Asher Hirsch Ginsberg

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Asher Hirsch Ginsberg (1856 - 1927), also known by the pen name, or pseudonym, Ahad Ha'am, Ahad Ha-'Am, Achad Ha'am, or Echad Ha'am, (Hebrew: one of the people, compare with L.L. Zamenhof's Unuel), was an essayist, and one of the great pre-state Zionist thinkers.

Born in Skvyra, today Ukraine, Ginsberg was a friend and supporter of Leon Pinsker, and a leader of the Hovevei Zion (lovers of Zion) movement. Hovevei Zion began as independent study circles in the late 19th century, and formed a confederation called Hibbath Tziyon (love for Zion). Their practical aim was settlement of Jews in Palestine, and they produced the settlements of the first Aliya (immigration wave). The Zionist settlement program of those days was, however, beset by nearly insurmountable practical difficulties, so that many of these settlements failed or were failing.

Unlike Pinsker, Ginsberg did not believe in political Zionism or in the settlement of Palestine before conditions were ripe. But he believed that spreading enthusiasm for the idea of returning to the Land and cultivating nationalist sentiment and culture among Jews in the Diaspora would bring Jews closer to that goal. He split from the Zionist movement after the First Zionist Congress, because he felt that Theodor Herzl's program was impractical.

Achad Ha'am traveled frequently to Palestine and published reports about the progress of Jewish settlement there. They were generally glum. They reported on hunger, on Arab dissatisfaction and unrest, on unemployment, and on people leaving Palestine. He believed that rather than aspiring to establish a "National Home" or state immediately, Zionism must bring Jews to Palestine gradually, while turning it into a cultural center. At the same time, it was incumbent upon Zionism to inspire a revival of Jewish national life in the Diaspora. Then and only then, he said, would the Jewish people be strong enough to assume the mantle of building a nation state. Achad Ha'am could not believe that the impoverished settlers of his day, laboring in Palestine far from the minds of most Jews, would ever build a Jewish homeland. He saw that the Hovevei Tzion movement of which he was a member, was a failure, in that the new villages created in Israel were dependent on the largess of outside benefactors.

Achad Ha'am's ideas were popular at a very difficult time for Zionism, beginning after the failures of the first Aliya. His unique contribution was to emphasize the importance of reviving Hebrew and Jewish culture both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, and this was recognized only belatedly and became part of the Zionist program after 1898. Herzl did not have much use for Hebrew, and many wanted German to be the language of the Jewish state. Achad Ha'am is in some ways responsible for the revival of Hebrew and Jewish culture, and for cementing the link between the Jewish state in the making and Hebrew culture.

Achad Ha'am saw what was in front of him - the impoverished settlements and the pitiful conditions in Palestine. Herzl looked down from the mountain and saw the promised land. Achad Ha'am could not have foreseen the First World War or the Balfour declaration, nor the Holocaust. He should have understood however, that while few Jews would come to Palestine as long as conditions were what they were under the Ottoman Empire, increasing numbers of immigrants would be attracted by improving conditions and by statehood. Like Herzl, Achad Ha'am was apparently blind to the potential of Jews of the Arab countries. For him, and for everyone else at the Zionist congress, "the East" was Russia.

Achad Ha'am's "cultural Zionism" and his writings have been widely distorted however, or misunderstood and quoted out of context to imply that he thought Jews should not settle in their land, or that he thought it was impossible to ever establish a Jewish state. In 1889 his first article criticizing practical Zionism, called "Lo Ze ha-Derekh" (This is not the way) appeared in "Ha - Melitz." The ideas in this article became the platform for Bnai Moshe (sons of Moses), a group he founded that year. Bnai Moshe, active until 1897, worked to improve Hebrew education, build up a wider audience for Hebrew literature, and assist the Jewish colonies.

In 1897, following the Basle Zionist Congress, which called for a Jewish national home "recognized in international law" (Volkerrechtlich), Achad Ha'am wrote an article called Jewish State Jewish Problem ridiculing the idea of a Volkerrechtlich state given the pitiful plight of the Jewish settlements in Palestine at the time. He emphasized that without a Jewish nationalist revival abroad, it would be impossible to mobilize genuine support for a Jewish national home. Even if the national home were created and recognized in international law, it would be weak and unsustainable.

In 1898, the Zionist Congress adopted the idea of disseminating Jewish culture in the Diaspora as a tool for furthering the goals of the Zionist movement and bringing about a revival of the Jewish people. Bnai Moshe founded Rehovot, hoping it would become a model of self-sufficiency, and opened Achiasaf, a Hebrew publishing company. Achad Ha'am died in Tel-Aviv in 1927.

Some of his articles were translated into German and Russian. They were also translated into English by Leon Simon under the title Selected Essays in 1912; see exact reference below:

Adapted from the original at Zionism on the Web by the author. This work may be reproduced with this credit.

This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.

The Library of Congress lists sixteen (16) titles under his name of which seven (7) are in the English language.