Allan Arkush on Ahad Ha'am and "The Jewish State and Jewish Problem"

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2016

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this podcast, Eric Cohen talks with Judaic Studies and History professor Allan Arkush, an expert in modern Jewish history, about Ahad Ha’am and his classic essay, “The Jewish State and Jewish Problem” (1897). In this essay, Ahad Ha’am—pen name of Asher Ginsberg—expounds on the material and moral crises facing the Jewish people. Modern Jews need an identity authentically derived from Jewish ideas and culture—not one simply formed by outside gentile influences. European nationalism is not sufficient to guide the founding of the Jewish state. Rather, Ha’am hopes that political freedom will enable the creation of a unique and genuine Jewish civilization. In this podcast, Arkush discusses the life and ideas of Ahad Ha’am and his relation to his contemporary Jewish and Zionist thinkers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tikva podcast on great Jewish essays and ideas. I'm your host, Eric Cohen.
0:14.2	Our subject today is a classic Zionist essay called The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem,
0:19.7	written by AhadahAm in 1897.
0:22.6	It's a complicated and important piece, including a critique of the first Zionist Congress,
0:27.6	an analysis of the material and moral conditions of Western Jewry and Eastern Jury,
0:32.6	and a call for a renaissance of the Jewish spirit and Jewish culture.
0:36.7	I'm very pleased to be joined today by Alan Arkish, a professor of history and Jewish studies
0:41.8	at SUNY Binghamton, one of the founders and a senior contributing editor to the Jewish
0:46.2	Review of Books, and widely recognized as one of America's preeminent scholars of modern
0:51.1	Jewish history.
0:52.3	Alan, thanks for joining me.
0:53.7	Thank you. So before we get to
0:55.9	the essay, let's start with the man, Ahadaham. Who was he? And how did he become such an important voice
1:01.9	in the great Zionist debates? He was born in 1856 in the town of Skavira in the Ukraine, the son of a prosperous businessman and
1:16.6	estate manager.
1:19.6	Ahadaham belonged to one of the leading Hasidic families of the region and was groomed from youth
1:26.6	to be a rabbi.
1:28.3	His father was in a situation where he could find and arrange for him to be taught by some of the leading scholars of the area on a private basis.
1:40.3	He never attended regular schools since his father was managing an estate far from
1:46.0	Jewish centers of learning. And he received a very rigorous Talmudic education at the same time
1:56.5	was inducted into the Hasidic world. At some point, after his marriage at the age of 20,
2:06.9	Aharaam slowly began to disclose that he could no longer accept the foundations of the tradition on which he had been raised.
	...

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