• t THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 56 Friday, June 24, 1977 AHAD HA'AM Ahad Ha'am — Hebrew pen name of Asher Ginsberg — the "atheistic rabbi," as he was called, is a prime example of those giants of the spirit whose influence is felt for generations. Born in 1856 in the Ukraine, he lived at the time of the birth of political Zionism and the renas- cence of the Hebrew language and Hebrew culture. The pen-name "One of the People" is typical for the manthimself. Here was a son of a traditional, well-to-do family, thoroughly steeped in classic Jewish learning — Ahad Ha'am was a Talmudist of note in his younger years — who came under the influence of Rus- sian and German thinkers of the 19th century; a restless spirit who could never satisfy himself with any kind of shallow tradition, but a man who had to measure all thought and all culture by his own criteria; a man who would become the "conscience of Zionism," who never wrote a line without an inner urge, hating all superfi- cial propaganda. And just as his origins were in Chassidism, so he harbored all his life a quest for a critical world view. And he maintained an uncompromising stand on the supreme value of truth. Ahad Ha'am never was a leadership figure in the political sense. He never held office in the Zionist movement. Yet his influence on men such as Weizmann, Ussishkin, Bialik and Buber, and on many other great figures of his age, was profound. During the rise of political Zionism, at the time of the Balfour Declaration and the negotiations surrounding the Versailles Peace Treaty, Ahad Ha'am did not appear in the headlines even once. Still, Chaim Weiz- mann would not act without consulting Ahad Ha' am. His criticism was, from the outset, directed at two sides. He chided the political Zionists for their lack of realism — never would it be possi- ble, Mad Ha'am stated, to settle all of Euro- pean Jewry in Palestine. The very idea of a Jewish State, a political entity just like any other modern state, was abhorrent to him. On the other hand, Ahad Ha'am's position as a Jewish thinker brought him into conflict with official orthodoxy, as soon as he had left the world of classical Jewish studies and turned to contemporary Russian and German freethink- ing philosophy. For Ahad Ha'am it is the Jewish spirit which is of preeminence in Jewish history, it • alone imbued the Jews with a national will to survive. This Jewish spirit is the grandeur of Jewish civilization, its hallmark. Zionism must foster it, in order to help the Diaspora Jew overcome his inferiority complex. "Al Parashat D'rachim" — "At the Cross- roads" — with this title of Ahad Ha'am's volume of essays he indicates the dilemma of the East European Jew who has emerged from the physical and spiritual ghetto and tries to find an answer to the problems of his time. Ahad Ha'am was totally opposed to assimilation, but he felt no sympathy, at first, for the single- minded political Zionism of Herzl either. His earlier criticism of the Chovevei Zion move- ment advocated a slow settlement in Palestine by small, select groups ("Lo Zu Haderech" — "This is not the Way") — instead of mass colonization; he strove for the creation of a "spiritual center" in Eretz Yisrael which even- tually would radiate its influence as a uniting force over all of world Jewry. Ahad ,Ha'am held a deep belief in the cho- senness of the Jewish people; he speaks fre- quently of a Jewish mystique, a secret of Jewish survival which nobody can explain. In this sense, it is somewhat unfair to call him an atheist. He did not deny a God concept, but he could not bring himself to adhere to the tra- 9 HAVING TROUBLE WITH THOSE HEBREW ABBREVIATIONS.. HERE ARE A FEW — AND THEIR MEANINGS = Addressing a letter —equivalent to Dear . . . Miss, Mrs., Madam United States Yylp — — rivlan — )3 11 1N United Nations negotiation •1 el Aviv report Israeli Pound (valuta) Ramat Gan I td., or inc. abroad, foreign South Africa 0.:!,0 tfeW . : ditional theistic faith, to an uncritical concep- tion of a personal deity. It was the Jewish genius for morality, the spirit of the Biblical prophets, the ethical wisdom of the medieval Jewish thinkers and poets, which for Ahad Ha'am contained the reasons for Jewish cho- senness. Ahad Ha'am had a deep mistrust of the non- Jewish world. His basically pessimistic view of Jewish history would have found a bitter verifi- cation in the horrors of the Nazi slaughter and it is doubtful whether this prophet of the Jewish spirit would have been able to cope, emotion- ally and as a thinker, with the holocaust. On the other hand, Ahad Ha'am would also be highly critical of the American Jewish community to the extent that it does not cultivate, in sufficient measure, what he once called " . . . study — study — study — the secret of Jewish survi- val." There is no question -that the voice of this aristocrat of the Hebrew spirit has much to say to the present generation, both in Israel and abroad. The constant reminder that we are first and last a people of the spirit, has not lost any of its validity as Ahad Ha'am proclaimed it in his own life time. His quiet, noble voice sounds as penetrating today as it did when the Jewish State was nothing more than a dream. :*.•: WW.5.:;;;;;;;;;;;§S .,„ ....Ap rti -tcorty? rtrtp. — t3"1n rtisyinn rt'vm — nuln wart 531 — win liavirr >>7 — 1-11"-r rp5r.riv! ni)5 — T - T roxi — )"-) 5vn lizYv7 — wiya vri — 5"In )3 nTiptt — onro z :NOM iff 4 kMEICO school synagogue T07 — t7"712 TI'Ppn •rt)A — D"112 And here are some brand new Hebrew expressions, strongly influenced by . . . American English: chewing gum humpty-dtimpty pin-up girl stool pigeon flirt "dead" (as in "dead tired") big shot to put one's cards on the table honeymoon baby sitter P'Yc'n 14'4 mv) vt../. 15D Kai 1.411) 1 ,D5p me n?) • Ahad Ha'am Adages: — ". . . Spiritual Zionism is the whole of Judaism, not a part of it, or an addition to it, a Judaism which shall have as its focal point the ideal of our nation's unity, its renas- cence and its free development through the expression of universal human values in the terms of its own distinctive spirit . . ." * * * "The people's heart is the foundation on which the land will be built." * * * What is national existence if not the exis- tence of a national spirit? What is a nation's importance, if not the importance of the spiritual treasures it has added to human culture!" * * "There is only one object — and that is the moral object: the emancipation of ourselves from the inner slavery and spiritual degradation which assimila- tion has produced in us." ta ' New Hebrew Poets From Texas! Samuel Robert Whitehill Dahlia Ross-Daniel %cc 111 -11cluvw Grow Soviet Union Upon His Fiftieth Yahrzeit • • ••••••••,,,,, • • an elementary school teacher by profession, and currently working for her Ph.D. at the University of Texas, has published last year a collection of Hebrew poetry "Flowers of Be- ing," issued by Kiryat Sefer, Jerusalem, with a second volume of poetry, 'scheduled for publi- cation this year. Ms. Ross-Daniel, whose poems have previously appeared in "Hadoar" and "Bitzaron," and who delivered a paper on "The Sun Myth in the Works of D.H. Lawr- ence and Saul Tschernichovsky" at the Miami Beach Convention of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew, is a specialist in audio-visual Hebrew Education. Presently she is at work developing a computer-assisted in- struction course to teach the Hebrew alphabet, vowels and writing system. Engaged in various other research projects, among them: "Time Theories in Jewish Philosophy," her avoca- tional preference goes to creative writing in Hebrew, in poetry and prose. born in North Carolina and now living in Texas began learning Hebrew at the age of 14 — with the aid of books and records! His first contact with the classroom was in 1968, when he at- tended Ulpan Akiva during a summer stay in Israel. And, low and behold, he has become a superb Hebrew poet "writing in a living idiom that ci .)es not differ from that which is current today among the generation of native-born Is- raeli poets." Such accolade comes, in a joint statement, from such luminaries of modern Hebrew creativity as Simon Halkin and Aharon Megged! A first volume of Whitehills' Hebrew verse will be published shortly in Israel. In addition to his mastery of poetry, Whitehill has also made his mark as a splendid, most sensitive translator. He has rendered in English two Megged novels, four Agnon stories, and the novel on the Yom Kippur War "The Bitter Lake" by Yossi Gamzu — just to list a few among his recent literary efforts to make modern Hebrew prose available to an English- speaking readership. And in association with Dan Almagor, now a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Robert Whitehill plans to work on translating the first Hebrew drama "A . Comedy of Betrothal," dating back to the 16th century. Both Dahlia Ross-Daniel and Samuel Robert Whitehill are students of Dr. Eisig Silberschlag — wYrri 'v-••,tov/ an illustrious name in American Hebrew poetry — former Dean of the Boston Hebrew Teachers College and now Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Texas. Rightfully, Professor Silberschlag can say: "I am proud of the crop." •• HI OF Ai ks r. t This special feature is the latest in a series prepared by the Tarbuth Foundation for the Advancement of Hebrew Culture. r. 4.