Subject: JUICE Pioneers of Israel - Part 1
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 23:28:55 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: JUICE Administration <juice@virtual.co.il>
To: pioneers@virtual.co.il
Subject: JUICE Pioneers of Israel 1
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World Zionist Organization
Jewish University in CyberspacE
juice@wzo.org.il birnbaum@wzo.org.il
http://www.wzo.org.il
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Course: Pioneers of Israel
Lecture: 1/12
Lecturer: Doron Geller
Welcome to the first lecture in our course, Pioneers of Israel!
While we will be concentrating, in general, on individual personalities, and
sometimes on rugged individualists, we will also try out the innovative
direction of collective biography. In this case, the first Zionist
pioneering group, Bilu, will be the focus of our attention.
Most of the time, we will proceed along a pretty linear time line, from
the First Aliya onward. But don't be surprised if we do an
occassional jump, from time to time.
During the course of the nineteenth century, there were a number of
exhortations by Jewish public figures for the Jews to return to their
ancestral land in Palestine. But these calls, before 1881, were few and far
between. Most European Jews were either staunchly religious, intent on
assimilation into their host cultures, or trying desperately to work out a
synthesis between the two.
In 1881 vicious pogroms broke out all over Russia. The response of many
Jews was emigration, especially to the United States. Others persisted in
their efforts and hopes for assimilation. Only a tiny minority became what
were eventually known as Zionists - Jews who were committed to rebuilding a
vibrant Jewish presence, and eventually, a Jewish state in Palestine.
Between 1881 and 1903, the period known as the First Aliyah in Zionist
historiography, about 25,000 Jews came to settle in Palestine. Many were
similar to the traditional emigrant to Palestine - he or she came for
religious reasons. The vast majority of them settled in the towns -
Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and Safed. But the others were
committed to living a life on the land, working with their hands,
re-establishing a healthy and vital Jewish presence in Eretz-Israel. Of
this tiny minority of the Jewish people at the end of the nineteenth
century, an even tinier minority among them were distinguished by their
idealism, innovation, and what historically proved to be the group most
representative of the character of the future state of Israel. They were
known as the Bilu.
For many Jews, the Enlightenment and the liberalization of discriminatory
laws across Europe during the course of the 19th century came upon them as a
blessing and a dream. Many Jews eagerly embraced their host cultures, often
with more fervor and passionate patriotism than the Christian members of
these countries did. This was true no less so in Russia than in other
European countries such as Germany and France.
Thus the pogroms that broke out all over Russia in 1881 and 1882 came as a
cruel shock. Not only the mob, but also "enlightened" non-Jews acted in
concert, frequently with the connivance of Czarist officials, to attack the
unsuspecting, disbelieving, and frightened Jewish population under their
control. Chaim Chissin, a future member of Bilu, wrote; "Until these
pogroms began I myself had thrust aside my Jewish origins. I considered
myself a devoted son of Russia. I lived and breathed a Russian life and
every new Russian scientific discovery, every new creation of Russian
literature, every victory of Russian imperial power, everything Russian
filled my heart with pride. My passionate desire was to devote my strength
to my fatherland, to carry out all the duties of a good and honest citizen.
Then suddenly, with no warning, we were shown the door."
In the wake of the riots fasts were declared in many Jewish communities
throughout the Russian Empire. On the night of one of these fasts in
Kharkov, a young student, Israel Belkind, invited a number of his fellow
students to his room in order to discuss how to deal with this completely
unforeseen eruption of anti-Semitism. They decided not to set down new
roots in America but in Palestine, the ancestral home of the Jews. They
vowed to resettle the land and renew themselves, and thus act as catalysts
for the renaissance of the entire Jewish people in Palestine.
At the same time, a similar idea had surfaced among a group of students in
Moscow. They gathered together in a hovel on the outskirts of Moscow and
spent a week, day and night, discussing the character of the future Jewish
State in Palestine. These two groups from Kharkov and Moscow found out
about one another, merged, and called themselves Bilu, a Biblical Hebrew
acrostic from a verse in Isaiah meaning "O House of Jacob, let us go forth."
There is little doubt that there was a strong element of transference among
these passionate and idealistic young men and women. They had been, and
would have continued to be, devoted Russian patriots. As it were, they
transferred their love, energy, and desire for integration into Russian
culture into an equally intense desire for the rebuilding of the Jewish
State in Palestine. They decided to set up a cooperative farming settlement
in Palestine, governed by justice and complete equality. Rather than just
running from Czarist oppression, they wished to show themselves and the
world that a better world could indeed be built and maintained, if people
only cared enough to see it through. They were, in fact, the first and only
socialists among the members of the First Aliyah. This in particular
distinguishes their tiny number, which never consisted of more than 30
members in Palestine, of the more than 25,000 Jewish immigrants to Palestine
between 1881 and 1903.
But their naivete was reflected in the fact that although they were
insistent on setting up a cooperative farming settlement, they had no
experience or even knowledge of agriculture, let alone Palestinian climatic
conditions. The Palestinian climate was vastly different from the frigid
Russian landscape from which they had come. But that did not deter them.
In the summer of 1882, 14 members of Bilu - among them one woman - set sail
on the three-week journey to Palestine. A smaller number came soon after.
They landed in Jaffa, a squalid, bustling port full of venal Turkish
officials and according to the memoirs of Jewish immigrants, fierce-looking
Arab boatmen. They were quickly hustled ashore, in not too gentle a manner
- and not without a healthy amount of "baksheesh" (bribe or protection
money) - into the completely alien world of the Levant. This was not the
land of the Bible they had expected to see. Many Jewish immigrants,
particularly after the First Aliyah, felt a strong sense of fear as they
entered the unknown land of their forefathers. They were not re-entering
the world of Biblical times, an inviting Jewish homeland waiting with
outstretched arms for her cherished sons and daughters - but a forbidding,
menacing world of natives who felt completely at home in this land, and made
many new immigrants acutely aware of their minority status. For some, this
feeling was hardly different from what they had felt in Russia.
At the same time, the Bilu - and members of the First Aliyah in general -
may have felt a certain sense of fear but they had no doubt that Palestine
was the land of the Jews and they were its rightful owners. Thus they acted
with far less deference to the Arabs than they might have towards a Czarist
official or even a Russian peasant. What was tolerable in the "Old Country"
was, for most idealistic Jewish immigrants, intolerable in Palestine.
Moreover, they did not yet have the experience of conflict with the Arabs to
serve as a damper to their enthusiasm.
Soon after their arrival, the Biluim proceeded to the agricultural school of
Mikveh-Israel, set up by the Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore in
the 1870's to propagate Jewish self-sufficiency in Palestine. But by 1882,
over 40% of the workers employed there were Arabs. The Bilu - just a few
more than twenty - asked for work. As Chaim Chissin relates it in his
diary of the period, the French-Jewish administrator, Hirsh - refused them
at first. The urban, former university students unused to the climate and
labor would be of no use to him. But they were determined. Hirsh relented,
but frequently assigned them the most difficult and boring tasks, such as
ditch digging. This would have turned most educated and highly talented
youngsters away. The Bilu had a goal, however; to prove that Jews were
capable of working their own land and then to use their expertise to expand
all over the country. This enabled them to endure the rigors of physical
labor to which they were unaccustomed, and even to find renewed vigor and
stamina when they were on the brink of exhaustion and despair. But it was
no easy task. One Bilu pioneer wrote: "Standing in a row with the others,
I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Nevertheless, I began to flail
about energetically with my shovel in every direction. Before long, my
palms began to blister. Then the blisters burst and my hands began to
bleed, making it impossible for me to hold the shovel. But I immediately
became ashamed of my lack of spirit, and I thought, 'Is this any way to
prove that Jews are capable of physical labor? Is it possible that I really
can't pass even this simple test of the spirit?' Taking heart, I grabbed
the shovel again and, ignoring the terrible pain in my hands, I worked
furiously without stopping."
Hirsh was determined to get what he considered this "nonsense" out of their
system, and gave them ever more grueling tasks. Chaim Chissin described how
the pain in his back caused by working in a stooped position caused him and
other Biluim agony, but he took heart from those who could keep at it.
But not many could. Soon no more than half of them could get up for work in
the morning. Some returned to Russia. Others drifted off to the cities.
Those who remained - only 14, after a short period of time - wanted to
realize their ideal and start a cooperative settlement. But they did not
have the funds, and despite promises of support from Europe, it was not
forthcoming.
In 1882, at about the same time the Bilu arrived in Palestine, the colony of
Rishon le-Zion was founded by Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem. It was an
individualist, capitalist experiment, as were all of the twenty-odd
settlements established during the First Aliyah. In early 1883 half of the
Biluim went there in a body and began working as hired laborers. Still
relatively ignorant of farming and local conditions, they did not know when
to sow and when to reap. But they tried to work as a community; they dug
ditches and foundations, planted trees, and even built two-storied houses
for themselves. Their living conditions were markedly improving from those
at Mikveh Israel, and it was reflected in their approach to life. Dusty,
grimy, seeing the sunrise at dawn, and watching the sunset in a crimson
cascade at dusk, they enthusiastically tilled the soil and worked the land.
In the evening, as they became inured to the difficulties of physical labor,
they organized intellectual pursuits - just as they had intended to when
they set out for Palestine. They arranged talks on Jewish history,
agriculture, and other subjects. They began to learn Arabic, in addition to
their rudimentary Hebrew. Things were coming together. They saw their work
bearing fruit; even if it was not all they had intended it to be as a
socialist experiment, it was a beginning. One can imagine their pride.
These sons and daughters of peddlers, merchants, scholars and rabbis were
fulfilling a dream. They were true pioneers.
We should keep in mind that the Bilu were acutely aware of the Jewish
reputation for unwillingness to engage in physical labor and
self-defense. Much of this reputation was based on fact, despite David
Biale's attempt to reform such an image in his book "Power and
Powerlessness in Jewish History". No, the Jews who came to Palestine
were consciously attempting to overcome such stereotypes, especially in
themselves.
The Bilu had already begun to prove themselves in the arena of physical
labor. They soon had the opportunity in the arena of self-defense. The
neighboring Arabs would let their animals graze on their property. By day,
the whole village of Rishon would come out and drive them off. By night,
once the trespassers were detected, the young men would set out on
horseback, the older men on foot, and after giving them a thrashing, the
trespassers would leave and the Jewish settlers would return to their
village, "where the women.would be waiting to receive them, their faces full
of admiration". One cannot underestimate the feeling these young Biluim
must have had. They were proving their manhood, and their women were proud
of them. After the recent events in the Pale of Settlement, this was a
revolutionary change in their own view of themselves and their capabilities.
As Chissin reflects in his diary: "When I see the settlers engaged in a
tussle with the Arabs, I often ask myself: Are these the Jews who in their
countries of domicile endured all kinds of insults and degradation without
complaint? Where is the 'innate' fear, which many Jews consider to be a
feature of their people, and which they defend on the ground that the Jews
abhor physical violence"?
Of course these tussles were not limited to the Arabs and Jewish settlers;
frequently Bedouin Arabs had the same disputes with their Arab brethren, and
with similar consequences. Only very rarely did one of these engagements
result in a death on either side, which could evolve into a long and
complicated blood feud. The Bilu and the Arabs did not bear a dislike for
each other based on nationalist motives at this early stage of settlement.
But there is no question that the impression the Bilu and other Jewish
settlers received in Palestine was that the local Arabs respected force, and
despised those unwilling or unable to use it.
Some of the Bilu, however, felt that, despite their pride in their
accomplishments both in labor and in the realm of self-defense, they were
not achieving their ideal of establishing a cooperative socialist
settlement. Arabs were working in Rishon le-Zion, and the non-Bilu Jewish
members did not share the Bilu's enthusiasm, to put it mildly, for a
socialist future in Palestine in which they would lose their capital.
Accordingly, when the funds came through to purchase another bit of land,
the Biluim acted. In December of 1884 they founded the settlement of
Gedera. Ten men went there with just the most basic agricultural equipment.
They did not have the support of the Jewish farmers in the other colonies,
such as Petach Tikvah, Zichron Ya'akov, and Rishon le-Zion, who regarded
their socialist experiment as strange, and the more orthodox among the other
settlers were even hostile towards them. But the Bilu tried in any case.
They overcame their ignorance of farming, and they worked, on the average,
ten hours a day or more. Undernourished and exhausted as they were, they
persisted for several years in this manner. But funds were scarce in
coming, and with few others willing to join them, their morale began to flag
and their ideals to fade away. By the end of the decade (1889-90) the
cooperative experiment was increasingly, albeit sadly, viewed as an unviable
project. To survive, the disillusioned Bilu began to follow the example of
the other settlements. Gradually Gedera became an individualist colony as
well. The original Bilu soon employed cheap Arab labor, and turned away
other idealistic Jewish newcomers. They became a ward of Baron Edmond de
Rothschild's largesse, as were all of the other colonies.
The Biluim knew this was no way to build the Jewish State. But they could
not have survived on their ideals alone. Their time simply had not yet
come. As an organization, the Bilu disintegrated within a few years after
their arrival. Some members returned to Russia, several went to the United
States, Australia, or South America, and pursued careers far different from
their original intentions as settlers. Some became overseers and landowners
in Palestine, and became the class rivals of the Second Aliyah - who shared
the idealism and sacrifice of the Biluim but were more inventive,
persistent, and tenacious than their forerunners.
But still other Biluim, such as Chaim Chissin, never relinquished their
original idealism, long after reality had set in. After the cooperative
experiment had failed and was surviving almost solely due to the generosity
of Edmond de Rothschild, Chissin could not accept surviving on charity
alone and wished to support his wife and family by his own efforts. After
unsuccessfully driving a wagon between Jerusalem and Jaffa, he returned to
Russia in 1887 to study pharmacy, and then went on to Switzerland to study
medicine. He was gone for 18 years. Having completed his medical studies,
he returned to Palestine with his wife and four children in 1905. He landed
at Jaffa, the same port where he had landed as a young, idealist pioneer 23
years before. Now a medical doctor, he practiced his profession, but was
also active in the revitalized socialist Jewish workers movement in
Palestine. He helped found four settlements - Ein Ganim, Be'er Ya'akov,
Nahlat Yehudah and Kfar Malal. He helped found Tel-Aviv in 1909. He was
much admired and lauded for his ability to successfully resolve labor
disputes between two contending parties as well. One of his greatest
admirers was Berl Katznelson, a man of similar skills and temperament and a
leading figure of the Second Aliyah.
In Zionist historiography, the Bilu have occupied a place far more prominent
than their meager number would suggest. They were only a fraction of a
percent of the First Aliyah as a whole. But they were the first
socialist/idealists who came to settle in Palestine. Although they failed
in their time, they were the forerunners of the Second Aliyah, who arrived
with similar ideals but were able to implement them where the Bilu had not.
But the Bilu laid the foundations for a Jewish state in Palestine and partly
determined the character it was to take. Although the Bilu failed in their
time, their memory, example, and inspiration lived on after them. When the
state of Israel was founded in 1948, it was in many ways imbued with the
sense of vision, idealism, self-sacrifice and hope of the Bilu. When those
veterans of the Bilu looked around them in the first decades of the
twentieth century and saw cooperative settlements springing up all over
Palestine, they could take heart that their original ideals had belatedly -
but successfully - come to fruition.
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