The Story of the Jews Volume 2: When Words Fail: 1492--Present

by Simon Schama

In his caustically grand way, Ahad Ha’am had a point about the content-free quality of Herzl’s notion of ‘Jewishness’ defined more by how the Gentiles felt, for ill or good, than by the core of Judaism itself. But the counterpoint is that for all his devotional eloquence and penetrating intellect, Ahad Ha’am also was unclear about what true Judaism was, for the simple reason that at least since Maimonides this had not been an agreed truism. It was not pure Torah or the Karaites would be right. It was not unexamined Talmud (not that that was a monolithic work) or Maimonides would be wrong. It could not accommodate the reforming Judaism by which millions now defined themselves as Jews. But all that Ahad Ha’am knew was that it was richer, weightier, more serious than anything the irreligious Herzl was offering, which was Jewish secularism, and that for the Jews to be reborn as a nation, they needed to find Judaism first. Thus an enmity, a civil war, was seeded at the very birth of Zionism. It has yet to be reconciled.