Ahad ha-Am (1856 - 1927)

By Isabelle Nemirovski

Biography

Asher Hirsch Ginsberg, better known by his pen name Ahad ha-Am (literally in Hebrew: "One of the people," Genesis 26-10), is a writer, essayist but also one of the greatest actors and thinkers of Zionism.

He was born in Skvira, near Kiev in Russia on August 18, 1856. From a wealthy family - his father was a wealthy merchant of the village - he receives a traditional Jewish religious education and studies the Talmud. Largely self-taught (several applications to the university were unsuccessful), he also looks to the profane sciences and studied the literature of Haskala¹, philosophy and many languages (Russian, German, English, French). He also abandoned the practice of religion soon after his marriage in 1873.

1884:Ahad Ha-Am moves to Odessa, the great center of Hebrew literature and of the Zionist-inspired association Hibbat Tsion² where he becomes a member. He will live there until 1907.
1889: His article entitled Lo ze ha-Derech ("It's not the way"), published in the odessite newspaper Ha-Melita will make him famous. He criticizes the policy of Hibbat Zion that advocates for the immediate installation in the Land of Israel.
1891: He visits Eretz Israel and sums up his impressions in an essay entitled Emet miErets Israel ("The truth of Eretz Israel"). He emphasizes the existence of a large Arab population and criticizes Jewish settlers who tend to treat it with hostility: he thinks that there are risks of clashes between the Jewish and Arab populations. He is, in fact, a highly critical view of the economic, social and spiritual needs of Jewish settlements.
1893: He visits the country again. The criticism against it is the same.
1895: It gathers all his articles in a collection entitled Al Parashat Drakhim ("At the Crossroad").
1896: He is editor of ha-Siloah that he founded and directed until 1900. This monthly magazine is the most important organ of Zionism and Hebrew literature in Eastern Europe and contributes, thanks to a big Jewish readership, to the development of Modern Hebrew literature.
1900: He travels again to Eretz Israel and is part of a delegation of Hovevei Zion ("Lovers of Zion") that meets Baron de Rothschild in Paris.
1903: He leaves the direction of the journal ha-Siloah and enters the tea society Wissotsky to focus on his literary research. After the pogrom of Kishinev (1903), he encourages the Jewish self-defense. At the end of the sixth Zionist Congress he takes a position against the Uganda Plan that he considers a normal consequence of the detachment of political Zionism from Jewish values.
1907: He moves to Britain where he continues his activities.
1917: He plays some role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration of 1917, although he quickly perceives its limits, that is, that the English would do exactly what they consider being their best interest.
1922: He moves to Tel Aviv where he lives until his death in 1927. He completes his Essays “Al Parashat Drakhim” ("At the Crossroad" - 4 volumes) began in 1895, writes his memoirs and letters which are published between 1923 and 1925.

Ahad Ha-Am and the Jewish national idea

Before locating Ahad ha-Am in the Zionist context, a definition of the term is essential. According to the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Judaism: "The term Zionism refers to both an ideology and a political movement aiming at the national revival and independence of the Jewish people on the Land of Israel. The word was coined by the Viennese writer Nathan Birnbaum in 1890 to designate the proper orientation policy of building a Jewish nation in Palestine."

Zionism finds its land of choice in Eastern Europe, on the borders of the Russian Empire, in the late nineteenth century where lives the largest in number and the more dynamic Jewish community, but also the most troubled. The first wave of pogroms takes place between 1881 and 1884 following the assassination of Alexander II by anarchists in March 1881. The hopes raised by the liberal policy of Alexander II at the beginning of his reign will be destroyed because with his successor on the throne, Alexander III, there will be an uninterrupted period of reaction. The Jews are ordered to change their lifestyle, culture and religion. The situation of the community deteriorates and misery is seen on a daily basis. The reaction of the Jewish population take three main directions: an increased emigration to the West, a political radicalization of youth who wants to eliminate autocracy and a growing assertion of a national consciousness in an intelligentsia increasingly secularized. With this third and last option, the Zionist movement is organized and takes shape. It’s Theodor Herzl - he proposes a radical solution to address the "anomaly" of the Jewish existence - who will actually launch the political Zionism in 1896 and 1904 by giving it a founding manifesto (The Jewish State), an organization (the Zionist Organization) and a political program (to create a home for the Jewish people).

Ahad ha-Ham poses as the lawyer of a Zionism that is referred to as "spiritual" or "cultural", and he has no faith in the effectiveness of the inner circle of Theodor Herzl, whom he accuses of neglect and haste. In a resounding article entitled “Lo ze haDerekh” ("It's not the way") appeared in ha-Melits³ he criticizes also the officials of the Baron de Rothschild in Palestine for their authoritarian attitude. He considers, for its part, that the majority of the Jewish people is doomed to live in dispersion and that Palestine, in any case, can absorb only a small percentage, so he advocates for the establishment of a spiritual home on the Holy Land. It would not be a home for the Jews but rather for the Judaism. For Ahad ha-Am, emigration to Palestine is not essential. "Conservation and development of the Jewish spirit" it is more important. He thinks it is urgent to stop the spiritual disintegration of Judaism and to develop a Jewish national consciousness that would create a unique and sustainable cultural production that can withstand the danger of integration by the surrounding world and, ultimately, the loss of the Jewish identity. This spiritual center would be the heart pumping the Hebrew culture through all the diaspora. Zionism of Ahad ha-Am, says the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Judaism, "is more qualitative than quantitative" since focused more on the spiritual distress of Judaism than on the material problems of the Jews. The educational work or, as one of his sayings, "a preparation of hearts", is a prerequisite for the implementation of the Zionist enterprise and would ensure its success. He is skeptical about a rapid colonization of Eretz Israel without moral and intellectual preparation of the pioneers. That would be against the law of nature that dictates to "plow the soil, prepare it, sow the seed, and wait ..." In this regard, Ahad ha-Am' has the project of writing an encyclopedia on Jews and Judaism to encourage Jewish studies and revitalize the thinking (this project will not be completed). He estimates that in this period of the history the young Jew is more attracted to the European culture than to the legacy of his ancestors to whom he finds difficult to identify to and, besides he disdains. Therefore it’s necessary to reinvigorate traditional Judaism for every Jew is proud, for those who have come to assimilate into the new country understand that they deny themselves and that they live, according to his saying, "in slavery in the midst of freedom”. He calls for a clever combination of "tradition and modernity”, in which every Jew must keep faith in the past while adapting his values to the new conditions to build the future.

Ahad ha-Am was harshly criticized and knew a lot of detractors, including the political Zionists and the writers of the younger generation who treated him of "outdated," and even of being "excessively" backward-looking. His rigorous approach will therefore have a limited impact. If the strength and consistency of his ideas are respected - especially by Haim Nahman Bialik, one of the most important figures in the odessite literary world - his intellectual honesty and lucidity scare. It will be later recognized as a visionary because in his text of 1891, Emet mid-Eretz Israel ("Truth about the Land of Israel"), he is the first to pinpoint the risk of clashes between Jewish settlers and a large Arab population already present on the land. The main features of his personality were the excessive rigour and the uncompromising rationalism that we find in his writings: a style clear, precise and structured; perfect for his analytical thinking. He often used metaphors to support his thinking. We find another manifestation of his strictness in his conception of literature. According to him, literature should, above all, serve a cause and be the vehicle for a message. He wrote: "The lyrical themes are good only for a free nation ..." This intransigence harmed the journal ha-Shiloah - a prestigious literary magazine at the time founded by him. He required from his writers literary qualities and publications only focused on Judaism while his audience, the younger generation, was waiting for a modern, universal and opened to the world literature. He was finally forced to resign and the chef editor position was entrusted to J. Klausner.

Ahad ha-Am’s ideas were not retained by History that preferred those of Theodor Herzl and of David Ben Gurion. Nevertheless they didn’t go unheeded because, at the same time, Martin Buber presented a plan for a national and artistic revival going hand in hand with a return to the sources of Judaism.

Notes:
1) Haskalah (Hebrew word) is an Enlightenment movement that originates between the Jews of Germany in the eighteenth century under the leadership of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) and spreads to Eastern Europe in the first third of the nineteenth century.
2) Hibbat Zion ("Love of Zion") is the first Russian association of Zionist inspiration, created in Odessa, after the wave of pogroms of 1880-1882, by the physician Leo Pinsker.
3) Odessite newspaper founded in 1860.

Bibliography and Sources:

- AHAD ha-HAM, Au carrefour, textes choisis traduits de l’hйbreu par A. Gottlieb, Paris, Lipschutz, 1938, 177 p.
- BARNAVI Elie, Histoire universelle des Juifs, Paris, Hachette, 1992, 321 p.
- MINCZELES Henri, Vilna, Wilno, Vilnius, La Jйrusalem de Lituanie, Paris, La Dйcouverte, 2000, 495 p.
- WIGODER Geoffrey,(dir.), Dictionnaire encyclopйdique du judaпsme, Paris, Robert Laffont, 1996, 1365 p.
- www.benyehuda.org/ginzberg/
- www.daat.ac.il/encyclopedia/value.asp?id1=1134