Land and Desire in Early Zionism

1 Pioneers and Pioneerism

1 PioneersandPioneerism This book articulates the Zionist act of aliya and settlement in the Land of Israel by focusing on the experiences of the halutzim, or pioneers, the paradigmatic Zionists . In opposition to almost all Zionist historiography, it presents the pioneers ’ most central experience—the existential reality of being-in-the-Land-ofIsrael and their basic desire for the Land—without reducing this desire, as most historians do, to a political, economic, romantic, or psychological phenomenon. In the May 1925 issue of the Kibbutz Ein Harod newsletter, MeBifnim, a member wrote that a distinction should be made between two types of halutziyyut, or pioneerism, in the building of the Land of Israel. The first was the halutziyyut of conquest, which did not know what goal it sought, and the principal impulse of which was to blaze a trail, move forward, get out into the world. The second was the halutziyyut of construction, which burned no bridges and did not proceed blindly, but rather unwound like an unbroken string marking out a road.1 This kibbutznik was describing here, in brief, the constitutive aspects of pioneer desire as I present it in this book. This desire carries with it an ecstatic, boundaryblurring impetus, alongside an impetus that establishes discipline and creates boundaries. These two impetuses act simultaneously. So, for example, when I discuss the sweat flowing off the pioneer’s body onto the soil of the Land, I will show that this both blurs the boundaries between him and the Land (the pioneer who moistens the soil and senses himself as part of it) and creates boundaries (the pioneer moistens the Land, thus making it “Jewish,” constituting a boundary between Jewish land and Arab land). Desire, I claim and intend to prove historically, knows no boundaries yet, in this lack of knowledge, actually establishes them. This book describes the impetus of blurring boundaries as it finds expression in the pioneer-ecstatic relation to the Land of Israel—to its soil, to its inanimate objects, its plants, and its wildlife , to its landscapes and other spaces. Then it shows how, simultaneously, this same boundless ecstatic desire is channeled toward the Land, constituting its borders in the form of wells, paths, roads, settlements, and other such visible realities. I do not intend to explain the pioneer desire for the Land of Israel. Attempts to 1 2 land and desire in early zionism explain the causes and sources of this phenomenon, as well as its purpose, miss the mark. Instead of explaining, I seek to describe. To do so, I simply chart pioneer desire.2 Asthemanyquotesfromthepioneersthemselvesincludedheredemonstrate, pioneer language, the multiplicity of pioneer texts, and their unrestrained expressiveness themselves constitute part of the pioneer desire for the Land of Israel. The pioneers expressed this desire in descriptions of their experience of beingin -the-Land as an ecstatic, almost mystical sense of actually merging their flesh with its soil, flora, and fauna, of achieving a symbiosis with it, as though the boundaries between themselves and the Land had dissolved. Yosef Weitz, one of the first settlers at Um Juni, on the shore of Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee), wrote that he had not really understood the mystery of the Zionist need to possess the soil until he made the ascent—aliya, the Hebrew word for immigration to the Holy Land—to the Land of Israel and dug his first trench in Rehovot: “Then, when the scent of the soil rose to my nostrils, I sensed something new that had perhaps been hidden away in some secret place under the threshold of consciousness , awakening and spreading through all my bones and sinews. And the deeper I dug, the sensation of the soil became more profound and spread through me, and the feeling overcame me that I [must] embrace the land, merge into it, suck from it the essence of life. The spirit of the generations blew within me from the depths of the soil and I felt, really felt, the powerful connection between me and the soil of Israel.”3 These expressions of desire could be explicitly erotic. At midnight, on a visit to Ben Shemen Farm, the author Y. H. Brenner was walking to the home of his friend, the farm’s manager, Yitzhak Elazari-Volcani. As a compatriot who accompanied Brenner later recounted, they walked along a path that ascended to the farmyard. At some point Brenner began speaking of the Land of Israel. They reached a broad field on the hillside that had...