Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha'am and the Origins of Zionism

by Steven J. Zipperstein

Here is a long overdue biography of the guiding intellectual presence—and chief internal critic—of Zionism during the movement's formative years between the 1880s and the 1920s. Ahad Ha'am ("One of the People") was the pen name of Asher Ginzberg (1856-1927), a Russian Jew whose life intersected nearly every important trend and current in contemporary Jewry. A Hebrew essayist of extraordinary knowledge and skill, he exerted a rare, perhaps unequalled, authority through his writings on every controversial issue from Jewish nationalism and clericalism to the Palestinian Arab problem.

Steven Zipperstein offers all those interested in Israel and modern Jewish history a wide-ranging, perceptive reassessment of Ahad Ha'am's life against the backdrop of his contentious political world. This influential figure comes to life in a penetrating and engaging examination of his relations with his father, with Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, and with his devotees and opponents alike.

Genres: Israel

Hardcover

First published October 29, 1993

Reviews

[Jeffrey Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is someone I know, and this is what I wrote to him just now when I finished reading the book:
I just finished reading the biography of Ahad Ha'am.
I am impressed by the thoroughness of your scholarship and your combination of admiration, appreciation, and deep criticism.
If you were to bring out a revised edition of the book, I would recommend an opening chapter surveying the desperate condition of the Jews in the Russian Empire and the rest of the world, though it all comes out during the chapters of the book. In other words, what was the crisis that Ahad Ha'am was confronting?
From my probably too rapid reading of your book, I came out with deeper appreciation of the importance of Jewish self-definition as a nation and understanding of how revolutionary that idea was at the time - and perhaps remains.
Certainly you can look back at the achievement of writing this biography with satisfaction.

I didn't add to my note to Zipperstein that I think the book is too dense and thorough for a general readership. He pretty much assumes that his readers are familiar with Ahad Ha'am, which isn't the case. I would also would add that I always took it to be axiomatic that we Jews are a nation. This book showed me that it's far from axiomatic. Indeed, it is controversial. Perhaps nationalism is inherently controversial.
He and I agree that a flaw in Ahad Ha'am's thought and in Jewish nationalist thought in general was failure to address the injustice done to the Palestinians by the establishment of the Jewish state. Ahad Ha'am died long before the Holocaust, a crisis in Jewish history that dwarfs everything that came before it since the Romans destroyed the Temple and put down the second rebellion came 60 years later. If he was despondent after World War I, it is unimaginable how he would have felt after World War II.
I'm half a decade older than Zipperstein. My response to being Jewish was moving to Israel, despite the inherent injustice of Zionism. Coming from a much more traditional background than I, his response was to become an eminent Jewish historian.
Ahad Ha'am was not a happy man at the end of his life. I'm not that happy either (with respect to Israel, Jewishness, and the other issues central to "Elusive Prophet."

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

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