The Mechanism of Innovation and Integration in the Chain of Tradition

Ahad Ha-‘Am, Berdichevsky, Bialik, and Golomb

Abstract

Ahad Ha-‘Am (1856–1927), Micha Josef Berdichevsky (1865–1921), Chaim Nahman Bialik (1873–1934), and Abraham Golomb (1888–1982) all tried, each in their own way, to include secular and national modern content as an integral part of Jewish tradition. Since they were all well aware that some of these contents were innovations in this tradition, they relied on the dynamic model of the Jewish heritage, which states that our tradition is an inheritance that is passed down and modified from generation to generation. This article focuses on a specific common denominator in their presentation of this model: today, new content may well be considered to be a deviation from the traditional past, but in the future, it will itself become part of tradition, because by then it will already be perceived as an integral part of the continuous past