Hannah Trager - Pioneers in Palestine: Stories of one of the first settlers in Petach Tikva

Routledge Revivals

PIONEERS IN PALESTINE

Pioneers in Palestine

STORIES OF ONE OF THE FIRST SETTLERS IN PETACH TIKVAH

By

HANNAH TRAGER

Author of Stories of Child-Life in Palestine, & Festival Stories of Child-Life in Palestine.

WITH A FOREWORD BY

ISRAEL ZANGWILL

First published in 1923 by George Routledge & Sons

This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge

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1923 Taylor & Francis.

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The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

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A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 24025763

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-55531-0 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-315-12212-0 (ebk)

PIONEERS IN PALESTINE

Mr. Zorach Barnett and his wife at the celebration of their 50 years jubilee.

Pioneers in Palestine

STORIES OF ONE OF THE FIRST SETTLERS IN PETACH TIKVAH

By

HANNAH TRAGER

Author of Stories of Child-Life in Palestine, & Festival Stories of Child-Life in Palestine.

WITH A FOREWORD BY

ISRAEL ZANGWILL

ILLUSTRATED

Dedicated

to

THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF BALFOUR, K.G., O.M.,

in token of gratitude for The Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917, and his noble endeavours for the re-establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine under the British Mandate of the League of Nations, by one of the Pioneers of the Jewish Resettlement in Erez Israel.

In the latter days Out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.Isaiah ii. 2-4.

FOREWORD

By ISRAEL ZANGWILL

A ZIONIST has been cynically definedby Ferdinand, the ex-king of Bulgariaas a Jew who pays another Jew to live in Palestine. But even this commuted Zionism is, in these over-taxed times, a form of idealism, and the amounts paid out by Jews to other Jews, going as it were to the front, far surpass any contributions ever extracted by merely moral suasion from any other sect. I remember what a feat it was thought when in pre-war days the Wesleyans, to celebrate some centenary, got together a million pounds. This sum has already been outdone by the absentee Palestine patriots even during the lean years of the post-war period, and under the energetic campaigns of Dr Weizmann, the flow of subscriptions is expanding rather than abating. Nor should the seven million pounds devoted to Zion by that pioneer Palestine philanthropist, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, be overlooked. When the wealthy Babylonian Jews similarly preferred their exile and sped their parting brothers, strengthening their hands as Ezra tells us with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with beasts and with precious things, there was apparently room in Palestine for the bulk of their race. Moreover the Jews were then homogeneous, not distracted and diversified by a score of different environments and languages. Yet only some forty-two thousand answered the call. If to-day one finds the same humour in the Zionist zeal for the lands of the diaspora, it must be remembered that a thorough-going Zionism, in the sense of a thorough going of Zionists to Palestine, would now be impracticable, inasmuch as Palestine is too small to hold the Zionists, not to mention the millions of other Jews. For the Jewish population of the world is now estimated at fifteen or sixteen millions.

The Zionists had anticipated that Transjordania would provide a valuable annexe or hinterland to Palestine properas a territory it is really superiorbut not only have the rich lands of Moab and Gilead been now permanently alienated by the setting up of Transjordania as a separate political unit under the Emir Abdullah, but even a northerly slice of Palestine itself has had to be sacrificed to the ambitions of France. When, finally, we bear in mind that Palestine with its exiguous area of some nine thousand five hundred square miles, already holds a non-Jewish population of six or seven hundred thousand, we shall see how easily a Zionist may reconcile it with his conscience to deport his money rather than his person to the National Home.

Nevertheless, the hundred-per-cent Zionist remains the most satisfactory specimen of the genus. And of this species the earliest to take the road to Jerusalem have been the most admirable. Not that to settle in Jerusalem was a sufficient mark of Zionism, for Jerusalem had always attracted settlers ready to die there. Zionism begins with the first impulse to live in Palestine and to make the land live likewise. If our authoress is correctand there is no reason to doubt her accuracyher father was not only a Zionist before Balfour beclouded the situation with his well-meant proclamation, not only a Zionist before Herzl had blown the trumpet of political re-gathering, but a Zionist before even the first non-political Zionism arose through the Chovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion). Of this last group, Zorach Barnett was one of the inspirers, but before it arose he had already co-operated in the foundation of a settlement, and that the very first, Petach-Tikvah (The Gate of Hope). It was thus he who opened the Gate of Hope to modern Israel. Says Coleridge:

It seems like stories from the land of spirits,

When any man obtains that which he merits,

Or any merits that which he obtains.

One is glad to find therefore from a recent issue of the Doar Hayom (or Daily Mail) of Jerusalem, that the veteran pioneer, after more than one gallant failure, has lived to see his jubilee celebrated under the auspices of The Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, by every section of Palestine life and by representatives from all the many colonies his pioneering stimulated.

It is always interesting to track the source of a great river, and it is clear that in watching through Mrs Tragers eyes the little procession starting out in quest of land from the suburban settlement of The Hundred Gates, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, we are at the fountainhead of modern Zionism. Mrs Trager does valuable work in recapturing for history these rich details of the life, at once idyllic, industrious and dangerous, of that primitive period, when the comparatively short Jaffa-Jerusalem road (or absence of it) was traversed neither by train nor motor-car, but constituted a three days adventure, punctuated with perils from floods or storms or Bedouins, and when the idea of settling and cultivating land within the ambit of marauding Arabs was as novel as it was heretical. The old Jewish life had become mummified. He who owns no land is no man, said the Talmud, yet the elders of Zion, who could so glibly furnish the exact location of this dictum in the wilderness of the sacred volumes, were shocked by any attempt to apply its teaching. These Die-hards remind one of Simeon ben Yochai, who, coming out of his long seclusion in a cave, cursed the ploughmen he saw for not being at their books, and was rebuked by a Bath-Kol (Voice from Heaven) asking him whether he would destroy Gods world. Nevertheless it was the books that ensured the resurrection, that guarded the mummified ear of corn till it could sprout again; for as Benjamin Disraeli wrote in 1846: A race that persist in celebrating their vintage, though they have no fruits to gather, will regain their vineyards.