The foundation of revival is self-labor, above all agricultural. But this is not asceticism: AZR also demands the worker's dignity and humane conditions, and sees in labor purification and holiness — not suffering for its own sake.
A central thread of his teaching: hatred between brothers and schism are the primal sin. He calls for national unity born of love, and opposes every "division," religious or class-based. The root of this stance lies in a childhood memory of the liturgical-rite quarrel in Lyady.
Acquisitiveness (the lust for possession) is in his eyes the root of isolation and division, found in the beggar and in the sage alike. The remedy is not a mechanism but an inner transformation: love in deeds. He extends this even to "the closed commune."
The sanctity of life is absolute: even the life of a murderer is holy, and defense is legitimate but without hatred and without revenge. Alongside this stands a lament over suicide and the call to choose life — as a moral engine.
Vegetarianism for him is not a health habit but a moral principle: extending the prohibition of murder to animals, out of Jewish mercy and an affinity with Tolstoy. Compassion is the test of the human being.
The heart of his teaching: a religious, observant Jew who sees no contradiction between Torah, labor, and social justice — but a fusion. The prophets are the source of morality, and the Hebrew worker is their heir.
A consistent demand for human dignity: the worker's dignity and conditions on the one hand, and women's suffrage and esteem for the learned woman on the other. Denying a right — whether from the worker or from the woman — is in his eyes slavery and robbery.
Hebrew is the anchor of the revival and an "eternal flame" that must not be extinguished. AZR the teacher and writer fought for its place in education and in life, against those who proclaimed its death and against its displacement in favor of foreign tongues.
His Zionism is two-layered: the body is the working of the land, and the soul is cultural continuity and faith. Without faith and memory, the body cannot endure; and without the soil, the spirit hovers in the air.
In education he stands against the coercive "prison-house" and against the cult of the "matmid" (the perpetual student): the teacher is a friend, education proceeds through joy, and nature and labor are teachers. Thus he raised students such as Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.
Even after the riots of 1929, AZR held two ends together: defense of dignity without hatred and without revenge, alongside faith in friendship and mutual aid with the Arab neighbors — and condemnation of the spreaders of hatred from both peoples.