The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan

3. Nationalism and Righteousness: Ahad Ha-Am and Matthew Arnold

46 I am more convinced than ever that Achad Ha-Am’s conception of nationality plus [Matthew] Arnold’s interpretation of Israel’s genius for righteousness contains that which could form the positive expression of the Jewish spirit. All it wants is definiteness and detail. —Mordecai Kaplan, August 1905 Akeyaspectof MordecaiKaplan’stalentasathinker,aswewillseeagain andagain,ishisabilitytocombinewidelydisparateconceptsandideologies into a single coherent whole. He was, for example, a life-long Zionist and, at the same time, a true nephew of his Uncle Sam, even editing a book of prayers and songs for American holidays.1 It also happened that the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the congregation that Kaplan founded in 1922, was first housed in a brownstone once occupied by GeorgeM.Cohan,2 thewell-knownpatrioticentertainer,composer,and playwright.Thoughamerebitoftrivia,suchsynchronicityisevidenceof the many streams of Kaplan’s intellectual life, seemingly divergent but nevertheless overlapping. In 1905, just twenty-four years old, Kaplan summed up his approach to Jewish life in a single journal entry, quoted above: “I am more convinced than ever that Achad Ha-Am’s conception of nationality plus [Matthew] Arnold’s interpretation of Israel’s genius for righteousness contains that which could form the positive expression of the Jewish spirit. All it wants is definiteness and detail.”3 The juxtaposition of Ahad Ha-Am, the cultural Zionist, a descendent of Hasidic rabbis, with an English poet and critic indicates the work of a great historical imaginaNATIONALISM AND RIGHTEOUSNESS: AHAD HA-AM AND MATTHEW ARNOLD T H R E E Nationalism and Righteousness 47 tion. Kaplan presents us here with one of the foundational ideas of his system. It is well known that the people of Israel and their collective consciousness lay at the center of Kaplan’s concept of Torah and of Jewish civilization. This emphasis on Jewish peoplehood owes much to the distinguished cultural Zionist Ahad Ha-Am. Preeminent among Zionists, Ahad Ha-Am is the key to understanding the young Kaplan. It has been said that Kaplan was Ahad Ha-Am’s most dedicated disciple. While this is true on the whole, Kaplan was also critical of his mentor in very significant ways. Ahad Ha-Am (Asher Hirsch Ginsberg) was born in the Ukraine in 1856, where he received a traditional Jewish education in the home of his Hasidic father, a wealthy village merchant. The young Ginsberg studiedTalmudand medieval philosophy with aprivate teacherand was deeply influenced by Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed. He also read the literature of the Haskalah, the eighteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment . In 1873, he moved to Odessa, an important center of Hebrew culture, where he came into contact with some of the foremost Jewish authors of his day, including Chaim Nahman Bialik, Mendele Mocher Sforim (Sholem Abramovich), and Ze’ev Jabotinsky.4 In the late 1880s, Asher Ginsberg began publishing under the pseudonym Ahad Ha-Am (One of the People).Though still in his early thirties and unknown, he criticized the existing policy of the Zionist movement, which advocated immediate Jewish settlement in Palestine. Ahad Ha-Am insisted that educational groundwork was a necessary prerequisite, in order for the Jews of Europe to appreciate the unique dilemmas of returning to their ancestral homeland. His influence was considerably enhanced when, in 1896, he founded the Hebrew journal Ha-shilo-ah, a post that he held until1902.Nearlyuntilhisdeathin1927,hecontinuedtowritetopicalessays that discussed current controversies in light of his own philosophy. In the long and tumultuous process of Jewish modernization and secularization, Ahad Ha-Am assumed a place both preeminent and unique. For much of the Jewish intelligentsia across the early twentieth century, men and women whose origins were in Eastern Europe, he was the final authority in matters of ethics, the spirit, and literature. Great 48 The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai M. Kaplan poets like Bialik dedicated poems to him. Even many non-Orthodox American Jewish Zionists considered him the spiritual leader of the generation. Yet in his day, he was in some ways quite heretical. His approachtoJewishproblemswasnotthatofJewishtraditionbutofmodern thinkers, among them Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and Charles Darwin. His thinking, in its essence, is evolutionary.5 Ahad Ha-Am can only be understood amid the vast confrontation between late nineteenth-century Jewry and the intellectual currents of the day. Secularization challenged traditional Jews on many levels, creating conflicts not only intellectual but existential as well. Like so many of his generation, Ahad Ha-Am felt alienated from the traditional community of...