Against the secessionist tendency of Haredi circles, AZR, who grew up in a Chabad home, refuses to remove any Jew from the collective:
"We consider every Jew, Haredi or not Haredi, to be our brother… and even Rabbi Chaim Sonnenfeld, too, God forbid, we will not remove from the collective… And if he will not stand in our ranks… his sons and grandsons will surely be working together on the soil of our fathers and will bear the banner of the name of a Jew." AZR, "To Our Haredi Brethren" ("Davar," 1925), Ben-Yehuda read/43887.
"Return, wayward children, return to your people and work with us shoulder to shoulder to raise up the ruins of Jerusalem. We will not go to Gerizim, and you we will not let go to Gerizim." Ibid.
The multitude, says AZR, thirsts for an overt miracle in order to believe ("and Israel saw the great hand… and they believed"); but the true miracle is precisely the quiet, natural growth:
"Whoever looks with a discerning eye can see even in this little that has been done a miracle of miracles: an uprooted people returning and taking root in its own soil, intelligent young people… giving their lives for the revival of their people and their land… And is it not a miracle from heaven?" AZR, "On the Miracles" (Adar 1926), Ben-Yehuda read/43890.
"Open your eyes, my people, and see the miracles and wonders that are being wrought now, and believe that the hand of the Lord, the exalted right hand of loving-kindness, is stretched out to help you and to bless you on your way toward Zion." Ibid. (And here too: "the murmur of the Congregation of Israel, this is the soul of the nation," see "Heirs of Prophecy.")
In a distinctly national stance, AZR comes out against young people who sought to erase the word "Hebrew" from "the Histadrut of the Hebrew Workers" and make it international. Here his position demands a balanced reading: he opposes the blurring of identity, but in the same breath he supports partnership with the Arab neighbors and even credits their culture:
"I do not say, God forbid, that we should not seek ties of partnership with the Arab neighbors. We dwell together with them on one territory and we have many shared interests, but we shall not blur ourselves… We want a unity of living peoples… together with the other peoples in friendship and in peace, but by no means to give up our own selfhood." AZR, "Those Who Force the End" (Collected Writings, 1935), Ben-Yehuda read/50108.
He even castigates the ignorance of our own Hebrew culture and recognizes the strength of Arab culture: "The Arabs… are strong in their culture, only that we know nothing of it." 1920s context
The three essays are one defense of the unity of the people and its identity, against three threats of division: religious secession, faithless detachment, and international self-effacement. In all three, AZR does not coerce but rather draws in with love: "We are all Jews, and even… we will not, God forbid, remove from the collective." This is the same principle of the "Congregation of Israel" as the soul of the nation (see "Heirs of Prophecy").
But AZR is not naive: he knows that over-unity, absolute fusion, suffocates. In a midrashic parable he tells that the souls of Adam and Eve asked to descend into the world joined to one another and not to be parted; the Holy One warned them, and yet fulfilled their request and joined their bodies, but it soon became clear that it could not be so:
"There are times when a person needs solitude precisely… and the main thing — were they not created for a purpose, formed to be inhabited, and if they are joined, there will never be fruitfulness… Then they cried out to the Lord: Please, separate us! It is impossible to live this way." AZR, "On Union and Separation" ("Haftarah," 1928), Ben-Yehuda read/28085.
And the "separation," the surgery that divides, was handed to "angels of destruction" who "sawed without mercy," "but it was very necessary. Without it there would be no life in the world and no fruitfulness." The refined lesson: true unity is not the erasure of the individual but rather a linking of distinct beings, exactly as AZR draws inward "with love, not by coercion."