The diaspora experience is the perceived historical backdrop for Gordon's essays; everything he writes about the future of Palestine, he writes from the perspective of the diaspora's past. Below I will present Gordon's perspective on how the diaspora experience has affected the Jewish people, to show how he creates a negative identity for the Jews of the past. As the following quote shows, Gordon's view of Jewish existence in the diaspora and what it had done to the Jews as a people was extremely negative: "Because we are torn from the roots of Palestine, and in the diaspora we have become enslaved and persecuted, we have been alienated from nature, from living a natural form of life and from any productive work. Our economic and spiritual life are anomalous. Our national spirit has drawn sustenance for this life in exile only from the remains of the past or from the tables of others" ( The Work of Revival in the Diaspora: 77). Gordon repeatedly refers to a number of negative connotations in his essays: the image of Jews as estranged from nature and work, and consequently without a living, passive and parasitic culture ( dependent on others.) Below I will analyze what Gordon meant with these specific statements by connecting them to his ideology on the connection between nation, nature and work. Diasporic life and the connection between people, nature and work Gordon was the first Jewish thinker to wrestle with the problem of Jews and their alienation from nature. While Zionists wrote about the trauma of the uprooting of Eretz Yisrael from the ground, Gordon spoke of this uprooting from the perspective of his philosophy of man and society (Cohen and Noveck 1963: 59). Gordon saw the Jew…at the center of the card…will of others and in harmony with the prevailing spirit in the worlds of others (The Core of the Matter: 54). Gordon argues that the natural growth and self-realization of the Jewish people were hindered by extraneous and alien influences (Some Observations: 377). As Jews were removed from primary creative processes and forced to live under the constant pressure and influence of foreign cultures, they eventually lost distinctive external markers of identity, social structure, language, and lifestyle and became dependent on others. materially and spiritually, leading them to have an inanimate existence, devoid of national creativity (Our Future Tasks: 381). This life made the Jews passive and submissive; they no longer act or influence others, but are simply acted upon and influenced by others (The Work of Revival in the Diaspora: 78).