The existing literature on the Second Aliyah commonly focuses either on the human agents (“the workers”), their activity (“agricultural labor”) or the object on which labor is being performed (“the Land of Israel”). The paper adds to the existing works by pointing to the Second Aliya works’ fundamental view of agricultural hand tools as the ultimate way to labor on the Land of Israel. A close reading of the Second Aliya diaries reveals their view of these tools as an important factor – both as passive as well as transformative instruments – in accomplishing the major objectives guiding their labor ideology. It suggests that while the workers related mechanical instruments with the ills of capitalist and Jewish societies, they saw the activity of laboring with farming hand tools as being a virtuous practice in its very nature. Since the hoe and the plough required applying direct biological energy to cultivating land, the workers came to view them as powerful forces that carry the capacity to generate a new type of Jewish person and society. Thus, the paper seeks to add to the existing literature by charting the conceptual space of farming hand tools in Second Aliya labor ideology.