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

By Zipperstein, Steven
University of California Press, 1993, Hardcover, 386 pp., Out of print, ISBN: 0520081110

A leading thinker of the Zionist movement, the restless, reclusive, cynical Asher Ginzberg (1856-1927) was also its chief internal critic.

Known by his pen name Ahad Ha'am (“One of the People''), the Russian Jewish activist would accuse his rival, Theodor Herzl, of reckless impatience; in Herzl's view, Ha'am's cautious vision of slowly building a Jewish national homeland was “cloistered, impractical.''

Ha'am, who emigrated to Tel Aviv in 1922 and served as a moderating voice in a tense, factionalized Palestine, asserted that decent treatment of Palestinian Arabs was crucial to the future of a Jewish state. He was also a critic of the use of aggression as a tool to further nationalist goals. In this engrossing political biography, Zipperstein, director of the Stanford University Jewish Studies program, finds aspects of Ha'am's Zionist credo “lamentably dated'' but also underscores his contemporary relevance. Publishers Weekly