Zionism and hityashvut: new ideologies of settlement

It was the pioneers of the First Aliyah who built on the cornerstones laid by the founders of Petach Tikva and Gai Oni, developing a philosophy of hityashvut which would subsequently be expanded as one of the most central pillars of Zionism. Despite the fact that none of these settlers themselves came from an agricultural background, they developed an ideological approach to the Land which comprised a number of different aspects. For them, returning to the Land entailed the creation of a base to serve others after themselves.

Redeeming the Land

· They saw themselves as the vanguard of a Jewish people returning to the Land, thus overturning the aforementioned passive concept whereby the decision for the People to come back was perceived as being in the Divine realm. The names that the newcomers gave their settlements, names like Rishon LeTzion (the first to Zion), Rosh Pinah (cornerstone) and Yesud HaMaalah (the beginning of the going-up), clearly illustrated their conception of their role.

· Moreover, the people of the First Aliyah saw themselves as continuing the biblical and post-biblical tradition of Jewish farming as reflected in the biblical and Rabbinic literature. In addition, as a primarily religious group, they saw that it would be possible to fulfil the various halachot (Jewish laws) that were connected with the farming of the Land but which had fallen into neglect over time.

· Finally, since in the lands of the Galut, it was usually forbidden for Jews to own or even to farm land, they believed that in the Land of Israel, the Jewish Land as they saw it, Jews had to be free to do those things that had been forbidden them in the countries which they did not control. To that extent, farming the soil was an expression of being a free People in charge of their own fate in their own Land, a value that they felt strongly.

All these ideas, (with the exception of the halachic idea which would be irrelevant to the majority of future settlers most of whom would be secular), would be continued and developed by subsequent waves of settlers. From these early roots the idea of hityashvut would solidify into one of the most sacred of all Zionist values.

Difficult Beginnings

It is worth indicating at this point some specific associations which tied in with the idea of hityashvut from the earliest stage of Zionist settlement. Hityashvut was interpreted by Zionism as specifically referring to the act of settlement on the land, rural settlement, which, moreover, subsumed the idea of working the land on which one was settled. As such it was distinct from another sacred value, Aliyah, which refered to coming and settling down in the Land of Israel, and encapsulated ideas such as self-labour and self-sufficiency. It is interesting to note that the earliest ideas of Zionism were intimately linked to the idea of physical settlement on the land - just as the earliest ideas of Judaism are tied in, as previously mentioned, with a physical relationship with the Land of Israel. This was despite the fact that the earliest settlers knew next to nothing in practical terms about farming the land. It may also have contributed to the ideological nature of the concept of hityashvut which often dwarfed the practical importance of any specific act of settlement, and added a romantic halo to the idea of the return to the land.

It is perhaps significant to mention that by no means all the olim of the first Aliyah settled on the land. Many, perhaps the majority, gravitated to the towns. The same pattern would hold true for subsequent waves of Aliyah. However it is symptomatic that the ultimate image of the oleh would long be the rural pioneer, working the land with his or her own hands.

The first wave of Aliyah, which took place over the last two decades of the nineteenth century created a new map of settlements. By the end of this Aliyah, some two dozen settlements had been added. Most were in the coastal plain (Petach Tikvah, RishonLeZion, Rechovot, Hadera etc.) or in the north (Rosh Pinah, Yesud HaMaalah, Metulla etc.) The word that was used to describe these farm villages which were based on the principle of small private farms was MOSHAVA.

In theory, each farm was supposed to be (or become) self-sufficient. In reality however, right from the earliest days of the moshavot, the farmers found themselves driven deeply into debt. Unable to pull themselves out of debt by their own efforts alone, they were ultimately forced to depend on the philanthropic efforts of Baron Edmund de Rothschild of Paris who was prepared to pour vast sums of money into the settlements in order to subsidise the farmers and prevent the settlements' collapse. Help, however, came at a price, and a very high one for many of the settlers. Rothschild insisted on putting his own representatives into any settlement that requested his help and these people had the authority to make the decisions on almost every significant aspect of the life of the settlements, not just at the agricultural and economic levels. Many of them ruled with a harsh and humiliating attitude towards the settlers, and as a result the attitudes of many of the farmers began to change.

Inevitably, they started to feel that the project was no longer entirely theirs, and the intense determination that had characterised all of the settlements in the early days - to work the land solely by their own hands in order to create the basis for the new Jewish community that would grow up in the country - weakened and, in many cases, disappeared. Many of the settlements decided to use hired Arab labour and many of the farmers became supervisors of others' labour rather than users of their own. As the 19th century drew to a close, the settlements came towards financial independence, but much of the character that had marked the moshavot in their early days had changed. For many of the subsequent settlers, the settlements of the first Aliyah were disappointing, lacking as they did at least one of what were increasingly being seen as the integral marks of authentic hityashvut.

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