Cultural Zionism

Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginsberg)
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, working in his house in the Talpiot neighborhood.

Cultural Zionism (Hebrew: צִיּוֹנוּת רוּחָנִית, translit. Tsiyonut ruchanit, trans. 'Spiritual Zionism') is a strain of Zionism that focused on creating a center in historic Palestine with its own secular Jewish culture and national history, including language and historical roots, rather than other Zionist ideas such as Political Zionism. The founder of Cultural Zionism is Asher Ginsberg, better known as Ahad Ha'am. With his secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Eretz Israel/Palestine, he confronted Theodor Herzl. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ha'am strove for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews".[1]

  1. ^ Ahad Ha'am, The Jewish State and Jewish Problem, trans. from the Hebrew by Leon Simon c 1912, Jewish Publication Society of America, Essential Texts of Zionism [1]