AZR shatters a common image: Hibbat Zion in Poltava was not secular but essentially religious:
"The Hibbat Zion movement in those days was in essence a progressive religious movement. The meetings were always held in the Zelenski beit midrash. Most of the members were religious people, truly God-fearing, and Zion was truly the yearning of their souls." AZR, "With Hovevei Zion," Ben-Yehuda read/19884.
Even "Rabbi R. Yaakov Mordechai, that most Hasidic of Hasidim, did not object"; and the atmosphere was Hasidic in its joy: "Everyone knew that the Hovevei Zion knew how to rejoice, like the first Hasidim in their day." The idea: "to leave the exile… to settle in the land of our fathers, and even to make do there with bread and water, if only to dwell there as citizens."
With characteristic candor, AZR describes their lack of practical experience: lotteries, an emissary to collect subscriptions, and hundreds of rubles lost in vain. Then a more serious attempt: a fundraising drive of a hundred rubles per member, and the dispatch of two delegates (Rabbi R. Yechezkel Arlozorov and Mr. Deiches of Kharkov) to Paris, to propose to Baron Rothschild that he buy land on their behalf:
"And we spent many nights in practical debates over where to build the houses and where to plant the vineyards… and we made 'precise' calculations of how much each parcel would yield… The Baron, who was more practical than we, did not accede to our proposal, and the settlers' association fell apart." Ibid.
His self-judgment is sharp: "As for our practical affairs, we were groping like blind men in the dark, deceiving ourselves and others."
But what failed in practice succeeded in spirit, and this is the essence of his outlook (compare "Soul and Body"):
"But in our spiritual work we succeeded greatly. Through us the national consciousness developed among all strata of the people, and wherever the 'Bnei Zion' entered, they brought with them a spirit of life." Ibid.
The members, AZR adds, stood "on a high level" morally — faithful, charitable, and observant of tradition even the free-thinkers among them. The chapter closes with a personal milestone: in 5649 (1889) he published "The Melamed's Talk" in "HaMelitz," and his story "The Hebrew Children" won him a prize of 50 rubles — "this was the first time I received an author's fee."
This is the ground from which the Poltava delegate to the Congress grew: religious Hovevei Zion, infused with joy, naive in practice yet mighty in spirit. When Herzl came in 1897, the national consciousness had already been sown, and the transition from "groping in the dark" to an organized movement was natural (see "Delegate to the First Zionist Congress").