As a young adult, Shochat went to work in her brother's factory in Minsk to learn about working class conditions. In 1899, she was imprisoned because of her contacts with Bund revolutionaries. There, she was indoctrinated by Sergey Zubatov, the head of the Tsarist Secret Police in Moscow. Zubatov conceived a plan that fit with Shochat's ideological notions, through which workers would form "tame" organizations that would work for reform rather than for overthrow of the government. She was persuaded that this would also help achieve rights for Jews. Shochat proceeded to found the Jewish Independent Labor Party in 1901. The party was successful in leading strikes because the secret police supported it, but was loathed by the Bund and other Jewish socialist groups. The party collapsed in 1903 following the Kishinev pogrom. Experiencing, as she put it, 'severe emotional distress' following the loss and failure of her political organization and path, she accepted an invitation from her brother Nachum, who was the founder of the Shemen soap factory, to accompany him on a research expedition to some of the wilder places of Palestine. She arrived on January 2, 1904.