Ahad Ha'am Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha'am and the origins of Zionism

An incisive biography of the guiding intellectual presence - and chief internal critic - of Zionism, during the movement's formative years between the 1880s and the 1920s. Ahad Ha'am ('One of the People') was the pen name of Asher Ginzberg (1856-1927), a Russian Jew whose life intersected nearly every important trend and current in contemporary Jewry. His influence extended to figures as varied as the scholar of mysticism Gershom Scholem, the Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and the historian S…