In the article "Our 'Heroes' and Vegetarianism," AZR takes on young men who mocked the "vegetarians" as cowards, and turns the tables: there is no heroism in violence, and no disgrace in vegetarianism:
"There is no heroism whatsoever in smashing windowpanes and cracking skulls; and conversely, in the name of vegetarianism there is no disgrace whatsoever. The vegetarians have compassion for life — their own, their fellow's, that of all quiet living creatures. Life is for them a thing of sanctity." AZR, "Our 'Heroes' and Vegetarianism," Davar, 5685 (1925).
He arrives at a radical position on the sanctity of life — even the life of a criminal:
"The life of any human being, even one who is a murderer and a rapist, is sacred; and only He who apportions life to every living thing has the power to take away the soul… There is nothing more precious in the world than human life." Ibid. (AZR cites the aggadah: "Lay not your hand upon the lad" was spoken by an angel — to teach you that in order not to kill a person, even an angel may countermand an order.)
Against the background of the violence of World War I and the revolutions, AZR warns against nationalist violence — and names, already in 1925, the harbingers of catastrophe:
"Let us not squander the energy within us on zealotry for zealotry's sake; let us not walk in the ways of the Yevseks, the Hitlers, and the Ku-Kluxers, who are, as it were, the heroes of the hour. The future does not belong to them." Ibid.
An early and prophetic identification of the Yevsektsiya (the Jewish Communists), the Hitlerites, and the Ku Klux Klan as different faces of the same violence-zealotry — eight years before Hitler's rise to power.
In the article "Compassion" (Rahmanut) AZR cries out against poverty and degradation in Tel Aviv, and for human dignity — above all that of Mizrahi women and their children:
"Can it be that in the first Hebrew city in the Land of Israel there should be room for such degradation of a human being? A woman, whether Yemenite or Georgian… wallowing in dust and filth, she and her child, all day long… repeating her chant: alms… compassion!" AZR, "Compassion," Davar, 5689 (1929).
He demands a practical solution, and does not shrink from criticizing the women's organizations:
"The women are awakening, seeking for themselves the right of equal say with the men — rightly so, why not? But how have their eyes been sealed against seeing that a woman is so degraded… This disgrace must be removed from the first Hebrew city." Ibid. (The solution: to support the woman who cannot work, to find work for the one who can, and to care for the child, "and not to abandon her utterly from earliest childhood.")