page_title: Ahad Ha'am
section_title: Political influence
hierarchical_section_title: Ahad Ha'am / Political influence
caption_attribution_description: English: Ahad Ha’am’s proposal to the Paris Peace Conference
context_page_description: Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name Ahad Ha'am, was a Hebrew essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism. With his secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel, he confronted Theodor Herzl. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ha'am strived for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews".
context_section_description: Ahad Ha'am's influence in the political realm can be ascribed to his charismatic personality and spiritual authority rather than his official functions. For the "Democratic Fraction," a party that espoused cultural Zionism (founded in 1901 by Chaim Weizmann), he served  "as a symbol for the movement's culturalists, the faction's most coherent totem. He was, however, not – certainly not to the extent to which members of this group, especially Chaim Weizmann, would later contend – its chief ideological influence."
  Ahad Ha'am was a talented negotiator. In this role he was engaged during the "language controversy" that accompanied the founding of the Haifa Technikum (today: the Technion) and in the negotiations culminating in the Balfour Declaration.
caption: Ahad Ha’am's proposal to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
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