Countering Zionism: Agudat Yisrael Between Religious Affiliations and the Nation

• In Event: Who Speaks for the Jews? Unconventional Claims about the Jews as Religion and Nation

Abstract

Founded in 1912 in Kattowitz, the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael aimed at uniting traditionalist leaders from Europe and Palestine in one overarching organization. Among the primary motivations of its founders were to combat the advancing march of secularization within European Jewry, and to challenge modern forms of Jewish group formations, particularly Zionism. Historians, in their attempts to define Agudat Yisrael, have wavered between the labels “anti-Zionist” and “non-Zionist.” The standard narrative imagines a transition from a strong anti-Zionist outlook towards less hostile attitudes and, eventually, to a willingness to cooperate with Zionism. Some scholars went so far as to claim that the movement became gradually more “Zionist” during the first decades of its existence.
Departing from these conventional approaches, this paper looks closely at the tensions between religious and national affiliations within the movement’s platform and ideological writings. Rather than assuming that Agudah leaders denied national affiliations any significance in the first years of the movement’s existence before gradually turning to nationalism, I argue that those loyalties and their interplay with other group affiliations played a significant role from early on in the movement’s history. Based on a close reading of the movement’s press, as well as an analysis of internal debates and correspondences with religious Zionists and the World Zionist Organization, I explore the different strategies that Agudists employed in the struggles with their political adversaries. Attempting to counter the secularizing influences and political power of the Zionist movement, Agudists created and promoted new group formations.

author

• Daniel Mahla, Columbia University