Our Goal for Ha-Po‘el ha-tsa‘ir
Yosef Aronovich
1907
Conscious of the fact that our national work is of no value as long as there is no measurably large and measurably strong Hebrew1 workers party in the land of Israel, we have set ourselves the goal of creating such a party. How to create it and whether indeed it is possible to create such a party under the present conditions is the central question…
Creator Bio
Yosef Aronovich
Born in the Podolian shtetl of Kiriyevka (today Kyriïvka, Ukraine), Yosef Aronovich (Aharonovich) received a traditional education but was then drawn to Haskalah Hebraism and ultimately Zionism. Deserting the Russian army in 1904 to avoid fighting in the Russo-Japanese War, he started a Zionist agricultural training program in Brody (then, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) called Ḥalutzei Tsiyon (Pioneers of Zion), and arrived in Palestine in 1906. There Aronovich became the founding editor of Ha-Po‘el ha-tsa‘ir (The Young Worker), the organ of the Ha-Po‘el ha-Tsa‘ir socialist non-Marxist Zionist movement, which, during his editorial tenure 1907–1922, he used to support the new Hebrew literature and culture and propound the idea of communal farms. He joined the Histadrut in 1923 as the Bank Hapoalim’s new director; became increasingly active in the Hebrew Writers Association, contributing to their Moznaim journal; and served on the Tel Aviv city council.
This was the editorial statement of the Ha-Po‘el ha-tsa‘ir newspaper (party organ).
Ha-Po‘el ha-Tsa‘ir (Hebrew, “The Young Worker”) was a pacifist Zionist socialist labor movement founded in Petah Tikva (Palestine) at the initiative of Aaron David Gordon (1856–1922). The members of the movement built new Jewish settlements and farms and dedicated themselves to agricultural labor and to the revival of Hebrew. In 1920, Ha-Po‘el ha-Tsa‘ir united with Aḥdut ha-Avodah (“Labor Union”) to form the Histadrut, a general workers’ organization.