Yonatan A. Dahlen

Our Land and the Land of Our Fathers: the Case of A.d. Gordon Yonatan A. Dahlen

Pioneers in every sense of the word, the halutzim of the second and third aliyot sparked the advent of a new Jewish identity in both body and spirit. Every swing of the hoe or thrust of the shovel penetrated the very being of the halutz as well as the Land?s Jewish soil. With a recast Eretz-centered theology, the halutzim reinterpreted their Jewishness while simultaneously cleaving to the rich traditions of their ancestors. The product of this amalgamation is a religiosity formed from elements of Jewish mystical tradition and socialistic agricultural labor. Though the edification of halutz religious methodology depends on foundational structures of the past, its esoteric ideology is directed towards a messianic eschatological future.