[The Time Has Come (1906)] [91]
[“When Messiah Comes” (1907)] [114]
[A Spiritual Centre (1907)] [120]
[The Supremacy of Reason (1904)] 162
[Judaism and the Gospels (1910)] 223
[Index] 254
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
The present volume of translations from the Hebrew of Achad Ha-Am[[1]] differs in character from the volume of Selected Essays published in 1912 by the Jewish Publication Society of America. The earlier selection was confined, by the express desire of the publishing Society, to essays dealing with the broader aspects of Judaism and Jewish thought; essays of a more polemical character, in which the author has defined his attitude to the modern Jewish national movement, were designedly omitted. Of the ten further essays included in the present selection, only two belong to the former category, and these have been placed, out of their chronological order, at the end. The other eight essays all deal with one aspect or another of Zionism, and they form a series which will enable the English reader who is interested in the Zionist movement to follow its history under the guidance of one who is at the same time among its staunchest pillars and its most unsparing critics. The first[[2]] of the eight—which is also the first essay written by Achad Ha-Am—belongs to the early years of the Jewish national movement, when the Zionist Organisation was unborn, and the very name “Zionism” uninvented. The last of the eight—and the most recent of Achad Ha-Am’s essays, for the war and ill-health have made him silent of recent years—records his impressions of the practical results achieved by Zionism in Palestine up to 1911.
As the background of these essays is for the most part unfamiliar to English readers, it will not be out of place to give here a brief sketch of the phases through which the Zionist movement has passed, in so far as that is necessary for a proper understanding of the criticisms and allusions in the essays themselves.