The Ashkenazi Revolution

114modern one. His call was for rest and calmness, to refrain from taking newpaths and to continue the small and moderate activism that widens culturalhorizons. Most of all: Ahad ha’Am said that there is time and there is noneed to hurry, there is limitless time for the “preparation of the hearts” andfor introspection. There is no need for panic. Each man can, in general,remain in his own tent and residence. Ahad ha’Am brought, to the sect ofthe Enlightenment and working people, what they sought and exactly whatthey desired, to remain on the well-worn path and to avoid revolutionaryways. But Ahad ha’Am married this avoidance with a grasp of dominationand aggressiveness, which fought political Zionism. The doctrine of Ahadha’Am embodied all that the moderate intellectual, and Hebrew author,admired. It contained rest and calmness, but it also contained attacks andaggressiveness against those who demanded change and innovation. Thiswas a fuzzy “spirituality” that made it possible to avoid real, and concrete,tasks and, at the same time, it was a fierce and merciless war against theJewish street and in defense of the essential pillars of the Hebrew authorand the moderate intellectual.3Mendele and Ahad ha’Am complimented each other as builders of the ruleof the New Hebrew Literature, but its final power was acquired by a thirdauthor, Hayim Nahman Bialik who, within his category, the category ofpoets, was greater than the other two. Within the writings of Bialik ishidden a power much greater than that which is hidden within the writingsof Ahad ha’Am or the prose of Mendele. Bialik was greater than both ofthem as a craftsman of words and as a craftsman in general. His writingsfortified, for Hebrew Literature, the final status that it has held until today.Bialik was a classic product of the rabbinical world, the finest fruit of theday schools and the great yeshivas. Had he been born at a different time,he would have been one of the great rabbinical commentators, and perhapseven the author of prayers and religious poetry. But it so happened thatBialik was born in the generation of emancipation, secularism and thecollapse of religious life. His world is a split and divided world, with halfof it in the rabbinical world and the other half in the reality that estranged