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Ahad Ha-Am; Asher Ginzberg

1960ref. 79651London England: East and West Library 1960. First Edition thus stated presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Good . xii 2 348 pages. Glossary of Hebrew Words. Bibliographical Note. Notes. Index. Small tears and chips to dust jacket. Minor edge soiling. Sir Leon Simon the author of this book was one of the intimate circle of Ahad Ha-Am's disciples during the decade and a half of the latter's residence in London. He became a devoted translator of Ahad Ha-Am's works and an expounder of his teachings. Sir Leon Simon CB born 1881 in Southampton; died 1965 in London was a leading British Zionist intellectual and civil servant who took part in the drafting of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and served on the Zionist Commission with Chaim Weizmann. An advocate of cultural Zionism and the reviver of Hebrew language Simon was a scholar and translator of Ahad Ha'am and produced the first modern Hebrew translations of Plato. He served as the Chairman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Executive Council and as from 1949-50 as the university's President. Simon came under the influence of Ahad Ha'am Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginzberg a leading figure of cultural Zionism and went on to translate many of his works into English as well as writing his biography. Simon was a member of the Zionist Commission alongside Israel Sieff M. D. Eder and others in 1918 to begin talks with the government of David Lloyd George on the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. A draft of the Balfour Declaration written by Simon on paper of London's Imperial Hotel on July 17 1917 was auctioned off in 2005 through Sotheby's for $884000 US in New York. It is the only known surviving handwritten draft of the declaration. Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginzberg 18 August 1856 - 2 January 1927 primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name Ahad Ha'am was a Hebrew essayist and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism. With his secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel. Unlike Herzl the founder of political Zionism Ha'am strived for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews". In 1896 Ahad Ha'am founded the Hebrew monthly. Ha-Shiloa the leading Hebrew-language literary journal in the early twentieth century. It was a vehicle to promote Jewish nationalism and a platform for discussion of past and present issues relevant to Judaism. Ahad 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 throughout the Diaspora something that was recognized only belatedly when it became part of the Zionist program after 1898. Ahad Ha'am played an important role in the revival of the Hebrew language and Jewish culture and in cementing a link between the proposed Jewish state and Hebrew culture. Ahad Ha-Am represents one of the most interesting manifestations of the vitality of the Jewish spirit. The basis of his thought was an attempt to join the Prophetic tradition and Jewish idealism with the culture of the western world. To a generation of Jews whose intellectual leaders had abandoned the ways and views of their parents but could find no no goals that would assure their people's survival Ahad Ha-Am issued a call for a spiritual renaissance through conscious self-dedication to the values implicit in Jewish life. He was acceptable neither to the old orthodoxy nor to the new political nationalism of his day. Yet he laid the foundations for a revivified vibrant and meaningful Jewish people. Both Israel and the Diaspora feel his influence and everyone who reads this book will readily see why. In 1955 there appeared in Hebrew a definitive study of Ahad Ha-Am's career written by Sir Leon Simon and the late Joseph Heller. In this English version the Jewish Publication Society only published the Leon Simon biography. It is an expanded version of Sir Leon's original biographical sketch a forthright and lucid character study of Ahad Ha-Am by a pupil and disciple one eminently qualified for the task he undertook. This biography of a complex and fascinating Jewish intellectual has the added interest of being a document which testifies to the degree to which the forces of acculturation work even on the personality of one who is as committed a Zionist and Hebraist as Sir Leon. His whole approach in appraising Ahad Ha-Am's life-balanced fair-minded judicious-is very British indeed. No less praise can be given-and this the ordinary reader must find gratifying-to the skillful way Sir Leon camouflages his careful scholarship as he pursues his subject. Footnotes are not used but the student of Ahad Ha-Am will discover that no source material has been ignored. Everything is adroitly employed-the six volumes of personal letters which Ahad Ha-Am collected shortly before his death the occasional fragments of biography which he composed and even the not very accessible private memoirs of his sister. It may come as a surprise to some that Ahad Ha-Am's uncompromising positivist convictions were in conflict with his natural conservatism-a conservatism expressed in an almost filial deference toward Jewish traditions. And Sir Leon gives a poignant picture of that conflict personified in the hate-love which marked Ahad Ha-Am's relation to his father. The portrait of the stern father as the image of Jewish religious authoritarianism familiar in 20th-century Hebrew fiction is shatteringly real in the biography of Ahad Ha-Am. The father had little sympathy for the son's ambitions and consistently belittled his abilities. The conflict in Ahad Ha-Am worked at the very roots of his system. It explains a good deal not only of his ideological development but also of the psychological deterrents which inhibited his personal life. Introspective self-critical and skeptical regarding his own abilities Ahad Ha-Am became a leader of men. "A high seriousness and a sense of responsibility" compelled him to speak out forcefully and clearly about the problems of his day. For all his devotion to the Zionist ideal he saw the pitfalls of nationalist enthusiasms leading to the distortions of expediency. His thinking retains a relevance for contemporary Jews; and contemporary Jewish journalism could use a little more of his high-minded criticism and uncompromising honesty. East and West Library hardcover

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