Aaron David Gordon, one of the principal…
1904 CE
After working for some twenty years as a minor official for the estate of Baron Horace Günzburg, Gordon sets a personal example by immigrating to Palestine in 1904; before Gordon's arrival, the major theorists of Labor Zionism had never set foot in Palestine.
Gordon believes that only by physical labor and by returning to the land can the Jewish people achieve national salvation in Palestine.
He settles in the village of Petah Tiqwa, refusing a job as librarian to work as a farm laborer.
The spiritual leader of the Second Aliyah, Gordon becomes a folk hero to the early Zionists by coming to Palestine at a relatively advanced age—forty-seven—and assiduously working the land.
Gordon and his comrades want every tree and every bush to be planted by Jewish 'pioneers.'