Background
Ha'am was born in Skvira, a village outside Kiev, the Ukraine, into a wealthy merchant Hasidic family.
Ha'am was born in Skvira, a village outside Kiev, the Ukraine, into a wealthy merchant Hasidic family.
He received a traditional Jewish education that he supplemented independently with the study of European languages and the writings of the Haskalah. The latter’s prevailing influence fueled a rationalist nature that led to an eventual estrangement from his religious roots.
His first published essay, “Lo Zeh ha-Derckh” (“This Is not the Way’’), appeared in 1889 in the movement’s HaMelitz under the pen name of Ahad Ha'Am (“One of the People”) and catapulted him into immediate fame and intensive literary activity. Subsequently, he became the spiritual leader of the secret society of B'nei Moshe (“Sons of Moses”) an elite group of "lovers of Zion” who for seven years worked together to open Hebrew libraries, set the stage for modern Hebrew schools, and establish the first elementary school where Hebrew was the language of instruction.
The conclusions of his first article were confirmed during two subsequent visits to Palestine in 1891 and 1893, after which he concentrated his efforts on defining with greater precision his philosophy of Judaism and Jewish nationalism.
In 1895, he became the editor of Ha-Shiloah, a new Hebrew monthly, as business reverses forced him to seek an alternative career. Under his leadership, the periodical flourished, attaining a high standard of style and language with the consistent and urgent cry for a return to Jewish values.
In 1902 he left Ha-Shiloah to return to business and in 1908 he became manager of the London office of Wissotzky’s tea firm, remaining active in public affairs and devoting time to what would become some of his best-known essays. He participated with Zionist leaders in London in the negotiations with the British government that led to the Balfour Declaration and voiced concern specifically about the national rights of Arabs in Palestine.
In 1922 Ahad Ha'Am settled in Tel Aviv where he completed Al Parashat Derakhim (“At the Crossroads”), a four-volume collection of essays started in 1895, prepared his letters for publication, and dictated some autobiographical reminiscences before his death.
He left a lasting legacy to the staunch adherents of cultural Zionism in their struggle against the practical and political schools of Zionism, though the force of the latter ultimately won the dedication of most of the movement’s leadership.
In the wake of the Lirst Zionist Congress (Basel, 1897), inaugurating the movement for political Zionism, Ahad Ha'Am’s well articulated opposition found a response among the Eastern Euro¬pean Jewish intelligentsia. His suspicions of Theodor Herzl’s diplomacy and assimilationist values, coupled with his dogged commitment to Jewish education as a prerequisite to settlement in the Land of Israel, led him to reject the Jewish state as the primary goal on the national agenda. Instead, he argued, a “national spiritual center” in Palestine could help in the overall program of revi¬talizing a Jewish moral consciousness among a people suffering from the debilitating effects of two millennia of homelessness. The moment should not call for a homeland as refuge, but a comprehensive answer to address both the ethical backwardness of the ghetto and the void in Jewish content of emancipated Jewry.
Quotations:
Ahad Ha'Am to Chaim Weizmannon the occasion of the laying of the cornerstone of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1918.
Now we stand before a new period of our national w’ork in Palestine, and soon we may be faced by problems and possibilities of overwhelming magnitude. We do not know what the future has in store for us, but this we do know: that the brighter the prospects for the reestablishment of our National Home in Palestine, the more urgent is the need for laying the spiritual foundations of that home on a corresponding scale which can only be conceived in the form of a Hebrew University. By this I mean — and so, I am sure, do you — not a mere imitation of a European University with Hebrew as the dominant language, but a university, which from the very beginning, will endeavor to become the true embodiment of the Hebrew spirit of old and to shake off the mental and moral servitude. Only so can we be justified in our ambitious hopes as to the future universal influence of the “Teaching” that “will go forth out of Zion.”