conviction that members of society are able to choose proper values, criticize past effects of behavior, and pool their conclusions in the working out of agreed upon social norms.4 The difficulty that arises from Dewey’s propositions concerns the basis upon which these society members must decide between conflicting values. From Gordon’s treatment of the tension between the cognitive understanding and life-experience, it does not appear that he would have had a problem with the use of scientific method in the process of working through the practical problems confronting society. But it is equally clear that because of the priority he gives to the quest for life as an ethical imperative, the pursuit of life, in and of itself, was, for him, a universal value necessary in order to guide the utilitarian aspect of decision-making. In contrast, Dewey maintained that no such absolute or universal value could possibly be known. Whereas Gordon was therefore able to suggest the organic relations obtaining between individual, family and people, along with the innate religious sensibility carried by their religio-cultural heritages, as the basis upon which human beings can confront and neutralize the ever-advancing “wall that separates man from nature,” Dewey’s humanism had only the conflation of democracy and scientific method to rely upon. Dewey’s approach to society, education and culture helps elucidate the contemporary relevance of Gordon’s philosophical ideas because of the pivotal role that Dewey’s joining of the human spirit with scientific method played in the development of the twentieth-century liberalism. He obviously worked very hard to bring together scientific knowledge and spiritual freedom, the two sides of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment heritage that became separated from the nineteenth century on. In the context of early twentieth-century America, when the modern liberal faith in human reason and autonomy still had to struggle with fundamentalist commitments to the religious doctrines of the past, Dewey’s demonstration as to how scientific method furthers the creation of an ethical human society was ground breaking. His was not merely an expression of faith in the application of the empirical method used in the 4 Dewey, Intelligence in the Modern World, ed. Joseph Ratner (New York: Modern Library, 1939), 400–404; idem, “Freedom and Culture,” in John Dewey: The Later Works, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1988), 136–172.

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natural sciences, as in Comte’s early nineteenth-century vision of the social sciences. It was a concrete and well thought out proposal as to the mechanics involved in making the scientific method work for the betterment of society. Following a century in which the commitment to scientific positivism became divorced from concrete ethical and spiritual considerations, Dewey’s proposal to develop the human spirit through the expansion of intelligence and the empirical method constitutes an attempt to save modern humanism from the outdated presuppositions of the early philosophical idealism from which it arose, as well as from the one-sided materialism of nineteenth-century scientific endeavor. Nonetheless, from the perspective of contemporary society, Dewey’s philosophy may be seen as the unfortunate harbinger of the power that, following World War II, was ceded to science and technology, at the expense of the freedom of spirit, in the realm of ethics and the material struggle for life.

Reflection, Reflexivity and the Fate of the Human Spirit Apparently, it is modern science’s historical debt to the free spirit of reason, at the time of the Enlightenment, that gave rise to Dewey’s presumption that in the future, the principle of spiritual freedom will continue to direct scientific endeavor. I will claim, however, that because of the domination of scientific discourse by technological determinism in the decades following World War II, the very notion of human freedom has turned into an enigma devoid of any real content. In order to clarify my point, I should like to call the reader’s attention to the difference in meaning between two similarly sounding words: reflection and reflexivity. Upon reading Anthony Giddens’s Consequences of Modernity,5 I was struck by his use of the term reflexivity to represent what he saw as the most characteristic aspect of modern life when compared with earlier periods. The meaning of this term, as used by Giddens, attracted me because of the way it compares with the term reflection that is often invoked as the determining characteristic of modernity in the period of philosophical idealism that preceded the industrial revolution and the creation of the social sciences.

5 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1991).

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Early nineteenth-century philosophical idealism understood cognitive reflection as the hallmark of modernity insofar as it was perceived as the mindful activity through which human beings understand themselves and the world in which they live. The reflection of human reason that brought about the advances of science, historical scholarship, and philosophy was thought, prior to the transformation of society by the industrial revolution, to be representative of all that makes humanity superior to the lower forms of life in the natural world. Giddens’s reflexivity, on the other hand, involves a more complex relationship between the subject and his or her world. As opposed to premodern society, in which “the past is honored and symbols are valued because they contain and perpetuate the experience of generations,” reflexivity, according to Giddens, refers to the contemporary situation in which “thought and action are constantly refracted back upon each other.”6 When Giddens used the term “reflexivity,” he did not distinguish between pre-industrial and post-industrial modernity. Apparently, he viewed the extreme reflexivity of post-industrial society as the defining characteristic of modernity in general. For my discussion the distinction between pre-industrial modernity, which was still characterized by free spiritual reflection, and the extreme reflexivity of post-industrial society is, in any event, paramount. In pre-industrial modernity the reflexivity of relations between “thought and action” had not yet silenced the forms of knowledge derived from tradition and the free philosophical reflection of speculative reason. In this respect, one may view the celebration of the free reflective spirit at the time of the Enlightenment, as a middle position that stands between Gordon’s prioritizing of life experience over the cognitive understanding and the reflexive character of technology and social discourse as described by Giddens. But following industrialization and the early mechanistic technology with which it was deeply entwined, social practices, according to Giddens, are constantly revised on the basis of scientific knowledge whose initial purpose was to understand the nature of these practices. I refer to the reflexive relationship between technology and discourse, described by Giddens as a “social reflexivity,” insofar as, for him, it describes a situation where the “social practices” are subject to “chronic revision” by the

6 Ibid., 38.

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knowledge and subsequent discourse that were constructed through the “reflexive components of sociology.”7 Reflection is an act of the subjective spirit, which bears an intentional relation to phenomena that are given in nature, society, and civilization. In the social reflexivity of the post-industrial world, on the other hand, even the self, the subject of discourse, becomes a “reflexive component of sociology.” This describes human subjectivity as though it is an objective phenomenon devoid of spiritual freedom, and therefore constitutes a reality that is far removed from the free cognitive reflection upon nature and self, as presumed by philosophical idealism. On this background, let us take a look at the changing impact of science, technology and discourse on human existence prior to, during and after World War II, in order to then consider the nature of problems facing Jewish and human existence in the present; problems that, as we shall see, make Dewey’s presupposed harmonization of science and humanism into an anachronism.

The Impact of Technology and Discourse on Consciousness and Life-Experience prior to, during, and after World War II This is not the place to go into a detailed account of the historical processes that culminated in World War II and the Holocaust. Nonetheless, it is important that we mention certain aspects of the relationship between discourse and technology in the historical development of the West prior to, during and after the war in order to comprehend the long-term roots of contemporary problems.8 The battle between Stalinist Bolshevism and Fascism prior to and during World War II played an important role in the transformation of Western civilization during the twentieth century. While neither should be seen as characteristic of modernity per se, each can and ought to be considered a poisonous fruit that grew from the overall structure of modernity following the obliteration of philosophical idealism. In Bolshevism and Fascism, the early modern sanctification of the human being as the creator of his or her world is retained, even as each relied on the functional mechanics 7 Ibid., 38–45. 8 On this point I follow Eliezer Schweid in his New Gordonian Essays [Heb.] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuḥad, 2005).

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of science and technology in order to construct and fortify itself against opposing ideologies and life-orders. The concrete mechanics of science and technology were used even more insidiously, against the citizens of the USSR and Nazi Germany, in order to realize the Nietzschean will for power that drove them. The result, in both cases, involved an ideological erasure of spiritual freedom even prior to material acts of violence, in a manner that foreshadowed the actual sublimation of the spirit to the digitalization of technology at the end of the century. Following the outbreak of World War II, the scientific and technological prowess of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were directed against each other with the goal of attaining world domination. Along with the Nazi occupation over much of the European continent, the production of science and technology was directed by the entire force of Germany’s military and police apparatus towards the building of an immense and super-efficient infrastructure that industrialized the mass murder of Jews and other groups of people not deemed worthy of life. Of course, all of the countries that fought in World War II employed the most developed science and technology that could be attained in their pursuit of victory on the battlefield, and there is reason to believe that it was the superiority of America in these area that ultimately won the war for the allied powers. American superiority in science and technology was clearly present in the creation and use of the atom bomb that brought an end to the war with Japan. The point is that even before the war, it was not only the totalitarian states that attempted to shape history in accordance with their ideologies. The liberal democracies were also busy shaping history in a manner that corresponded to their dominant discourses. The difference is that in opposition to the totalitarian character of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, the development of science and technology in the United States and other liberal democracies was driven by academic freedom and the needs that arose from American involvement in international commerce, rather than by a well-established political ideology. Following the war, reflection upon the devastation of Europe caused by the employment of science and technology in the service of ideology, in conjunction with the role these played in the victory of the allies, instigated new social, institutional, and ideological trajectories that formed the mindset that at the end of the century came to be known as post-modern.

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The above discussion of Dewey’s empirical naturalism provides a keen example of the fact that in the same period of time in which the mechanization of society came to dominate the totalitarian states of Europe, at the expense of material and spiritual freedom, the philosophical discourse that developed in the liberal democratic countries, prior to the war, continued to search for ways in which the freedom of the human subject might be saved from subordination to the scientific and technological mechanization of society. This attempt, on the part of the liberal democracies, followed the humanist philosophical trajectory that we still find in Dewey’s appreciation of the scientific method as an expression of human progress in the realm of spirit. The reason for the growing domination of liberal discourse immediately following the war, particularly in its American version, is obvious. American superiority in the sciences and technology translated into a military victory over the most evil regime the world has ever seen. Moreover, this victory was interpreted as a moral vindication of the liberal American conception of human progress as opposed to the doctrinaire and totalitarian European versions. The apparent moral vindication of American liberalism was strengthened by the use to which it, and the incredible wealth it produced, were put during the American-initiated reconstruction of Europe. The short period of time in which the towns and cities of Central and Western Europe were rebuilt, and the even more surprising speed with which, through American aid, its postwar allies and former enemies in Europe achieved a level of affluence beyond that which could be even hoped for in the past, contributed much to America’s new status as leader of the free world in material as well as moral achievement. This success, as well, seemed to confirm the validity of American liberal concepts that go back to the time of the Enlightenment. However, this confirmation came through material progress and not necessarily through moral or spiritual growth. Sadly, with time, in the United States and in other liberal democracies, spiritual freedom consistently lost ground to the consciousness-shaping power of technology. My fundamental claim concerning the transformation of values, from an emphasis on free spiritual reflection to the totalizing character of post-modern social reflexivity, is that this change came about in the wake of America’s new status as the leader of the free world. Initially, this status was made possible by the joining of its liberal values and its scientific and

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technological abilities. On this background, the United States began, after the war, massive investment in research at the institutions of higher learning, which greatly enhanced American military power, its place in international commerce, and its overall standard of living. But this also tipped the balance in American universities, and subsequently in other Western countries, between the Enlightenment emphasis on education through the humanities, and the drive for material progress through science and technology. The beginning of this transition was entirely pragmatic. The emphasis on the empirical sciences and technological development was not planned in order to eclipse the role played by the humanities in higher education. It was rather intended to increase affluence at home and political, economic, and military influence abroad. The new digital technology and the forms of artificial intelligence employed by the then-young computer industry served this purpose through the continuous creation of ever speedier forms of communication and ever more efficient systems of production that ultimately formed a new structure of consciousness, new parameters of experience, and a new hierarchy of values that became characteristic of the next generation. Even though the phenomenon of non-intentional reflexivity in the given social reality, mentioned by Giddens, goes back to the first industrial revolution, it is only following the digitalization of society that the reflexivity of discourse and technology obliterated the ontological distinction between the human spirit and the social mechanisms, that allowed for the freedom of spiritual reflection in the past. In effect, one might say, the impact of technology on life has replaced what was referred to in the past as the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. In other words, technology and its effects on the understanding of humanity in social discourse now provide the logos of contemporary human subjectivity.

The Replacement of Cosmic Experience with Commercially Produced Identity Symbols in the Epoch of Virtual Reality A variety of descriptions and explanations as to the state of consciousness and experience characteristic of the recent period appear in the professional literature of the past four decades. In Jean Baudrillard’s 1981 Simulacra and Simulation,9 the author describes contemporary civilization in terms of a 9 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

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consumer society characterized by perceptions of the products of media construction as real without the necessity of an actual reality to which they refer. This depiction points in the direction of a shallowing of spirit, since Baudrillard is ultimately speaking of a re-formation of subjectivity in which technology determines the ontic parameters of what the individual considers to be his or her world. Ülrich Beck and Anthony Giddens see contemporary society, as formed by the impact of global technology and communications in the digital age, as high in risk and low in trust, because society has come to depend upon complex impersonal institutions and extended systems of logistics created through advanced technology.10 I take this to be an example of the deterioration of the natural embroidery of reality that, at least according to Gordon, once constituted human life. Life is always filled with risk, hence the need to struggle. And yet, one of the reasons that contemporary society is high in risk and low in trust is that the concrete human relations from which, according to Gordon, human solidarity and social responsibility develop, are increasingly replaced with “mechanical” relations determined by a digitally dominated social order. In his 2005 Social Acceleration,11 Hartmut Rosa understood the re-formation of human consciousness in late modernity as the result of a radical speeding up of the tempo of experience in all area of life, including social institutions and personal relations. A telling example is given in the multiple times that people make, reassess and remake life-decisions that were in the past considered to be the type of decisions made once in a lifetime, such as choosing a career, getting married, and so forth. This, too, is a product of the digital revolution, particularly with respect to the speeding up of communication and its effects on the economy and social relations. Many of the things with which one’s identity, in the past, was intimately inter-woven, Rosa claims, have become but short-term aspects of the high tempo of change that constantly re-forms our personal lives. Experience itself has become a matter of eternal flux, lacking the ontological anchors necessary for change to become meaningful. This, I believe, is just one example of the 10 Ülrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter (London: Sage Publications, 1992), passim; and idem, Cosmopolitan Vision, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 22, 33–36. See also Giddens, Consequence of Modernity, 7–10, 33–36. 11 Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, trans. Jonathan TrejoMathys (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).

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fragmentation of consciousness and the absence from human life of what Gordon referred to as the “cosmic moment.” Following the digital revolution, much anecdotal evidence points to a correlative relationship between the amount of time that children spend sitting in front of computer screens, or playing with apps on cell phones, and the decline of their participation in group games such as hide-andseek. Many researchers presume a correlation between the increased use of sound-bytes as measures of time in media production and the shortening of people’s ability to integrate extended lines of reasoning. I have personally observed a sharp decrease in young people’s ability to ponder, to wonder about the meaning of life, and consider ultimate questions, while the imagination once used to consider such things is turned toward multimedia fantasy epics created in virtual reality. I cannot recall the last time I heard a conversation in which the notion of wisdom, as something that requires a depth of consciousness and degree of self-transcendence, was even mentioned. All of these demonstrate the totalizing character of the reflexive relationship between science, technology and social discourse in our time. Gordon, we will recall, severely criticized the commoditization of nature, and of the human being, in a period of time when the joining of science, technology and free market capitalism was still in the process of transforming humanity’s reflective relation to nature into a more deterministic form of reflexivity. Now this process appears to have reached the other extreme, in which the impact of reflexivity on life is total. The deterministic and totalizing character of social reflexivity, in the present, appear to be a result of the combined effects of the profit motive and advanced technological ability. This is best seen when considering the role first played by electronically, and later digitally produced “identity symbols” in advertising. Apparently, there are natural instincts and feelings that even technology cannot obliterate. But through the power of the electronic, and particularly the digital media, these are re-directed by the formation of psychological cathexes, which are configured, in the present, through the use of statistically constructed algorithms. The original motivation for using advanced technology, in advertising, was to increase financial profit by increasing the public consumption of commercial products. But the means through which this was achieved involved the manipulation of the human self through artificially produced “identity symbols.” This was carried out first through television, radio and

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the cinema, and later through the innumerable avenues of virtual reality provided by the digital media. What is of most concern here, is the seemingly limitless power of the digital media to reconstruct human consciousness on the basis of these “identity symbols.” Once the artificial arousal of identification with an object through media-made symbols was so successful in the realm of commerce, it moved to the political arena. In both area it involves the circumvention of intentionality. This, I believe, involves a deep human tragedy, in so far as the digitally produced “identity symbols” have begun to replace the multi-layered dynamic of human life, that in the past formed the possibility of discussion and debate. This would explain why it appears, in present day politics, that honest debate, taking into account the conflicting needs of various social sectors has all but vanished and is in the process of being replaced, all over the West, with a violent clash between opposing political camps in a manner that appears to leave no room for compromise. Marshal Mcluhan had it right when, in 1964, he coined the phrase “the medium is the message.”12 Even more than the electronic media of his time, the contemporary impact of the digital media on life constantly reforms the structure of society. It stands as the foundation of much that happens in the economy, in the character of jobs to be gotten in the work force, in the values people identify with, in the content of our children’s education and subsequently, in the types of decisions that individuals must make in their struggle for existence. These determine, in return, the ever-changing character of social relations. But considering Mcluhan’s statement, we may ask: what shapes the media? Is the media that forms our experience of reality an integral part of the life of the cosmos, as Gordon would have it, or is it a virtual construction of materials that are produced from within the planet’s eco-system, but which are in themselves lifeless? For Gordon, the answer to these questions means the difference between a healthy community life, in which human beings are distinct from each other but recognize their common origin in nature, and an unhealthy humanity that puts the atomistic individual above all. It is also the difference between a living humanity that is comprised by a plurality of communities and peoples whose creativity is nurtured by their 12 Marshal Mcluhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Berkeley: Ginko Press, 2003); and idem, The Medium is the Message: an Inventory of Effects (New York: Bentam Books, 1967).

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particular cultural and spiritual heritages and an abstract humanity devoid of creative potential.

The Fate of Jewish Peoplehood:13 Emancipation, Dissolution, and Fragmentation How have these developments affected contemporary Jewish existence? For the sake of brevity, let us focus our attention on a paradoxical moment in the development of modern Jewish discourse in Central Europe at the time of emancipation; a moment which may then serve as a point of comparison between the state of Jewish peoplehood before and after the epochal change in Western civilization that occurred following the end of World War II. The general discourse of Reform Judaism in the period of emancipation was justifiably characterized as assimilationist because it supported integration into the surrounding culture and society. The assimilationist orientation that characterized early Reform was thus expressed in an ideological turn away from the previous ethnic oriented self-perception of the Jewish community. This turn was expressed in the fact that its founders reformulated their understanding of Judaism in accordance with the demands that arose from the concept of a universal humanity, and the conditions set by non-Jewish society, for acceptance as equals in the modern civil state. Through these responses to the dismemberment of Jewish communal autonomy and the granting of citizenship in that period, early Reform Judaism extended the cosmopolitan ideal of the Enlightenment beyond the realm of philosophical and ideological discourse into the practicalities of Jewish community life and its new relationship with modern civil society. But there are also aspects of early Reform that are most definitely traditional. 13 In 2015 Noam Pianko published a book entitled Jewish Peoplehood: An American Innovation (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015). In this book he investigated the history of the term “peoplehood” in twentieth-century America, as it gradually supplanted the previously used terms denoting Jewish collectivity such as “religion” and “nation.” This high-quality book contributes much to our understanding of the changes that occurred in the usage and nuances of the term. Nonetheless, I take strong exception to its implicit contention that the investigation of the term’s usage in the social context of the twentieth century is sufficient in order to ascertain its meaning for the present, insofar as it ignores the simple meaning of this word—“the state of being a people”—and the similarity of the English term “people” with the ancient Hebrew word am, thus rejecting an essential sense of historical continuity that accompanies it.

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The founders of Reform sought to change Judaism, but they attempted to do so from within, and acted out of a deep conviction that the reformulation of Judaism in light of the contemporary cosmopolitan ideal constituted the historical realization of the Jewish religion’s highest values as taught by the ancient prophets. Most importantly, the cosmopolitan society of which the founders of the Reform movement dreamed did not, in fact, yet exist. Their personal lives were still rooted in a Jewish family existence which, at that time, remained relatively intact. This observation, together with Gordon’s position that one’s spiritual orientation is initially formed through an immediate and a long-term inter-generational dialogue within the context of the family, explains certain facets of the early institutionalization of Reform Judaism that would otherwise remain rather perplexing. Considering the assimilationist orientation of its ideology, we may ask, why did the most important founders of Reform Judaism not call for the creation of a shared religious movement that would unite Christians and Jews in divine worship already in the present, but only for the introduction of the ways of modern society and culture in the already existing forms of Jewish ritual? Why did they insist on official recognition of Judaism as a religious sect alongside the various Christian sects, and retain the vision of a universal religious framework only for the messianic end of days? When looking at the early Reform discourse on the ideal of a universal humanity and cosmopolitan attitudes, one might also inquire as to the significance of quasi-traditional forms of Jewish exegesis that were often used in order to justify their approach. These paradoxes, I submit, reflect a tension filled relationship between ideological discourse and the actual Jewish experience of the founders of Reform, resulting from a sense of Jewish self that was, for them, still a given in the context of the Jewish family life in which they grew up, and which still existed after the abolishment of Jewish communal autonomy. The founders of Reform Judaism understood correctly that the continuation of Jewish existence was always dependent upon its ability to acclimate itself to changing civilizational realities. The realities they faced required adapting to the idea of a universal humanity and social integration into modern civil society. But in practice, the depth of their experience as Jews in the concrete context of their families and what remained of their Jewish communities would not allow the Reformists to do away with Judaism as the religion of a particular people or to divorce its ideology from the traditions of Jewish exegesis and ritual that developed over the centuries.

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This explains why the cosmopolitan discourse of early Reform did not attempt to abolish Judaism as a historical phenomenon and was satisfied with its re-formation in a mold that fit present needs. This tension between the cosmopolitan character of Reform ideology and Jewish ethnicity, we should add, continued so long as European anti-Semitism made inter-marriage with non-Jews a relatively rare phenomenon, and so long as the existing social structures and public discourse were able to be balanced by the relatively stable condition of the Jewish family. From the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, there is a steady change in the balance of influences coming from within and from without, that ultimately led up to the contemporary condition of world Jewry. In the first half of the twentieth century Jewish thinkers such as Aḥad Ha’am, Mordecai Kaplan, and others were already struggling against what they saw as the potential dissolution of Jewish life in the context of modern civilization. But it was only following World War II that a radical and relatively sudden change took place. With respect to the problems facing Jewish existence throughout the ages, I maintain, a cataclysmic change occurred in the middle of the twentieth century that reversed the relationship between the Jewish people’s inner life and the life of the broader non-Jewish society. This change occurred first and foremost in the United States. In all previous generations, including the period of emancipation, the greatest challenges standing before Jewish existence derived mostly from the fact that Jews and Judaism were perceived as separate or distinct from the broader non-Jewish world. However, following the digital revolution, the globalization of the world economy, and the creation of a new media culture and discourse in the second half of the twentieth century, the fundamental problems confronting Jewish existence were a result of the Jews’ successful integration in the various domains of human endeavor that form the backbone of contemporary civilization. The thoroughness of this integration was complemented by a diminishing sense and growing fragmentation of the Jewish self. The picture of Jewish life at the turn of the millennium in America that arises from the last pages of Jonathan Sarna’s American Judaism14 and from Steve Cohen and Arnie Eisen’s The Jew Within15 is one in which the experience 14 Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 15 Steve Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).

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of the individual Jew became dominant and Judaism’s collective character diminished. The American Jew at the beginning of the millennium was just as likely to have Jewish or non-Jewish friends, and to be part of a multireligious family, with only some of its members identifying as Jews.16 These are concrete results of the successful integration of Jews in American society, as is their visible and uncontested presence in all area of the economy, politics, and culture. As opposed to emancipationist Jewry in nineteenth-century Central Europe, who still needed to struggle for equality and integration, the life of American Jews at the turn of the millennium was no longer the experience of a discriminated minority. They were now an integral part of American mainstream society. Such changes in the internal and external social contexts furthered the dissolution of what was considered, in the past, a shared Jewish consciousness and distinctly Jewish communal existence. The dissolution of the collective Jewish self in the American Jewish Diaspora at the turn of the millennium can be illustrated by the fact that the only cultural language shared by American Jews since the second half of the twentieth century is a purely American English, and that by and large American Jewry no longer shares a particular cultural language with non-English speaking Jews around the world. The dissolution of the collective Jewish self at the turn of the millennium is further manifest in the fact that young Jews now place the continuation of Jewish existence rather low in their order of priorities, in the reduction of their involvement in Jewish communal activities, and their diminishing concern for many of the issues that dominated Jewish consciousness in the previous generation, such as concern for the State of Israel and for the welfare of Jews outside of the United States.17 My claim is that the dissolution of a shared Jewish consciousness inevitably means, in Gordonian terms, a shallowing and a fragmentation of the particular “cosmic moment” that, in the past, produced Jewish culture and Jewish identity, and which supplied these with an effective educational language. This is an inevitable result of the absence of a dialogue with the Jewish literary sources through which, in the past, Jews and Judaism considered their place in the universe. True, there has also occurred a surprising return to various Jewish traditions on the part of many individuals from families that had previously rejected these.18 But this stems as much, or more, from 16 Sarna, American Judaism, 32; Cohen and Eisen, The Jew Within, 1–12, 18–21, 34, 38, 130–134, 188. 17 Cohen and Eisen, The Jew Within, 10–11, 35, 142–152. 18 Ibid., 8–10, 91–96.

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a turn in American society to hyphenated and multiple identities, than it does from a dynamic inherent to Jewish life as such. This retrieval of specific traditions is not a return to a shared community life, in Gordon’s sense. Rather, as Cohen and Eisen showed, it is an intimately personal and highly fragmented return to particular identity symbols whose origins are found within the Judaism of the past, but which are now in the process of being reinterpreted and replanted in the shared ground of contemporary American society and culture. One of the important statements made by Cohen and Eisen in The Jew Within is that Jewish identity among young adults around the turn of the millennium was determined by “picking and choosing among new and inherited practices so as to find the combination they as individuals can authentically affirm.”19 I take this to mean a Judaism that reflects a degree of Jewish interest on the part of particular American-Jewish selves after the demise of Jewish collectivity has been accepted as a given. In this sense, Shaul Magid speaks of Judaism in contemporary America as a post-ethnic phenomenon.20 Because of understandings that I share with Gordon, I am deeply skeptical of Cohen and Eisen’s contention that in the situation described above, “the sovereign Jewish self, in its search for personal growth and fulfillment may turn out to be . . . the stimulus to a Jewish communal renewal and creativity as yet unimagined in America.”21 This prognosis might carry some weight if there actually was a robust and vital Jewish community and culture, with which the creative urges of these young Jews could interact. But this would require a reconstruction of the organic relations intrinsic to the form of Jewish ethnicity presumed in Gordon’s work, as well as a certain potential for philosophical reflection that allows for a reconsideration of contemporary norms and values.

Conclusion: A Programmatic Response to the Contemporary Situation Is there any way out of the present situation of absolute social reflexivity? Is there any way out of the atomization of the individual, the fragmentation of the self and shallowing of the spirit? 19 Ibid., 9. 20 Shaul Magid, American Post-Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). 21 Cohen and Eisen, The Jew Within, 12.

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Whether or not one accepts the presuppositions of Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature, and identifies with the general trajectory of his thought, the above discussion leaves no doubt as to its contemporary relevance. Because of the difference between free philosophical reflection and the deterministic and totalizing character of social reflexivity, one might presume that the most important theoretical question to arise, from the contemporary situation, is whose understanding of human existence, with respect to the givenness of world being, is correct: that of Kant or that of Darwin? Kant’s emphasis on the autonomy of human reason, as something that distinguishes between the human being and the natural world leads to the question, if even in the present situation the human subject is sufficiently free to correct the problems facing humanity. The Darwinian conception of life in terms of biological determinism, on the other hand, would lead one to assume that the contemporary state of social reflexivity is a matter of lawful determination in the biologically based processes of evolution within civilization, and cannot be changed except through mutation and gradual adaptation. If this were so, I would ask, if humanity is mutating, on a social and intellectual plane, into something that is no longer humanity. Like Kant, Gordon’s philosophy posits the potential for free will in any given situation. But Gordon, we will recall, roots that potential in the natural quest for life exhibited in the very same drive for survival that provides the starting point for Darwinian theory and the Nietzschean striving for power. Put succinctly, Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature bears a deep respect for the deterministic aspects of natural experience, which require an understanding of life as a struggle for existence, without compromising the freedom of spirit as a potentially revolutionary force able to create alternative social and historical realities. Theoretically, the totalizing character of social reflexivity can be breached in two ways: by an initiative that comes from above; that is, by social consensus and legislation, or from below, as a result of individual initiative. The route from above is obviously closed to us. It does not appear, at present, that the deterministic and totalizing character of social reflexivity leaves room for a radical change to come about by institutional decision making. The route from below also seems very unlikely, at least so long as future possibilities are considered on the basis of statistical analysis. But there is more of chance to change the character of contemporary consciousness through acts of individual and subsequent group determination, than through public institutions, that are by their nature subservient to the very

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systems we need to navigate around. This is where the freedom of human spirit amidst adversity in Gordon’s dialectic of expansion and contraction becomes an important value. One of the things that I think can be taken from the Second Aliyah pioneering spirit, and its reflection in Gordon’s thought, is the understanding that one’s ability to build a life when facing adversity, is ultimately rooted in the power of sheer determination that arises as a response to the severity of the challenge being faced. The Second Aliyah community talked, at times, of the need for “light on a day of smallness.” That light very often came with the realization that struggle is inevitable simply because the alternative is intolerable. I believe that a change in the direction that contemporary civilization is going is necessary for the survival of humanity, and that such a change is only possible if pursued by what Gordon referred to as an expansive spirit. In his words, what is required today, as well, is a “great spirit” that raises even “the smallest and most material activity” to “that of a spiritual value” and an incessant struggle against the type of “petty spirit” that makes even “the greatest and most spiritual act into something small.” There is no going back to the pre-industrial forms of family and community life, from which according to Gordon, the free human spirit is born, but perhaps there is the possibility of creating new forms of group life with the same depths of intimacy, and a gradual reconstruction of the religio-cultural heritage, that characterized them in the past. Already in his own time, Gordon imagined the kvutzah and moshav ovdim as new forms of community life, produced by contemporary need, but which were nonetheless capable of maintaining the past intimacy of familial relations and a community based spiritual tradition. Living at the center of what is already a largely atomized and fragmented society, our goals must be more modest. All we can do is perhaps locate a starting point, that could then lead to a long-term vision of community construction. Expressing my own personal interest in the matter, I think a retrieval of text learning as a cultural institution, such as that called for, in the context of Aḥad Ha’am’s and Hayyim Nahman Bialik’s Cultral Zionism or in Simon Dubnov’s Diasporist Judaism, can make a great contribution, not only to the continuation of Jewish life, but to the rejuvenation of humanity, in general, by joining a search for self, in the Gordonian sense, with the attempt to develop an expanded consciousness through engagement with text learning.

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In the introduction he wrote to his Hebrew translation of Tolstoy’s What is Art,22 Gordon briefly discussed some of Judaism’s classical sources with respect to the parameters of the Jewish self, exhibited in each. The Bible, he thought, was an expression of an ancient creative Jewish spirit that is both expansive and loyal to its own particular cosmic orientation. Tellingly, he was ambivalent about the Talmud, remarking that “it is difficult to say if it contains more of a development or more of a contraction of Judaism,” while he saw the sixteenth-century legal code known as the Shulḥan Arukh, as representative of the situation in exile, where the commitment to the Jewish self came at the price of a contracted cosmic consciousness. Since the problem of Jewish existence, in the present, is no longer that of the contracted life of self in exile, but rather the contraction of life shared with all humanity as a result of digitalization, I should like to add a few of my own thoughts on the importance of text learning, as a starting point from which a reversal of the contemporary contraction of consciousness by social reflexivity may begin. With respect to the “cosmic” expansion of the human self, Biblical literature is filled with texts relevant to the human struggle for meaning, self-realization, religious wonder, ethics and social justice. The Mishnah, the Talmud, and their offshoots in all areas of rabbinical literature, early and late, provide a fabulous example of an inter-generational dialogue that stands at the base of Jewish culture; a dialogue through which the Jewish self, Jewish culture, and Jewish life are recreated in each and every generation. Jewish medieval philosophy and mystical literature can be very inspirational with respect to the forging of a healthy spirit of wonder concerning the mysteries of existence, while grappling with such quasi-metaphysical questions as: is there anything to which one would be justified in ascribing absolute value? Is there anything that stands above or behind the givenness of reality? And, is there anything that follows from the human stance within the natural cosmos that bestows on the individual and society responsibility for one’s self, for one’s surroundings and for one’s near and distant neighbor? I am not concerned here with the answers that might be given to these questions, but rather with the depth of cultural language necessary to ponder them. Jewish philosophical texts provide a wonderful example as to how an individual might use his or her own conceptual abilities to analyze questions and challenges produced through the intertwining experience of 22 Gordon, Selected Writings, 314–319.

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the personal, the ethnic, and the universally human, from many different vantage points. From the study of modern Jewish history and thought, contemporary Jews can learn various ways of confronting social and metaphysical issues in the relativistic context of contemporary discourse. At the same time, the study of modern Jewish literature demonstrates how nuances, experiences, thoughts, and values of the near and distant past can be translated into new forms of creative activity relevant for the present and the future. Indeed, there is no returning to the past, and even though the rejuvenation of Jewish and human existence, in the present, may indeed require, as Gordon maintained, the rejuvenation of family and community life, with their shared religio-cultural heritages, re-making the learning of traditional or classical texts a central part of one’s own life, may contribute something very concrete to the redevelopment of extended community and family life, in Judaism and in all of humanity. By this I mean that the development of a deep and inspirational spiritual culture through the shared learning of classical texts can actually facilitate a sense of group belonging from which familial-type relations can be built. All engagement with the spiritual creations of the past already constitutes an inter-generational dialogue. But whereas in the past such an inter-generational dialogue was the product of a thriving family and community life, in the present it must precede the reconstitution of extended familial intimacy and begin with individual, tandem and small group learning. The goal is a reconstruction of humanity, organically related through the meeting of particular communities and groups with each other, on the basis of their individual relations to a shared universe. Education is an essential facet of such a vision. A proper curriculum is essential for an education that will help foster the spirit necessary to combat the shallowing of consciousness and the fragmentation of self. I further suggest that learning well-chosen classical and contemporary texts, outside of the Jewish canon, with the intended goal of spiritual expansion, may also prove to be an important factor in the over-all retrieval of group life. I yearn for a new creation of familial oriented communities that place the expansion of consciousness through the learning of ancient and contemporary texts at is center. But even short of that, the reinstitution of the humanities as an integral part of university education, and the encouragement of book learning in the context of intimate family and community

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relations, where they still exist, may yet prove to be critical with respect to the future of humanity. The cosmic aspect of learning old texts carries within it the potential for replacing the contents of social discourse produced by the digital media, with the tendency of the free human spirit to wonder at the mysteries of the cosmos, and to do battle with the existential and ethical difficulties that arise from the blood-and-guts experience of life in nature. To the extent that the involvement in religio-cultural heritages, retrieved or created, sparks the intertwining of personalities, and becomes a major focus in relationships that develop between them, particularly in the context of romantic relations and in the relations between parents and their children, we may already speak of the spiritual creations of the past as a major factor in the recreation of community and family life beyond the totalizing power of social reflexivity. Admittedly, many of the thoughts presented in this essay have yet to be worked out in a more elegant fashion. But as in Gordon’s time, it must be stated, that an elegant completion of the line of thinking developed in this post-script cannot exceed the actual development of life at any given moment. At best, one can try to understand from whence he or she came, and ascertain possibilities of thought to be pursued a little further down the line. My purpose will have been fulfilled if I have convinced the reader of the need for a renewal of philosophical reflection concerning many of the issues that appeared to have been long settled or forgotten in the West. These include the basis of ethics in human relations; the relationship between universal humanity and national or ethnic particularity; the meaning and origin of self, in and beyond the social context; and more. In the context of such philosophical reconsideration, I maintain that one ought to consider, along with Gordon, the extent to which contemporary civilizational realities form the problems of existence that need to be considered philosophically and pragmatically. From the particular perspective of Jewish peoplehood, I think that such topics as Zionism and the renewal of Jewish life; the desired goals of Jewish education; and the meaning and character of Jewish solidarity and Jewish religiosity also need to be revisited. Finally, I would like to say that even though this discussion took the quest for life in Gordon’s philosophy of man in nature as its point of departure, I do not think that Gordon’s philosophical method is the only one that can be used to decipher the social, cultural, and particularly the educational challenges facing the Jewish people and humanity. I do maintain,

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however, that any philosophy that is constructed in order to guide such a project should strive for nothing less than the existential depth and breadth exhibited by Gordon’s philosophical thinking. This is to say that it should be similarly humble in recognizing the problems that need be faced and that it should be sufficiently expansive so as to strive for a wisdom that takes into account realms of existence of which it knows that it will never have more than very partial impressions, even as it realizes that the quest for life means a constant struggle with the given power of civilizational realities.

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Bibliography

Primary Sources: Aharon David Gordon Gordon, Aharon David. Man and Nature—Critical Edition [Ha’adam Vehateva—Mahadura Bikortit], edited by Yuval Jobani and Ron Margolin. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2020. ———. Nation and Labor [Ha’uma Veha’avoda], edited by Shmuel Hugo Bergman and Eliezer Shoḥat. Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 1952. ———. Selected Essays, translated by Frances Burnce. New York: League for Labor Palestine, 1938. ———. Selected Writings [Mivḥar Ktavim], edited by Eliezer Schweid. Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 1982. ———. The Writings of A. D. Gordon in Five Volumes [Kitvei Aharon David Gordon Beḥamisha Kraḥim], edited by Yosef Aharonovitch. Tel Aviv: Hapo’el Hatzair, 5685–5689. ———. The Writings of A. D. Gordon in Three Volumes [Kitvei Aharon David Gordon Beshlosha Kraḥim], edited by Bergman and Shoḥat, vol. 1: Nation and Labor [Ha’umah Veha’avodah], originally published 1982, vol. 2: Notes and Correspondence [Mikhtavim Ureshimot], originally published 1954, vol. 3: Selected Writings [Mivḥar Ktavim], originally published 1982. Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 5717.

Additional Primary Sources Aḥad Ha’am. The Complete Writings of Aḥad Ha’am [Kol Kitvei Aḥad Ha’am]. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 5725. ———. “The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem,” in The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, edited by Arthur Hertzberg. New York: Atheneum, 1982.

Bibliography

———. Selected Essays of Ahad Ha-Am, translated by Leon Simon. New York: Atheneum, 1970. Buber, Martin. Israel and the World. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Dewey, John. “Freedom and Culture.” In John Dewey: The Later Works, edited by Jo Ann Boydston, 63–188. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1988. ———. Intelligence in the Modern World, edited by Joseph Ratner. New York: Modern Library, 1939. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Lectures and Essays. New York: Library of America, 1983. Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. Kaplan, Mordecai. Judaism as a Civilization. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1981. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ———. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Paul Guyer and Alan Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, translated by Ben Fowkes. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spake Zarathustra, translated by Thomas Common. New York: Limited Editions, 1964. Schweid, Eliezer. Between Judaism and Zionism [Miyaḥadut Letzionut; Mitzionut Leyaḥadut]. Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 1983. ———. New Gordonian Essays [Masot Gordoniot Ḥadashot], Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuḥad, 2005. Taylor, Charles. The Malaise of Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Secondary Literature on Gordon Aharonovitch, Yosef. “Biographical Notes” [Reshimot Letoldotav]. In Aharon David Gordon, Nation and Labor [Ha’uma Veha’avoda], edited by Shmuel Hugo Bergman and Azriel Shoḥat, 55–72. Jerusalem: Hasifriyah Hatzionit, 1952. Amir, Yehoyada. “Towards a Life of Expansion: Education as Religious Deed in A. D. Gordon’s Philosophy.” In Abiding Challenges: Research

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Secondary Literature on the Second Aliyah and its East European Background Alroi, Gur. Jewish Immigration to the Land of Israel at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century [Hahagira Hayehudit Le’eretz Isra’el Bereshit Hame’ah Ha’esrim]. Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 2004. Bartal, Israel. The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, translated by Chaya Naor. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005. Bar-Yosef, Hamutal. “Zionism Against the Background of Russian Culture” [Hatzionut al Reka Hatarbut Harusit]. In Bar-Yosef, Qeri’ot Usheriqot. Jerusalem: Carmel, 2005. ben Aryeh, Yehoshua. “Settlement in the Jordan Valley during the Second Aliyah” [Hityashvut Be’emek Hayarden Betkufat Ha’aliyah Hashniya]. In The Second Aliyah: Sources, Conclusions and Selected Events [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah: Mekorot, Sikumim, Parshiot Nivḥarot Uḥomer Ezer], edited by Mordecai Naor, 58–71. Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 1984. Ettinger, Shmuel. “The Ideology of the Second Aliyah on the Background of East European Jewish Social and Political Thought” [Ha’idiologia shel Ha’Aliyah Hashniyah al Reka Hamaḥshava Haḥevratit Vehamedinit shel Yehudei Mizraḥ Europa]. In The Second Aliyah [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah],

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Ofir, Daniel. “The Titanic Struggle Between Laborers and Farmers, Petaḥ Tikva 1906” [Ma’avak Ha’eitanim bein Ha’ikarim Vehapo’alim, Petaḥ Tikva 1906]. In The Second Aliyah: Sources, Conclusions and Selected Events [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah: Mekorot, Sikumim, Parshiot Nivḥarot Uḥomer Ezer], edited by Mordecai Naor, 120–130. Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 1984. The Second Aliyah [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah], edited by Israel Bartal, Zev Tzaḥor, Yehoshua Kniel, vol. 1. Jerusalem: Yad Yitzḥak ben Tzvi, 1997. The Second Aliyah: Sources, Conclusions and Selected Events [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah: Mekorot, Sikumim, Parshiot Nivḥarot Uḥomer Ezer], edited by Mordecai Naor. Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 1984. Schweid, Eliezer. “The Heritage of the Second Alyiah” [Moreshet Ha’aliyah Hashniyah]. In The Second Aliyah: Sources, Conclusions and Selected Events [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah: Mekorot, Sikumim, Parshiot Nivḥarot Uḥomer Ezer], edited by Mordecai Naor, 37–43. Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 1984. Shiloh, Margalit. “Arthur Ruppin and the Zionist Settlement in the Second Aliyah” [Arthur Ruppin Vehahityashvut Hatzionit Be’aliyah Hashniya]. In The Second Aliyah: Sources, Conclusions and Selected Events [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah: Mekorot, Sikumim, Parshiot Nivḥarot Uḥomer Ezer], edited by Mordecai Naor. Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 1984. Shiloni, Zvi. “Phases in the Development of Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel during the Second Aliyah” [Shlavim Behitpatḥut Hahityashvut Hayehudit Be’eretz Yisra’el Betkufat Ha’aliyah Hashniyah]. In The Second Aliyah [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah], edited by Israel Bartal, Zev Tzaḥor, Yehoshua Kniel, vol. 1, 104–134. Jerusalem: Yad Yitzḥak ben Tzvi, 1997. Tzaḥor, Zev. “The Development of the Second Aliyah Leadership” [Hitgabshut Manhiguta shel Ha’aliyah Hashniyah]. In The Second Aliyah: Sources, Conclusions and Selected Events [Ha’aliyah Hashniyah: Mekorot, Sikumim, Parshiot Nivḥarot Uḥomer Ezer], edited by Mordecai Naor, 26–36. Jerusalem: Ben Tzvi Institute, 1984.

Secondary Literature on Judaism, Jewish Thought, and Contemporary World Civilization Amir, Yehoyada. Renewal of Jewish Life in Nachman Krochmal’s Philosophy [Hitḥadshut Haḥayim Hayehudim Bemishnato shel Naḥman Kroḥmal]. Ra’anana: Ha’universitah Hapetuḥah, 2018.

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Rottenstreich, Nathan. Jewish Thought in the Modern Period [Hamahִshavah Heyehudit Be’et Hahadasha], vol. 2. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 5710. Sagi, Avi. A Challenge: Returning to Tradition [Etgar Hashiva el Hamesoret]. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuḥad, 2003. ———. To Be a Jew: Brenner—An Existentialist Jew [Lehiot Yehudi: Y. Ḥ Brenner Ke’ekzistentzialist Yehudi]. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuḥad, 2007. Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Schweid, Eliezer. A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy [Toledot Philosophiat Hadat Hayehudit Bezman Haḥadash], vol. 4. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2006. ———. Jewish Thought in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction, translated by Amnon Hadary. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. ———. Judaism and Secular Culture [Hayahadut Vehatarbut Haḥilonit]. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuḥad, 1981. ———. Prophets to Their People and to Humanity [Nevi’im Le’amam Ule’enoshut]. Jerusalem: Magnes, 5759/1999. Slotzky, Yehudah. Introduction to the History of the Israel Labor Movement [Mavo Letoldot Tnuat Ha’avoda Hayisra’elit]. Tel Aviv: Am Oved. 1973. Zipperstein, Steven J. Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha-Am and the Origins of Zionism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

159

Index of Subjects Aḥdut Ha’avodah, 110 anomie, 128 altruism, 70–71, 113 Arab, 13n1, 25, 28, 30, 80, 103, 107–113 art, 6, 72, 148 artificial intelligence, 137 Bar Giora, 30 Bible/biblical, 14, 24, 61, 148 civilization, 40, 50, 57, 59, 61, 75, 79, 81, 117, 121–125, 127, 129, 134, 137, 141–143, 146–147, 150–151 cognition/cognitive, 4n3, 6–7, 39, 42, 44–45, 47, 50–55, 57, 59, 63–65, 68, 70–72, 114, 122–125, 130–131, 133–134 community, 41, 48, 56, 58, 66–70, 72, 75–76, 78–80, 83–99, 103, 105, 107–108, 110– 112, 114–117, 121–123, 125, 127–129, 140–142, 145, 147, 149–150 contraction, 6, 70–72, 84, 88, 127, 147–148 conquest of labor, 26, 28–31, 94n1 cosmic moment, 109–110, 112–113, 116, 124, 139, 144 cosmos, 8, 11, 33, 37, 47, 49–50, 52–54, 58, 60, 63–67, 71–72, 87, 90–91, 95–97, 112, 114, 116, 122–123–125, 140, 148, 150 creation, 4, 9, 12, 20, 28–29, 33, 40–41, 48–50, 54–56, 59, 63–66, 68, 71, 75–76, 79–80, 82–83, 85–87, 89–91, 94–95, 97–99, 107, 109n3, 111, 114–116, 121–122, 124, 130–132, 135, 137, 142–143, 149–150 culture/cultural, 3, 5, 9, 14, 16, 20, 33, 37, 42–43, 49–50, 52, 56–57, 61–62, 64, 66–70, 72, 76, 78–80, 82–84, 90–91, 93, 96–98, 114–116, 123, 129–131, 141–145, 147–150 Day of Atonement, 62n4, 66–67 despair, 26, 85–86 Diaspora, 83, 103, 105–107, 144, 147

digital/digitialization/digital revolution, 107, 135, 137–140, 143, 148, 150 divine/divinity, 48–49, 54, 61, 66–67, 70, 80, 83, 87n6, 142 ecology/ecological, 12, 52–54, 61, 114, 125 education, 9, 11, 14–15, 20, 24, 32, 63, 76, 84, 88–91, 94–98, 116, 130–131, 137, 140, 144, 149–150 egotism, 70–71 emancipation, 20, 78, 141, 143–144 enlightenment, vii, 14–17, 19–20, 24, 37, 41, 53, 55, 57, 64, 115, 129, 131–133, 136–137, 141 eternity, 86, 138 ethic/ethics, 4, 6, 18, 24, 33, 37, 40–41, 43, 45–46, 50, 55, 60–66, 68–72, 75, 87n6, 95, 107, 112, 115–116, 122–123, 129n3, 131–132, 148, 150 ethos, 4, 7, 22–23, 26, 28, 31–33, 56, 71, 86, 125, 128–129 ethnic/ethnicity/post-ethnic, 7n11, 20, 58, 60, 66–67, 69, 79n10, 82, 85, 91, 107–109, 115–116, 125, 129, 141, 143, 145, 149–150 exile, 16, 28, 33, 56, 78, 81, 97, 106–107, 122, 148 expansion, 6, 59, 70–72, 84, 88, 132, 147–149 experience, vii, 4–7, 16–18, 20n24, 22, 25, 29, 32, 44–47, 50–54, 58–60, 62–72, 84, 86, 88, 91, 93, 95–96, 106, 115–116, 122–124, 130–131, 133–134, 137–138, 140, 142–144, 146, 148–150 equality, 15, 28, 78–79, 92, 95, 97–98, 114, 131, 141, 144 evolution, 39–40, 61, 146 family/familial, vii, 7, 14–19, 25–26, 57–58, 61, 66–70, 83, 93–98, 107, 114–115, 124–125, 128–129, 131, 142–144, 147, 149–150 fate, 12, 27, 57, 77, 81, 85–87, 107, 129–130, 132, 141

Index of Subjects

First Aliyah, 21–22, 25–26, 28–29, 62n2, 80–81 freedom, 7, 9, 18n16, 20, 24n35, 41, 45–46, 63–65, 67, 82, 87n6, 90, 92, 95, 107, 110, 115, 121, 125, 128, 131–137, 139, 146–147, 150 Garden of Eden, 61 Ha’ivri, 105–106 Ḥadera Commune, 31 ḥavayah, 6, 50–52 hakarah, 6, 51–52 Hapo’el Hatza’ir, 14, 27–28, 110 Haskalah, 14, 17n12, 20n24, 23 Hassid/Hassidism/Hassidic, 8, 16, 70n21 Hebrew, 4n4, 6–7, 9, 14–15, 27–28, 49–51, 79, 81, 105, 107, 112, 116, 141n13, 148 Hebrew University, 4n2, 88, 90 hope, 13, 26, 81, 85, 89n13, 96, 121, 128–129, 136 heritage, 23, 54n19, 62, 66–70, 75, 83, 90, 96, 114, 116, 129n3, 131, 141, 147, 149–150 human/humanity/humanism, 3–5, 8–9, 11–12, 23, 30, 33, 37, 39–72, 75–76, 79, 83–89, 91, 93–95, 97–98, 103, 106–109, 111–117, 121–125, 127–134, 136–143, 146–150. individual/individuality, 7–8, 20, 23–24, 26–27, 29, 32–33, 42–46, 52, 55–56, 59, 62–63, 65–72, 75–76, 78, 84–89, 91, 93–99, 108–110, 112, 114–116, 121, 124–125, 127–131, 138, 140, 144–146, 148–149 industry/industrial/industrialization, 14, 20, 25, 57–58, 64, 98, 127–129, 132–134, 135, 137, 147 instinct, 40, 64–66, 68–72, 77, 83, 112, 124, 139 intuition, 11–12, 16, 33, 37, 40, 48–49, 52, 54, 63, 70, 92, 99, 122 Jew, Jewish, vii–viii, 3–9, 11–12, 14–25, 27–29, 31–33, 43n12, 48, 50, 54, 56, 62–63, 67–68, 76–84, 86, 89–90, 94, 96, 103, 105–113, 116–117, 121–122, 125, 127, 134–135, 141–145, 147–150 Judaism, 5, 19n19, 23, 66, 77–80, 82–83, 141–145, 147–149 justice, 18n16, 50, 58, 75, 107, 109, 112, 114–116, 123–125, 148

Kabbalah/kabbalistic, 7–8, 48–49, 70, 84 kibbutz, 29, 31, 93–96 kvutzah, 26n43, 29–30, 93–96, 125, 147 labor, 3–5, 7, 9, 19, 21–33, 41, 44, 46, 56, 62–63, 75–76, 79–91, 93–97, 105–111, 113, 116, 121–122, 124–125 Land of Israel, 3–4, 7, 9–10, 13–14, 16, 18–19, 21–25, 28–31, 41, 54n19, 56, 79–81, 85–86, 88, 93–94, 103, 105–113, 121 language, 9, 14–15, 27–28, 48, 50, 54n19, 67, 69–70, 77, 90, 96, 99, 105–107, 123, 127, 130, 144, 148 law/lawfulness, 17, 40–41, 43, 45–46, 55, 58, 65, 85, 87n6, 94, 98, 116, 146 liberalism, 13, 41, 114, 128, 131, 135–136 literature, 6, 8–9, 11, 14–15, 20, 24, 62, 79, 137, 148–149 love, 43, 56, 65, 71–72, 112 Lovers of Zion, 15, 19n19 organ/organic/organism, 7, 11–12, 40, 44, 49, 52–55, 67, 69, 71–72, 77, 93, 95–96, 112, 114, 122, 125, 130–131, 145, 149 malaise of modernity, 128–130 Man in Nature, vii, 4–5, 8, 11, 37, 39, 41, 47–48, 55, 57, 60, 75, 93, 103, 121, 123, 130, 146, 150 Marxism, 10, 24, 28, 39, 41–47, 58, 85, 92–95, 97–99, 109–110, 116 Mishnah, 148 modern/modernity/modernization, vii, 5, 14, 16, 19–20, 24, 29, 37, 41, 45–46, 48, 55, 57–61, 64, 75, 78–79, 83, 97, 115, 121, 124, 128–136, 138, 141–143, 149 moshav, moshav ovdim, moshavah, moshavot, 25–26, 93–98, 111, 147 mystery, 9, 53, 60, 67, 124 nation/national, 4–5, 7, 15, 18, 20–21, 23, 27–28, 32, 66–69, 75–85, 89–90, 94n1, 105–109, 111–116, 121, 124–125, 141n13, 150 nature, 4–5, 7–12, 15, 17, 24, 26, 33, 37, 39– 61, 64–67, 69–72, 75–77, 79–81, 83–84, 86–88, 90–91, 93, 95–99, 103, 106–107, 109, 112–115, 121–125, 127, 130–134, 136, 138–140, 146, 148, 150 Pale of Settlement, 3n1, 13–14, 16, 18–20, 22, 33, 83, 121 pantheism/pantheistic, 54n19, 61, 123

161

162

Index of Subjects

people/peoplehood, vii, 5–7, 12, 15, 21–24, 27–28, 32–33, 54, 59, 61–62, 66–70, 75–87, 89–91, 93, 96–97, 103, 105–110, 112–117, 121, 124–125, 127, 131, 135, 138–143, 150 pioneer/pioneering, 3–5, 11, 21–30, 32–33, 41, 45, 48, 62n2, 72, 75–76, 80, 83–87, 89–90, 92–93, 98, 103, 105, 109–110, 117, 121, 123, 125, 147 Po’alei Tzion, 28 profit/profit motive, 30–31, 98, 139 prophecy/prophets, 20, 24n35, 89, 116, 142 providence, 87, 89n13 reconstruction/rejuvenation/renaissance/ renewal, 15, 21, 28, 32–33, 44, 48, 56, 63, 65, 67–68, 75–76, 78–79, 81–83, 88, 90–91, 98, 103, 105–107, 112, 116, 121, 124–125, 130, 136, 140, 145, 147, 149–150 reflection, 4n4, 16, 40, 44, 47, 52–53, 65, 90, 92–93, 115, 117, 122–123, 132–137, 139, 145–147, 150 reflexivity, 132–134, 136–137, 139, 145–146, 148, 150 Reform Judaism, 141–143 religio-cultural, 62, 66–70, 78, 116, 147, 149–150 religion/religious/religious sensibility, 3–4, 6–8, 16–17, 23–24, 37, 48, 50, 52, 54–55, 60–64, 66–72, 75–76, 80, 82, 85, 88–90, 105n1, 112, 122, 124, 128–129, 131, 141–142, 144, 148, 150 responsibility, 18, 30, 60–61, 63–68, 71, 93– 94, 97–98, 107, 112, 116, 122, 124–125, 138, 148 revolution/revolutionaries, 20–21, 23–24, 27–28, 57–58, 82–83, 90, 106, 108–110, 127, 129, 132–133, 137–139, 143, 146 Second Aliyah, 3–5, 7, 9, 11, 16, 19, 21–33, 42, 48, 56, 62n2, 68, 76, 81–82, 84–86, 88, 90, 92–94, 117, 121, 123, 127, 147, science/scientific method, 4n3, 14–15, 40, 42, 45, 48, 51–53, 57–59, 79, 122–123, 130, 132–137, 139 self, 4n3, 6, 8, 11–12, 18, 21, 24, 33, 37, 39–45, 47–50, 54–55, 60, 64, 70–72, 75–78, 80–91, 93–99, 103, 106–107, 109–112, 114, 116, 122, 124–125, 127–130, 134, 139, 141–145, 147–150 selfhood, 42, 44, 95, 109

self-realization, 28, 63n8, 84–91, 93–94, 96–99, 112, 129, 148 settlement, 5, 9, 22, 25–32, 45, 76, 79, 92–94, 97, 99, 125 Sixth Zionist Congress, 21 Shulḥan Arukh, 148 socialism, 19, 23–24, 26–28, 44, 59, 105 social justice, 58, 107, 109, 124–125, 148 society, 3–10, 15, 17–18, 20, 22, 24, 28, 33, 37, 40–42, 44–46, 49–50, 52, 57–59, 61–62, 64–72, 75, 78–80, 83–85, 90, 93–99, 105–107, 109–110, 115, 122–125, 127–150 solidarity, 23, 28–29, 43, 65, 67–68, 71, 83, 93, 95, 97, 109–110, 112, 123–125, 138, 150 spirit, 4–5, 20, 23, 26–27, 29, 37, 40, 43–46, 48–50, 52, 55–58, 62n2, 66, 68–71, 75–76, 78–84, 86–88, 90–91, 96–98, 105–107, 112, 114–116, 122–124, 127, 130–138, 141–142, 145–150 struggle (for life and existence), 5, 16, 25, 27, 40, 46, 56, 59, 82–83, 87–90, 95, 111, 113, 125, 132, 138, 140, 143, 146 Talmud, 89, 148 technology/technological, 42, 46, 57–59, 68, 122–123, 127, 130, 132–139 territorialism, 21, 26n41 Third Aliyah, 10, 44n17, 92, 94, 96 Torah, 17, 19–20, 48, 89 tradition, 5, 7–8, 14, 16, 19–20, 23–25, 30, 41, 48, 51, 54, 57–58, 62n2, 66, 68, 75, 80, 83, 87n6, 116, 133, 141–142, 144–145, 147, 149 tragedy/tragic, 23, 26, 86, 140 Übermensch, 43–45 Universal, 4n3, 40–41, 43n12, 55n20, 76, 103, 107–109, 112, 114–116, 124, 129, 131, 141–142, 149–150 World War I, 3, 10, 21, 26, 44, 58, 86, 89, 92, 94, 108, 127 World War II, 132, 134–135, 141, 143 World Zionist Organization, 29 Yiddish, 15, 28 Zionism, vii, 3, 7n11, 19, 21–25, 28–31, 76–82, 90, 94n1, 105–107, 111, 121, 147, 150

Index of Names and Places Aḥad Ha’am, 3n1, 43n12, 76–84, 115n4, 143, 147 Aharonovitch, Yosef, 14–18, 62 Alroi, Gur, 21n27 Amir, Yehoyada, vii, 51n12 Bardin, Shlomo, 15n6 Bartal, Israel, 4n2, 14n2, 19n20 Bar-Yosef, Hamutal, 24n36 Baudrillard, Jean, 137–138 Beck, Ülrich, 138 Ben Aryeh, Yehoshua, 30n49 Bergman, Shmuel Hugo, 6–7 Bergson, Henri, 7 Bialik, Hayyim Nahman, 3, 147 Bloom, Alan, 129n3 Bosel, Yosef, 31 Brenner, Yosef Hayyim, 76–77, 80–82, 84, 86–87, 89–90 Buber, Martin, 3, 8, 54n19, 112n9 Burnce, Frances, 4n4 Cohen, Hermann, 3–4, 67 Cohen, Steve, 143, 145 Darwin, Charles, 39–41, 65, 77, 83, 146 Degania, 30–32, 93–94 Dewey, John, 128, 130–132, 134, 136 Dubnov, Simon, 3n1, 147 Eisen, Arnie, 143, 145 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 55n20 Ettinger, Shmuel, 22–24 Frankel, Jonathan, 20 Fuehrer, Ehud, 8 Giddens, Anthony, 132–133, 137–138 Giladi, Dan, 21n27, 25, 31n52 Gitelman, Zvi, 19n21 Gordon, Yael, 13–16 Gordon, Yehiel, 16 Halpern, Ben, 31n52 Hed, Michael, 4n2

Herder, Johann Gottfried, 7 Herzl, Theodore, 15, 21–22, 78–79 Jezreel Valley, 93–94 Jobani, Yuval, vii, 11n24 Jung, Carl, 7 Kant, Immanuel, 4, 39, 41, 45–47, 51, 53, 55, 58–59, 63, 116, 146 Kaplan, Mordecai, 143 Katz, Shaul, 4n2 Katznelson, Berl, 110 Kinneret, see Sea of Galilee Kishinev, 21 Kniel, Yehoshua, 4n2, 22n30 Kolat, Yisrael, 4n2 Kook, Abraham Isaac, 7 Krochmal, Nahman, 78n5 Levinas, Emanuel, 3 Lilianblum, Moses Leib, 19 Lower Galilee, 29 Luria, Isaac, 49n10, 70 Magid, Shaul, vii, 145 Margolin, Ron, 11n24 Marx, Karl, 10, 24, 28, 39, 41–47, 58, 85, 92–95, 97–99, 109–110, 116 Mcluhan, Marshal, 140 Merḥavia, 94n1 Mohilna, 17–18, 20 Nahalal, 93–98, 111 Naor, Mordecai, 22–23, 25n39, 30n49, 94n1 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 24, 39, 41–47, 71, 76, 81–82, 84, 115–116, 135, 146 Obodovka, 15–16 Petaḥ Tikvah, 25–26 Pianko, Noam, 141n13 Ramon, Einat, vii, 13n1, 62–63, 65n11 Ratzabi, Shalom, 8, 51n12, 85, 93 Reḥovot, 26n41

164

Index of Names and Places

Reinholz, Yehudah, 31n52 Rishon Letzion, 26n41 Rosa, Hartmut, 138 Rose, Herbert, 15–16, 20n24 Rosenzweig, Franz, 3, 54n19 Ruppin, Arthur, 31 Russia, 3n1, 13–15, 18–20, 22–24, 33, 109, 121, 135 Sagi, Avi, vii, 77, 80 Sarna, Jonathan, 143 Schweid, Eliezer, vii, 7, 10n23, 18n18, 23, 48, 62n2, 85, 93, 134n8 Sea of Galilee, 29–31, 94n1 Sejera, 29–31 Shapira, Avraham, 8, 48, 115

Shiloh, Margalit, 94n1 Shiloni, Zvi, 4n2, 94n1 Shoḥat, Eliezer, 5n5, 10n22, 49n6 Slotzky, Yehudah, 22n28 Soloveitchik, Joseph B., 3 Strassberg-Dayan, Sara, 7 Tartakov (Gordon), Fayga, 15 Taylor, Charles, 128–130 Tolstoy, Leo, 24, 52, 148 Tzaḥor, Zev, 27 Ukraine/Ukrainian, 14 United States, vii, 19, 105–107, 129n3, 131, 135–137, 141n13, 143–145