ABSTRACT
Ahad Ha'am has been described by David Vital not only as the 'sage of Zionism'. In order to establish a Jewish state, Zionists had to reject central tenets of Herder's and Ahad Ha'am's thinking. On a demographic level, communities dispersed as the Jewish population moved from country to city, from enclosed community to urban anonymity, from European shtetl to roomy America and elsewhere. In his Zionist vision, Ahad Ha'am is haunted by the impression that those traditional elements preserving the Jewish people in the past might not hold any longer, a recognition that leads him to ponder the key role of spatial, geographic Palestine in modern times. A Jewish elite living on the ancient land and breathing its history would create a spiritual centre, one that would inject new substance into Jewish identity everywhere. In the case of the Jewish people, this means that literature, for Ha'am, where language is truly renewed should be preoccupied with philosophical and contemplative attitudes.
