The Rebels - Moshe Beilinson

They left developed, cultured societies in the midst of a social revolution which promised a new world. They left centuries-old large Jewish communities with a rich web of community organisations. They abandoned their middle class lives and background. They abandoned those most precious of human treasures - the mother tongue and the culture of birth. They left all this

without any collective framework or youth movement support, without public recognition or encouragement, without any certainty that anyone backed them at all. They left as individuals, isolated and despised by the masses. They left despite the indifference of the middle class, even that part which called itself "Zionist". They left despite the opposition of world figures, be they English lords or socialist leaders.

They left in confusion, in rebellion, almost in despair, without any assurance that they would not be the last pioneers as well as the first. They left sometimes without believing that all this made any difference; that someone would continue their rebellion. They left their country of birth to travel to their "homeland" - a homeland that existed only in their dreams. They came here to begin a new life, both materially and spiritually, in a language that they did not yet know. 

They came here to begin a life of physical labour, unused to it and unaware of all it entailed. They came to a land whose inhabitants were strangers, much stranger than the Russian or Polish peasant; they came without any way to bridge that gap. They came to a land ruled by an uncultured, rotten regime without any possibility of negotiation or communication. They came here to a small, backward Jewish community with a different set of values and different world view. They met here a few Zionist settlers who had lost any desire for independence, as if they had forgotten why they came here in the beginning. These settlers didn't accept the newcomers with joy, but were suspicious and sought to hinder their progress, if only from a lack of understanding of the newcomers' spirit and goals. They came here as individuals - a few dozen, a few hundred - scattered across the land. They lived here year after year without joy, without celebration, in continual struggle with the new climate and unfamiliar conditions. They lived here in loneliness, with one eye always to the horizon, seeking a sign that some new boatload of pioneers was on its way to join them. But the boat never arrived.

They lived almost without hope that something would change, that the sacrifice was not in vain. They lived in the shadow of fear that the Zionist movement had reached a dead end. They saw a Zionist movement whose leader was dead, and whose untalented successors continued without belief and without vision.

And they came to live here in poverty, fighting disease, their lives continually in danger. They lived without any organization, without organs of mutual aid, without cultural institutions or Kupat Cholim. They lived without moshavim, without kibbutzim, without any organised workers' settlements, without the idea of such a thing, in the beginning. Instead, they searched for a living as simple hired workers.

They did all this for years, and remained faithful to themselves and their values. And in the meantime they accomplished a miracle. They built the basis of a Jewish workers' society. They laid the foundation of a revived Hebrew culture, they created the kvutza, the kibbutz, a newspaper and a web of cooperative institutions. They did more than that. They created a new man - the Jewish worker,devoted, honest, resourceful; new kinds of relationships amongst men, between men and women, a new style of public life.

They created a community of proud Jewish workers who lived on their own labour, and who despise exploitation and greed.

All this required courage. The Jewish people has few other examples of such courage; the Zionist movement has none at all. The Jewish workers' society of today stands in gratitude and respect toward those few who rebelled against the reality of Jewish life and who understood the path upon which the Jewish people needed to embark.