Aharon David Gordon

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Aharon David Gordon

Aharon David Gordon (born June 9, 1856 in Trojanow near Zhytomyr / Russian Empire (today's Ukraine ); † February 22, 1922 in Kibbutz Degania ) was a Hebrew writer and a leading Zionist .

life and work

Gordon comes from a wealthy Orthodox Jewish family in the Russian Empire. His grandfather was a noted Jewish scholar, and his father was employed by an influential relative, Baron Joseph Günzburg (1812–1878). Gordon learned the Talmud , the Bible and Hebrew grammar as well as Russian and secular subjects as an autodidact from private tutors . As the only one of five surviving siblings, he decided to register for draft as a soldier in the Russian army against his parents' wishes , but was found unfit for service. After his marriage, he got a job in the financial administration of the property of Baron Günzburg, which he held with interruptions for 23 years. At first he was hostile to modern Hebrew literature, mainly because of the hostile attitude of numerous writers to the Jewish tradition. When in 1903 the village where Gordon worked was sold to a new owner, he lost his job and decided to emigrate to Erez Israel . In 1904 he went on the trip alone; his wife and daughter followed him after five years.

Although he was 48 when he emigrated and had never done physical labor, he now insisted on working the ground with the sweat of his brow . In Palestine he led a hard life as a worker in the vineyards of Petach Tikwa and Rishon LeZion and, after 1912, in various villages in Galilee . In 1909 he began to publish numerous articles, most of which were published by the newspaper of the HaPoel HaZair party ("The Young Worker"), a forerunner of the Histadrut . He spent the last years of his life in Kibbutz Degania on the Sea of ​​Galilee .

Gordon participated as a delegate at the 11th Zionist Congress in 1913 and the Ha-poel ha-zair Conference in Prague in 1920, but was never interested in matters of political Zionism for their own sake. He believed that only through individual efforts to change themselves could the Jewish people be saved. Therefore he inspired neither the Balfour Declaration nor the Jewish Legion in the First World War . Although he did not hold an official position, he exerted a worldwide influence on the Jewish labor movement through his writings and personal commitment . The Jewish youth association Gordonia , which was founded in 1925, is named after him and is essentially based on his ideas.

Gordon's worldview is based on the conviction that the cosmos forms a unit, that nature and man are one and that all people form an organic part of the cosmos. Human beings are formed in two different ways by the cosmos: through human knowledge of the world and through their intuitive perception of the world, which can never penetrate consciousness, but can be lived. What we know is only a fraction of who we are. Gordon was aware that his theory created a dichotomy between rational "knowledge" and "life". He compared this dualism to the relationship between the flame and the oil in a burning lamp. Consciousness, knowledge and knowledge are the flame that is nourished as oil by life itself. The intellect achieves clarity by directing its light on a specific sector of reality. However, a price has to be paid for this effort: the living relationship between the sector studied and the entirety of the cosmos is broken. The more a person penetrates nature with his knowledge, the less he can experience it with his whole being. But the source of our deepest certainties is not the accumulated knowledge, but life itself. Although the intellect is an important weapon in the struggle for survival, it tends to isolate and alienate people from the entirety of the cosmos .

In this tension Gordon discovers the source of religion . Through religion man begins to feel himself again as an organic part of creation. God cannot be grasped through the intellect, but man can come to him in an immediate living relationship. With the psalmist Gordon says: "My soul thirsts for God, the living God."

Gordon's friends found it difficult to understand his religious motives. For the socialist pioneers of the early 20th century, religion had become an ossified, meaningless, bygone phenomenon. Gordon attempted to dispel these objections by pointing out the difference between form and content. He admitted that in the formal area, religion had lost much of its vitality. Religious forms are declared sacred and immutable at the expense of content. But the content of religion arises in the religious individual as an expression of his sense of cosmic unity and purpose. Gordon believes that while religious thought may be dead in the present, God himself can never be dead. It is a hidden mystery that we encounter in all of our experiences. The true religion is in the future.

For the person who lives in the city, the source of this rejuvenation has broken off. Nature is no longer a source of inner renewal, but is reduced to quantities of grain or wood that are sold and bought. Relationships with other people and things also become purely utilitarian . No authentic religion can exist in such an atmosphere. The task of the intellect is not to conquer intuition, but to be its servant - its shamash . Achieving a balance between master and servant can only be achieved by resuming a direct relationship with nature. Our road leads to nature through the medium of physical work.

Gordon was hostile to socialism in its Marxist form. For him, Marxism was a pure product of the intellect, the aim of which was to reorganize the social order , not to renew the human spirit. Marxism seeks to change people by changing the regime instead of taking the opposite path.

Gordon uses the phrase am-adam ("people of mankind", "people who embody mankind") to express his thoughts on the importance of the people in the fulfillment of human destiny. Man is made in the image of God, and Gordon adds that people must also be made in the image of God. No people should ever allow themselves to put themselves above morality. A people embodies humanity only insofar as it obeys moral law. Gordon's cosmo-nationalism has universalistic effects, and this is where the challenge for the Jewish people in Israel lies for Gordon. The decisive test for him lies in the attitude of the Jews towards the Arabs:

Our attitude towards them must be shaped by humanity, by moral courage that remains at the highest level, even if the behavior of the other side does not seem ideal. Their hostility is all the more a reason for our humanity.

Gordon's writings were published under the title Ketawim 1951-54 in three volumes including a biography.

literature

Web links

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