In this talk, I shall present some of the writings of Asher Ginzberg (1856-1927), one of the leading fin de siècle Zionist thinkers, and one of the most influential writers of the Modern Hebrew linguistic revival. Ginzberg wrote under the pen-name of Ahad Ha'am. The literal Hebrew meaning of the name is "One of the People", and it was indeed his intention to stand up for Jewish traditions and what we might perhaps call "common-sense values" at a time of massive upheaval in the Eastern European Jewish milieu, when a wide variety of bold social experiments were being contemplated and - in the case of the Zionist enterprise for one - undertaken. Ahad Ha'am saw himself as the spokesman for a gradualist "Cultural Zionism" in opposition to what he saw as the rash promises of political Zionism at the turn of the century.
Besides taking up a position of opposition to the the political "hotheads", Ginzberg had words for the linguistic purists who pushed for a return to the pure Biblical roots of Hebrew, thus at best neglecting, and at worst negating the linguistic developments and cultural achievements of the diaspora. I shall show how he relates to these characters, while at the same time showing how many of his own assumptions are just as much deeply rooted in the Romantic and Orientalist thinking of the nineteenth century.