The polemic is aimed at the article by Vilkansky, Brenner's friend, who had made peace with the "way of the world" in which "the profane outweighs the sacred," and called for learning the "strategy" and "clarity" of calculation. AZR rejects this line utterly: such sobering-up is not wisdom but a surrender of the soul.
"Nu — is nothing missing to us but to learn from the deeds of the world's murderers, who certainly loved clarity and concreteness, honor and profit... Go and learn!" AZR, "On the Workers and on 'Shrewdness'," Project Ben-Yehuda, read/50105.
"We know that there have been, there are, and there will yet be 'shrewd men' — but from them the Land will not be built, the people will not rise to revival, and after such shrewd men we shall not follow." Ibid.
The conceptual heart of the article is the definition of labor not as economics but as a spiritual value. Vilkansky had argued that "religions are transient when their reward is not at hand"; AZR turns the argument around. The worth of a faith — and of labor — is revealed precisely when there is no reward.
"And so too in the religion of labor. Labor in and of itself is a natural blessing to man. It turns into a curse only when the worker knows that he works only for the sake of receiving a meager wage." Ibid.
"But to work, say, one's own soil, to which one is bound with every fiber of one's soul — such labor can be as beloved to him as religion to the believer, unto self-sacrifice." Ibid.
From here also follows his position on the Land of Israel: not an economic asset but a value in itself, worth anything only when it is joined to "honest labor."
"The Land of Israel is precious not for doing business in it, but because it is the Land of Israel. And the labor of the workers we always revere, because it is honest and creative labor." Ibid.
Vilkansky pointed to failed efforts as proof of the futility of the ideal. AZR replies that failure does not invalidate the truth for which one struggles, and brings Trumpeldor as supreme testimony: he "failed," he was killed, and yet his deed was right.
"Yosef Trumpeldor also failed... and were they to wake him from the sleep of death and ask him: do you not regret it?... it is clear he would answer: I do not regret it, I did well, and thus one must do." Ibid.
"And these two ideals — honest, creative labor and the Land of Israel — when they are joined together, one may be certain they will work wonders!" Ibid.
The same rejection of cold calculation takes on a human face in another article, "When the Strength Is Spent" ("Davar," 5689). AZR observes the mentally ill and the unemployed in the streets of Tel Aviv, and demands that the worker whose strength has run out be seen not as a burden but as a human being whose dignity stands intact.
"There is one who worked forty years with the hoe, worked and built the Land. And now, when his strength is spent and his feeble hands can no longer hold the hoe, he goes from door to door and stretches them out for the alms of a penny." AZR, "When the Strength Is Spent," "Davar," Adar I 5689 (1929), read/50103.
"The working man who knows his own worth as one created in the image of God and as an honest worker will not stretch out his hand for alms without an inner struggle, cruel and immense." Ibid.
And to the society that laughs at the madman and is indifferent to the unemployed, he hurls a warning: the responsibility lies with you.
"Fear, you complacent ones of Tel Aviv, before this spectacle!" Ibid. (And elsewhere: "For this you are responsible, and not they.")
The two articles are one face: a refusal to measure a person, labor, or land on the scales of utility and "shrewdness." The worth of labor lies not in its wage but in its very being honest creation; the worth of a person lies not in his output but in his being "created in the image," even when his hands have grown feeble. This is the same line familiar from the "religion of labor" of A. D. Gordon and Brenner, but in AZR's characteristic key: not abstract philosophy but conscience and compassion.