Sacrifice? - Rachel

 M. Beilinson's remarks about the Second Aliyah seem very strange to me. He paints a tragic picture of the heroic struggles of a few pioneers who sacrificed their lives on behalf of their homeland. But I see them differently. They didn't sacrifice themselves. They conquered a new world; they stood on a mountain peak, breathed the fresh clean air and saw the dawn of a new

age.

But let me deal with the details. "They left developed, cultured societies ... " They did not. They left the small, wretched village or town of their birth - a place of age-old poverty and despair that has nothing to do with "developed, cultured society." World literature is full of descriptions of such places and the youth who suffer and die there.

"They abandoned their middle class lives ... " Such words would be understandable if spoken by a middle class Jew for whom his society encompasses all that is good and true in life. But from M. Beilinson? Why does he feel he must mourn a lifestyle that is opposed, in essence, to the Zionist dream? He himself thinks that that kind of life is monstrous - for what does he

mourn?

"They left despite the opposition of world figures ... " Moshe Beilinson does not know how little the chalutzim cared about world figures? They didn't care either because they were naive youngsters, or because they despised politics to a certain degree. But they didn't care.

"They left to a homeland that existed only in their dreams ... " Doesn't M. Beilinson know that for youth a dream is very real if it has the power to push them to action?

"They came here to build a new life ... " As if every youth (if he is really a youth) doesn't seek a new life? As if sleeping in a stable isn't much preferable to an easy, comfortable life for anyone who is really young?

"They came to a land whose inhabitants were strangers ... " But there wasn't any reason to meet the inhabitants, and that didn't bother them as much as the lack of nationalist feeling amongst their own people.

"They lived year after year without joy and celebration ... " To get up in the morning and set out, not for the school or the office, but to the fields, to that wonderful meeting with nature and the land - that isn't joy? To sow and to plant and to join God in the act of creation; to be together with other young people who dream and hope like you- that isn't joy? And to dance throughout the night and to ride bareback across the land and to hike each spring through the Galil - that is

life without joy?

I agree with M. Beilinson's main point that it all took courage. But he sees their courage in their sacrifice of the good life on behalf of a new life here. I see their courage in their willingness to be true to themselves, in their audacity in doing so here in their reviving homeland.