Aḥad Ha‘am

Ahad Ha’am was the founder of Cultural Zionism. He was a critic of Herzl and political Zionism, and argued that first, before the return to Palestine, there must be a spiritual awakening of the Jewish people.

Quotes

• Learning, learning, learning—that is the secret of Jewish survival.
  • Said in 1910
• The heart of the people—that is the foundation on which the land will be regenerated.
  • Ahad Ha’am, “The Wrong Way,” 1889. Translated in Ten Essays.
• More than Israel has guarded the Sabbath, the Sabbath has guarded Israel.
  • From “Sabbath and Zionism”
• In Palestine we can and should found for ourselves a spiritual center of our nationality.
  • In “Dr. Pinsker & His Pamphlet.” See quote cited by himself at “A Spiritual Centre” in the collection Ten Essays
• [Zionism] provides an opportunity for communal work and political excitement; his emotions find an outlet in a field of activity which is not subservient to non-Jews; and he feels that, thanks to this ideal, he stands once more spiritually erect and has regained his personal dignity, without overmuch trouble and purely by his own efforts…. For it is not the attainment of the ideal that he heeds; its pursuit alone is sufficient to cure him of his spiritual disease, which is that of an inferiority complex, and the loftier and more distant the ideal, the greater its power to exalt.
  • Ahad Ha'am in Textual Sources for the Study of Judaism.
• What is national existence if not the existence of a national spirit? What is a nation’s importance if not the importance of the spiritual treasures it has added to human culture?
  • Quoted in Ha-Shiloah magazine. Volume 6, 1902.
• The national center will not be a “secure home of refuge” for our people, but it will be a home of healing for its spirit.
  • In Summa Summarum (1912).
• Our very existence in dispersion is possible only because we feel ourselves to be “the aristocrats of history.”
  • From an April 17, 1910 letter to A. V. Ravnitzki. Quoted in Essays, Letters, Memoirs by Ahad Ha'am, p. 268
• The salvation of Israel will be achieved by Prophets, not by diplomats.
  • In his essay “The First Zionist Congress” (Translated in “Ten Essays”)
• After two thousand years of untold misery and suffering, the Jewish people cannot possibly be content with attaining at last to the position of a small and insignificant nation, with a State tossed about like a ball between its powerful neighbours.
  • In his essay “The First Zionist Congress” (Translated in Ten Essays)
• Pharaoh is gone, but his work remains; the master has ceased to be master, but the slaves have not ceased to be slaves. A people trained for generations in the house of bondage cannot cast off in an instant the effects of that training and become truly free, even when the chains have been struck off.
  • In the essay “Moses”.
• We cannot conceive Christianity without Jesus, or even Islam without Mohammed... Judaism, and Judaism alone, depends on no such human “likeness.” God is the only idea of absolute perfection, and He only must be kept always before the eye of man’s inner consciousness.
  • In the essay “Judaism and The Gospel” (translated in Ten Essays)
• As to the war against the Jews in Palestine, I am a spectator from afar with an aching heart, particularly because of the want of insight and understanding shown on our side to an extreme degree. As a matter of fact, it was evident twenty years ago that the day would come when the Arabs would stand up against us.
  • Letter to a friend.
• We Jews have been taught by our history to appreciate the real value of laying foundations for future developments. Our share, as a people, in the building up of the general culture of Humanity has been nothing else than the laying of its foundations long before the superstructures were built by others.
  • Letter to Haim Weizmann.