The Doctrine of Beitar

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When the news of its existence becomes widespread in broad circles, this attitude will be very enthusiastic. There is no other form of demonstration / except for one exception, that will connect to their hearts in a more direct and clear way, than the tradition of the Aliyah: as children, or better yet, as friends—they will rejoice at every success; and they will comfort us in the hour of defeat from which there is no escape: they will laugh with glee when they tell how they tricked their guards.

C. Dear Jewish parents, since I began to wield a writer's pen I have been engaged in only one craft: I corrupted the youth; I tried to make them refuse to tolerate discipline / even though it was handed down, I tried to convince them that the appropriate translation for this time of "kamatz aleph o aleph" is not "to learn reading" but rather "to learn the doctrine of shooting"; all this always, and I am convinced that the matter has not harmed the children in the slightest until now. And I hope that fate will not take from me the strength and the honor to continue in the future with this pedagogical method until the end of my political career.

This is not stubbornness; I am convinced of this, and it is a belief; I believed in this even in my childhood days and I believe in it to this day. This belief can be formulated thus:

• All peoples, or at least all successful peoples, have a word by which they denote the ideal type of person. The ancient Greeks knew this concept in the famous formulation "kalos k'agathos"—"beautiful and good"; the Englishman calls it "gentleman," the Italian "gentiluomo," the Hindustani "pukka sahib"; the Pole, if I am not mistaken, includes this meaning in the word "szlachcic," and among us Jews, at least according to my books, the highest praise is, of course, the concept of "Ba'al ha-Bayit" [master of the house].

• But for the youth, these concepts are not suitable; when a German wants to give a father a compliment, he says: the son is a polite child. In Russia they would say "pervyy uchenik"/"the first student"/; I have hated since my youth both the polite children and the "pervyy" themselves. Because in my opinion, the most supreme concept, the highest degree of humanity combined with divinity that a person can possibly reach in his youth, all this has found its expression in the purest concept within the magic and wonder: "yoshev" [sitter/scholar]. If you are able...