Our move to Um-Juni made a great impression on all of the workers in Palestine. It was going to be the first autonomous settlement of Jewish workers in the country and members of the group felt a sense of mission. On the day we left for Um-Juni, there were eleven of us, two of them women.
The main incentive to settle in Um-Juni was our desire to be autonomous and work without overseers or external control. Our members were no longer satisfied by working in the existing villages. Judean farmers were entirely dependent on export markets; they were controlled by various administrators who ruled them arrogantly. Although we realized the importance of replacing Arab laborers with Jewish ones, we knew that this, in itself, would not foster our national renaissance nor change our values. Although pride demanded that Jewish hands do the work, we aspired to more, namely to our personal and national salvation.
This required a different kind of settlement, a settlement based on our own labor and one that provided for our own needs... Our new, communal way of life was never a doctrine to be followed blindly; it had not been copied from other nations. "The Kvutza" as we called it, was an original Eretz Israeli creation, with roots in our national and our moral ideals. We aspired to gather the entire pioneering movement in our homeland. We opted for our unique way of life because it fit our ideals and we never attempted to enforce it on others. We were never bothered by whether the masses might want to adopt our way of life. We knew that there was still a long road ahead of us, but we nevertheless chose to walk the narrow path.
We aspired to establish a small unit, a just society which might serve as a model for others. Aware of the enormous responsibility and knowing the obstacles that lay ahead, the Hadera group set out for Um-Juni in the autumn of 1909.
No comments:
Post a Comment