Ahad Ha'am

Asher Zvi Ginsberg was born in Russian Ukraine in 1856, in a high class daily in the Jewish Ghetto. He became a well known scholar of Talmudic and Hasidic literature by the time he was a teenager. His family moved to Odessa in 1886 when the Tsar forbid Jews form leasing land. 

He wrote many essays for Jewish periodicals and adopted the name "Ahad Ha-Am" which means 'one of the people.'

He was persistent in arguing that the work of rebuilding Zion had to be done slowly and carefully, and he didn't fit into major parties. He was too conservative for the younger more passionate groups, but he also proposed an agnostic point of view that separated him from the Orthodox.

He did eventually settle in Tel Aviv, and the street he lived on was closed off to traffic during his afternoon nap hours. And the whole city attended his funeral in 1927.

Ha-Am had a lot to say about keeping Judaism current and not committing to ancient rules that no longer apply to a modern civilization. In his 1984 essay The Law of the Heart, he wrote "The book ceases to be what it should be, a source of ever-new inspiration and moral strength; on the contrary, its function in life is to weaken and finally to crush all spontaneity of action and emotion, till men become wholly dependent on the written word and incapable of responding to any stimulus in nature or in human life without its permission and approval. Nor, even when the that sanction is found, is the response simple and natural; it has to follow a prearranged and artificial plan." He goes on to give several examples of instances in which minutiae from Jewish law goes against common sense and decency. He laments the mishna being recorded because he feels this forced it to fossilize and basically enslave people. He writes "Conscience no longer had any authority in its own right; not conscience but the book became the arbiter in every human question."  

But he also asks, "whether the Jewish people can still shake off its inertia, regain direct contact with the actualities of life, and yet remain the Jewish people."

Here are some other quotes I liked...

From Flesh and Spirit (1904)

"When the individual loves the community as himself and identifies himself completely with its well-being, he has something to live for; he feels his personal hardships less keenly, because he knows the purpose for which he lives and suffers."

"But the existence of the man who is a Jew is not purposeless, because he is am ember of the people of Israel, which exists for a sublime purpose. And as the community is only the sum of its members, every Israelite is entitled to regard himself as an indispensable link in the chain of his people's life and as sharing in his people's imperishability."

From On Nationalism and Religion (1910)

"We have to make the synagogue itself the House of Study, with Jewish learning as its first concern and prayer as a secondary matter. Cut the prayers as short as you like, but make your Synagogue a haven of Jewish knowledge, alike for children and adults, for the educated and the ordinary folk... learning - learning - learning: that is the secret of Jewish survival."

And in The Negation of the Diaspora (1909) he argues that a successful Jewish State would need to provide enough intellectual stimulation and practical opportunity for its members not to leave and look elsewhere for these things. 

He seems to support the idea that Judaism needs both a strong diaspora and a central autonomous state.