A.D. Gordon was born in Ukraine and worked for the state of some wealthy relatives. When their lease ran out, Gordon decided to give his money to his wife and children and go to Eretz Israel. He was 47 and had not experience working the land, but he became a laborer in Zion, working with young people. He worked on early kibbutzim including Degania. His wife and children followed him to join him. He developed cancer, and went back to Ukraine in 1922 to die.
Gordon is my favorite theorist I've read so far! His ideas about embodiment and the land really appeal to me!
Quotes from Logic for the Future (1910)
"And when, O Man, you will return to Nature - on that day your eyes will open, you will gaze straight into the eyes of Nature, and in its mirror you will see your own image. You will know that you have returned to yourself, that when you hid from Nature, you hid from yourself. When you return you will see that from you, from your hands and from your feet, from your body and from your soul, heavy, hard, oppressive fragments will fall and you will begin to stand erect. You will understand that these were fragments of the shell into which you and shrunk int he bewilderment of your heart and out of which you had finally emerged. On that day you will know that your former life did not befit you, that you must renew all things: your food and your drink, your dress and your home, your manner of work and your mode of study - everything!"
I love this quote because it's how I feel when I hike, especially in Israel! That's how I felt after Taglit.
From People and Labor (1911)
"The Jewish people has been completely cut off from nature and imprisoned within city walls these two thousand year. We have become accustomed to every form of life, except to a life of labor - of labor done at our own behest and for its own sake... This kind of labor binds a people to its soil and to its national culture, which in turn is an outgrowth of the people's soil and the people's labor."
From Some Observations (1911)
"Galut (exile) is always Galut, in Palestine no less than in any other country. Whoever seeks national rebirth and a full life as a Jew must give up the life of the Galut."
From Our Tasks Ahead (1920)
"We are engaged in a creative endeavor the like of which is not to be found in the whole history of mankind: the rebirth and rehabilitation of a people that has been uprooted and scattered to the winds. It is a people half dead, and the effort to recreate it demands the exclusive concentration of the creator on his work."
From Yom Kippur (1921)
"As long as we were penned within ghetto walls, ragged, and cut off from the great life of the world, from man and from his broad and abundant life, we accepted what our ancestors had bequeathed to us. We believed in it and we gave our lives for it. When the walls of the ghetto fell, when we saw the world and all that is in it at close range, when we came to know man and his life, when we added cultural values from without to all this - we realized that the traditions of our ancestors were no longer in harmony with what was growing and developing in our own spirits."
"Is it sufficiently founded in logic and in the human spirit - that with the loss of the basis for the blind faith the basis for religion has also been destroyed?"
From Final Reflections (1921)
"Life itself must be a song!"
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