As a founding editor of the leftwing Hebrew newspaper Davar and a co-founder of the Histadrut workers’ union, Berl Katznelson (1887–1944) was one of the most influential figures in the history of Labor Zionism. Alex Harris explores Katznelson’s attitudes toward the Jewish tradition, which were very different from those of such fellow Zionist socialists as the theoretician Ber Borochov or the novelist Y.H. Brenner. The great Hebrew writer S.Y. Agnon described him thus:
I will say something akin to a paradox, but it is true. [Katznelson] was not a Torah scholar in the conventional sense. But the love of Torah and clarity of his thoughts and strong mind allowed him to understand. Out of a love of Torah, he would sit for hours and hours and look at books that were seemingly distant from the center of his operations and his face would light up like one who found a treasure.
Harris elaborates:
Rather than viewing the socialist Zionist movement as a complete rupture from the past, Katznelson saw the young men and women of the Yishuv as continuing the arc of Jewish history. Both tradition and revolution were integral parts of the unfolding of history. In [his] article “Destruction and Detachment” (1934) Katznelson wrote: “Would we be capable today of a revival movement if the Jewish people had not protected in their hardened hearts and their holy hinterland the memory of the destruction?”
He also saw the practical value of traditional events in the modern calendar. Katznelson repeatedly praised Shabbat: “We have a need for Shabbat greater than for anything else—we will uphold it as a miracle and build our lives upon it—we will turn our Shabbats and our holidays into cultural bonfires.” Elsewhere he wrote, “the Sabbath for me is a pillar of Hebrew culture and the first socialist achievement of Adam, the first worker in human history.”
Read more on Tel Aviv Review of Books: https://www.tarb.co.il/a-man-of-israel/