Ahad Ha'am Elusive Prophet

Line drawings by Saul Raskin from The New Palistine.

——–. “Heresy, Apostasy and the Transformation of Joseph Rabinovich.” In Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, ed. Todd Endelman. New York, 1987.

Sionistskoe dvizhenie sredi evreev’. Odessa, 1900.

Bentwich, Norman. Wanderer Between Two Worlds. London, 1941.

Aberbach, David. Bialik. London, 1988

Salomon Schiller, “Smolensky und Achad Haam,” Die Welt no. 39 (1901)

Israel Friedlaender, “Ahad Ha’am,” in Past and Present: Selected Essays (New York, 1961), 276

Selected Essays of Achad Ha’am (Philadelphia, 1914), and Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism by Achad Ha’am (London, 1922),

I would read him, as he himself (and despite his grander pretensions) meant to be read, as a newspaperman reporting the ugly truth to a people he loved, about things he hated, about a land that was wonderful and also terrible, that might bring redemption but also horror, that could well be responsible for freedom from exile but also, at worst, for a moral exile more terrible than the numbing, assimilationist alternative.

If this is the Messiah, may he come, but may I not live to see him!