‘Reading Ahad Ha’am today is to be reminded of a strand of Zionism that concerned itself more with the moral ambitions of a future Jewish State than with its territorial expanse. The questions then asked and the debates then initiated have in no way lost their relevance and urgency.’ – Göran Rosenberg, author of A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz

Ahad Ha’am (Hebrew for ‘one of the people’) is the pen name of Asher Ginzberg, an outstanding Hebrew essayist whose writing has had a major influence on contemporary Jewish thought. He was born in 1856 into a pious Hasidic family in Skvire, in the Kiev province of the Russian Ukraine. When he was twelve his family relocated to a remote rural estate. As an adolescent he read modern philosophy and science, which led him away from his religious upbringing. In 1884 he moved to Odessa, a centre of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), where he promoted Jewish revival on a secular basis. He is remembered as the founder of ‘cultural Zionism’ and as a stern critic of the political Zionism of Theodor Herzl. In 1907 he moved to London, eventually settling in Tel Aviv, where he died in 1927.

Brian Klug is Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, and member of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life (2011) and Offence: The Jewish Case (2009). He has co-edited several books, including A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity (2008) and contributed to others. His writing has appeared in numerous journals and periodicals. He is an Associate Editor of ­Patterns of Prejudice.