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Work · Social Conscience · Tel Aviv 1921

"In Tents": AZR for the Homeless

A short, sharp piece ("Pinkas," Tammuz 5681): for the families who fled the 1921 riots and live in tents, and against the Tel Aviv notables who want to remove the "shameful sight" from their eyes
After the Jaffa riots of 5681 (1921), Jewish families fled the mixed neighborhoods and were housed in tents in Tel Aviv. When they were promised they could return, the "Tel Aviv notables" hastened to be rid of the shabby sight. AZR, in a short but firm piece, stands with the homeless and against complacent indifference. Primary source · "Pinkas" 5681 · Project Ben-Yehuda · Public Domain

A Do Not Leave Until There Is a Real Home

AZR warns the tent-dwellers not to rush back to a dangerous place without a real housing solution, and uses the "shame" of the sight as a tool of public pressure, so that the awakening to build a new neighborhood will not subside.

"But as for me, I would not advise the tent-dwellers to leave their place until they truly find secure dwellings in a new Hebrew neighborhood. Let the tent-dwellers go on sitting in their tents, and let the Tel Aviv notables go on looking and beholding their shame." AZR, "In Tents," "Pinkas," Tammuz 5681 (1921).
"The effort that has been aroused among our Hebrew public... to build a new neighborhood for those who fled the upheaval, will not come to naught, but will soon be put into action." Ibid.

The AZR Line

The piece is small but characteristic: AZR places the dignity of the homeless above the aesthetic comfort of the "notables," exactly as he demanded the dignity of the worker rather than asceticism (see "AZR and the Labor Movement") and came out against acquisitiveness and ostentation (see "Acquisitiveness," "For Show"). The social side of that same moral consistency. The piece fits into the background of his efforts to build workers' neighborhoods in the Land.