AZR opens with the father, a Hebrew teacher zealous for the language, a pioneer of the "Hebrew in Hebrew" method who dared to teach it even in a girls' school, against the wishes of the headmistresses.
"His father, R. Moshe Aharon Borochov... was a diligent worker as a Hebrew teacher in Poltava and a zealot for the Hebrew language, who began teaching Hebrew in Hebrew, and even in a girls' school, despite the wishes of the grand headmistresses, who regarded this as a kind of madness. At the same time he diligently collected donations for the Hovevei Zion fund." AZR, "Dov Borochov in His Youth" (from "Something of My Memories" / "Mashehu MiZichronotai"), 5695.
The child grew into a gifted and undisciplined youth, who invented theories of his own and clashed with his pedantic teachers under the Tsarist regime, until he left the gymnasium with a conduct mark so low it barred him from the university.
"As one possessed of an original talent, there were frequent clashes between him and the pedantic teachers... He solved intricate problems in mathematics, but he was always inventing new theories. And this would infuriate the teachers, who stood upon their honor." Ibid.
"Borochov left the gymnasium with a 'wolf's certificate' — that is, he received for his conduct a mark of 'three,' and with that the road to the university was barred to him. But he advanced in his knowledge out of books and out of life itself." Ibid.
This is the heart of the testimony: in the gymnasium a "national circle" of young Hebrews took shape — the kernel of the generation — among them Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Out of the need to bridge the socialist current and Hibbat Zion, Borochov created Poalei Zion.
"In the gymnasium there were other Hebrew students, and all of them were bound together in faithful comradely love. This was the national kernel of the young Hebrew generation in Poltava. Among them grew our comrades Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Yitzhak Klugai, the sons of Dr. Eliyahu, and others." Ibid.
"Dov Borochov, with his fine feeling and his deep understanding, grasped that in the Jewish heart these two elements can — and must — be fused together through real, creative labor, and precisely in Zion; and he created the movement 'Poalei Zion,' whose banner tens of thousands of young Jews in the Land and abroad would come to cherish." Ibid.
The portrait complements "Portraits: Borochov, Ben-Zvi, and Vitkin" with rare personal details (the father, the "wolf's certificate"), and joins the portrait "Nathan Vasilevsky": both open a window onto the national Poltava circle at whose heart AZR stood, and out of which grew the leaders of the Second Aliyah and the labor movement (see "AZR and the Labor Movement" and "AZR the Educator").