A.

“Did you know the country that fell asleep and will sleep for generations? Did you know the country, God’s vineyard, whose pride is that it told about God to many nations and instilled a new faith in peoples and predicted new starlight and the sound of new ideas?...”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled (The Child's Religion), 83



B.

“Not all the Bible. Not the prophets. More than I know, I feel, that here is the birth of a complete poetry. The sanctity of the book has vanished, but its value still remains. It would be strange if the new Hebrew language did not use its right and ability to create a new epic - not as a continuation of today, now - as a completion of a trilogy, after the holy writings and the New Testament.

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 83)

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C.

“But the Land of Israel should be seen, and not through a crack, through the slats of the car, as the attempt to revive the land, the language, the person, and his fate and  belief.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 87)



D.

“Even the beautiful night, - its stars are largest - and most respectful. They speak in a foreign language. They speak in a very important language, in the language of the Bible, about eternal, secret matters. The stars of the land of Israel demand an effort of the emotions and thought, and do not leave a moment of rest. I tried to examine my own impression, my subjective one, in my conversations. I even had the theory - perhaps that is why people run away from the voices of the stars, and silence them, a little here and a little there, in pleasures of the flesh?”

One day psychologists will deal with the danger of evening in the land of Israel, when people refuse to listen to the eternal truths of the stars and their categorical commands. The pure words emitting from them they will attempt to drown in a wave of blood.

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 89)



E.

“The Jews are being deported from Europe because they are needed at another front in the war for mankind’s tomorrow. They carried out their duties well and quickly, amazingly quickly. The Arabs already know not only how to shoot and throw bombs - that is a marginal detail in their new “daily” journal. They opened their sleepy eyes, saw their poverty and misery, sensed that they themselves were responsible for this. Here also the plowing is a meter deep and there are many rocks strewn in the field.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 93)

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F.

“It is possible to educate children without religion, but not without God. How to explain birth, death, the march of generations.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 97)

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G.

“When I looked at Nazareth from above, I don’t know why, but I asked myself a great question: who was Achad Ha’am and what did he write? Secondly, I remember, when standing in a garden on the Carmel, in front of the mausoleum of the Persian Ali Muhammad Bab, or Hussein Baha-Ullah:
20,000 of his followers were tortured to death, the cult is one hundred years old and has half a million believers.
(The children of Ein-Harod visited its settlement beside the Jordan on a school trip several years ago).

And here is this cult’s program:
The unity of the human race - and to forget prejudices; belief must unite; independent search for truth; belief and knowledge and intelligence fitting each other; an international language taught in all the schools in the world, art, science and work for all, not competition but working together; a comprehensive peace.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 138)

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H.

“All yearning, not Jewish but human,  is directed to the Land of Israel.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 176)

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I.

“If there is a country in which they permit the child, in all honesty, his dreams and fears, his longings and doubts - perhaps it is Israel. There they should erect a monument to the anonymous orphan.”

“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 177, a letter to Yosef Arnon dated Oct. 8, 1932)

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J.

“The world does not need work and oranges, but a new faith. The faith in future life must be connected to the child, as a source of hope.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 179, a letter to Arnon dated May 15, 1933)

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K.

“A country searching for God. - Perhaps someone will say: and India, and China? - perhaps. - But here - in longing (Kissufim), in surrender, in isolation, in shame - we will become unnecessarily hard, not a desire, but the reality of existence and its object.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 203, from a letter to David Simchoni, March 30, 1937)

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L.

Every corner of the world has its own 3000 years, but the history of the land of Israel is connected in a different way with human history.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 207, from a letter to David Simchoni, May 23, 1937)

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M.

“If I wanted to come to the Land of Israel it’s not because I have an illusion, it’s because we need to tell people that only God (although a new one, not the one of 2,000 years ago) will give the Land of Israel the right to exist and the hope of finding the way. Not the God of heaven, but the God of the Earth, not an ideal, but human, attainable and unknown.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 211, from a letter to Ya’akov Zuck, Sept. 14, 1937)

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N.

“If I want to come to Israel, it is to talk with God and with the past. People need a new Bible.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 211, from a letter to Edwin Marcuse, Sept. 14, 1937)

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O.

“How to begin? I have to purify myself from within, to eject everything temporary from my thoughts, to re-experience in the silence - before- silence everything I have seen, read. It sometimes appears to me that my skull has burst, another time I hear an austere accusing voice: it is forbidden to leave the world the way it is.”

(“The Land of Hope”, Dat Ha’Yeled, 213, from a letter to Yosef Arnon, Dec. 30, 1937)