An address before the Elected Assembly,
March 2, 1932

This year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding
of our first moshavot by the Shavei Zion: not counting Petah
Tiqvah, settled four years earlier by Jerusalem Jews, the agricul-
tural school at Mikveh Israel, set up by the Alliance Israélite Un-
iverselle in 1870, and Gan Montefiore near Jaffa, acquired in
1855.

In 1882, Rishon LeZion was founded in Judea, Zichron Ya'aqov
in Samaria, and Rosh Pina in Galilee; yet in this jubilee year of
1932, we still cannot boast that we have solved a problem which
involves the ultimate value and dignity, the hopes and security
of colonization in Israel, and the whole Zionist Movement--the
problem of Jewish labor.

It was not for want of recognizing its crucial importance.
Many of the originators of Zionism, such as Rabbi Zvi Hirsch
Kalischer, Zeev Yavitz, Mordecai Eliasberg and Pinsker, per-
ceived clearly that cultivation of the soil, manual labor and a
new incline of our economic life were indispensable to the
renaissance of the nation.

Here are the words of Pinsker, opening the first conference of
Chibbath Zion at Katowice in 1886: 'The frightful condition of
Jewry will not change for the better unless we succeed in finding
it a new place to live in, and a new kind of life; unless we pave
a new way for it, a way based on skills and on handiwork. Every
nation lives on its soil and among the sons of most nations are

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