Between Tradition and Modernity: Haim Zhitlowski, Simon Dubnow, Ahad Ha-Am, and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identity (New Perspectives: Jewish Life and Thought)

By Weinberg, David
Holmes and Meir Pub., 1996, Hardcover, 385 pp., ISBN: 0841913552, $40.00

During the late 19th century, Russian Jews faced the opportunity and challenge of participating in society at large.

Haim Zhitlowski, Simon Dubnow, and Ahad Ha-Am (pen name of Asher Ginsberg) are leading representatives of that "transitional generation" who struggled to articulate the issues of national identity and culture as the Jewish community experienced the ideological and political process of modernization and secularization.

Rejecting the pragmatic activism of the political Zionists and militant socialists who would eventually triumph over them, Ahad Ha-Am, Dubnow, and Zhitlowski attempted to reaffirm in secular form the spiritual and ethical ideas of traditional Judaism.

The three Russian-Jewish thinkers profiled in Wayne State University history professor Weinberg's cogent study sought diverse ways to secure a new foundation for modern Jewish identity and renewal. For Haim Zhitlowski (1865-1943), the answer lay in a revival of Yiddish language and culture, combined with agrarian socialism, Jews' return en masse to the land within the Soviet Union, a dream crushed by the Stalinism that he supported out of fear of Jewish extinction.

Historian Simon Dubnow (1860-1941), who dismissed Zionism as an isolationist response, envisioned autonomous Jewish communities within a future democratic Russia and other multinational states. He was killed during the liquidation of the Riga, Latvia, ghetto.

Journalist Asher Ginsberg (pen name Ahad Ha-Am, "One of the People"), who saw Palestine as a center of spiritual renewal, rejected Theodor Herzl's political Zionism and instead supported a bi-national Arab-Jewish confederation. He died in Tel Aviv in 1927 at age 71, isolated and demoralized.