“The secret of our Peoples’ persistence is that at a very early period, the Prophets taught us to respect only the power of the spirit and not to worship material power.”

On August 18, 1856, Asher Ginsberg, better known as Ahad Ha’am, was born in Ukraine to wealthy Hasidic parents. As he matured, he grew critical of religious dogma but remained loyal to the ethics and culture of Judaism, which he advanced in his many Zionist essays. Unlike his contemporaries, however, Ahad Ha’am remained suspicious of the Zionists’ quest for political power, sensing within it the potential to corrupt what he saw as the most valuable assets of Judaism—its culture and values.

Ahad Ha’am advocated a Zionism that viewed the cultural health of worldwide Jewry as its primary responsibility, fueling diaspora Judaism with passion and creativity expressed through the Hebrew language and the Jewish arts. Power, he warned, would misuse Jewish culture for its own purposes instead of nurturing it.

In some ways, Zionism has surpassed even Ahad Ha’am’s wildest hopes, as the dialogue between Diaspora and Israeli Judaism has produced profound cultural and scientific achievements in medicine, technology, art, literature, cuisine, music, film, and television that empower and influence not only Jews, but the world at large. And, just as Ahad Ha’am had hoped, many of these offerings carry with them Judaism’s respect for the spirit.

However, just as poignant as Ha’am’s hopes are his fears. As North American Jewry becomes increasingly fractured over its relationship to the policies enacted by the Israeli government, his fears regarding the corruption of Jewish culture for political purposes appear prescient. Zionism’s quest for political hegemony has led many Jews to abandon the Jewish ethical-culture championed by Ha’am, even as they actively espouse their status as “cultural” Jews (For Ha’am, Jewish culture meant much more than lox and bagels).

The task of the 21st Century Zionist, then, appears to be rooted in the challenge that Ha’am laid at the Zionists’ feet more than 100 years ago. How do we successfully wed support for Israel, a political entity with ends of its own, without compromising the synthesis and promulgation of Jewish culture and values?

— Rabbi Josh Knobel