Top 11 Quotes & Sayings by Ahad Ha'am

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an essayist Ahad Ha'am.

Last updated on November 17, 2024.

Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name Ahad Ha'am, was a Hebrew essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism. With his secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel, he confronted Theodor Herzl. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ha'am strived for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews".

Essayist | August 18, 1856 - January 2, 1927

Source: Wikipedia

If this be the Messiah, then I do not wish to see his coming

Ahad Ha'am

More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.

Ahad Ha'am

This Moses, I say, this man of old time, whose existence and character you are trying to elucidate, matters to nobody but scholars like you.

Ahad Ha'am

The right place for the League of Nations is not Geneva or the Hague, Ascher Ginsberg has dreamed of a Temple on Mount Zion where the representatives of all nations should dedicate a Temple of Eternal Peace. Only when all peoples of the earth shall go to THIS temple as pilgrims is eternal peace to become a fact.

Ahad Ha'am

[But if things continue the way they are] ...the society that I envision, if my dream is not just a false notion, this society will have to begin to create itself in the midst of fuss, noisiness and panic, and will have to face the prospects of both internal and external war.

Ahad Ha'am

The less their ability, the more their conceit.

Ahad Ha'am

More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.

Ahad Ha'am

We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as a donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going around it. But this is a GREAT ERROR. The Arab, like all sons of Sham, has sharp and crafty mind . . . Should time come when life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they WILL NOT easily step aside.

Ahad Ha'am

What is national freedom if not a people’s inner freedom to cultivate its abilities along the beaten path of its history?

Ahad Ha'am

We can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation.

Ahad Ha'am

Historical truth is that, and that alone, which reveals the forces that go to mould the social life of mankind.

Ahad Ha'am