Va-yo'el Moshe : The Most Anti-Zionist and Anti-Israeli

Jewish Text in Modern Times

Menachem Keren-Kratz

Jewish Quarterly Review, Volume 113, Number 3, Summer 2023, pp.

479-505 (Article)

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2023.a904508

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/904508

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https://muse.jhu.edu/related_content?type=article&id=904508
 T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R L Y R E V I E W , Vol. 113, No. 3 (Summer 2023): 479–506

Va-­yo’el Moshe: The Most Anti-­Zionist

and Anti-­Israeli Jewish Text
in Modern Times
M E N A C H E M K E R E N -­K R AT Z

INTRODUCTION

F O R M O R E T H A N A H U N D R E D T H O U S A N D Satmar Hasidic Jews and

even a greater number of members of the radical Haredi groups that are
associated with ­organizations such as the Edah Haredit and Neturei
Karta in Israel and the Central Rabbinical Congress of Amer­i­ca (CRC,
also known as Hit’aḥadut Ha-­Rabanim), Va-­yo’el Moshe has become a ca-
nonical text. The book, written by Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar
Rebbe, is taught in special classes, both in the yeshivas and in i­ ndependent
study groups, and hundreds of rabbis around the world cite the book
regularly during their sermons at public events. Excerpts from the book
can be found quoted and interpreted in pamphlets that are distributed
­every weekend in dozens of synagogues worldwide and sent by mail to
thousands of subscribers. Va-­yo’el Moshe inspires vari­ous radical groups,
such as Neturei Karta, whose provocative demonstrations—­such as their
participation in protests alongside radical Muslims who seek the annihila-
tion of Israel—­challenge, and aggravate, Jews in Israel and abroad.
The ideology expressed in Va-­yo’el Moshe can be reduced to two funda-
mental princi­ples. First, it claims that Zionism in general, and the State of
Israel in par­tic­u­lar, is the worst sin imaginable. This sin was so grave that
God’s only pos­si­ble response to it was the Holocaust. Second, it claims that
only a small group of Jews—­namely, ­those who accept the ideas that Te-
itelbaum expressed in Va-­yo’el Moshe—­are “true Jews,” while all o­ thers who
call themselves Jews are imposters who are ­either false or flawed. By la-
beling not merely secular, assimilated, Reform, and Conservative Jews, but
even religious and Haredi Jews, as “fake Jews,” the book suggests that
­there is no real need to consider their rabbis’ ideological stands or halakhic
rulings.

The Jewish Quarterly Review (Summer 2023)

Copyright © 2023 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. —-1
All rights reserved. —0

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 480 JQR 113.3 (2023)

The Satmar Rebbe’s anti-­Zionist and anti-­modern ideology presented in

Va-­yo’el Moshe and in many other sources has been the subject of a ­great
deal of research.1 Some of t­hese studies focus on specific aspects such as
the so-­called Three Oaths midrash (bKet 111a),2 the ban on modern He-
brew,3 or its unique eschatological concepts.4 Consequently, this essay ­will

1. For example, Norman Lamm, “The Ideology of the Neturei Karta, according
to the Satmarer Version,” Tradition 12.2 (1971): 38–53; Allan Nadler, “Piety and
Politics: The Case of the Satmar Rebbe,” Modern Judaism 31.2 (1982): 135–52; Zvi
Jonathan Kaplan, “Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, Zionism, and Hungarian Ultra-­
Orthodoxy,” Modern Judaism 24.2 (2004): 165–78; David N. Myers, “ ‘Com-
manded War’: Three Chapters in the ‘Military’ History of Satmar Hasidism,”
Journal of the American Acad­emy of Religion 81.2 (2013): 311–56; David [S]orotz-
kin, “Building the Earthly and Destroying the Heavenly: The Satmar Rabbi and
the Radical Orthodox School of Thought,” in The Land of Israel in 20th ­Century
Jewish Thought, ed. A. Ravitsky (Hebrew; Jerusalem 2004), 133–67; Sorotzkin,
Orthodoxy and Modern Disciplination: The Production of the Jewish Tradition in Europe in
Modern Times (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 2011), 374–420; Ḥanokh Ben-­Pazi, “ ‘Al ha-­anti-
universaliyut shel ‘ha­-­ra’ayon ha-­tsioni’: Nekudat ha-­mabat ha-­satmarit shel ha-­
rav Yoel Teitelbaum,” Ha-­Ḥinukh u-­sevivo 29 (2017): 291–304; Shaul Magid,
“American Jewish Fundamentalism: Ḥabad, Satmar, ArtScroll,” in Piety and Rebel-
lion: Essays in Ḥasidism (Brighton, Mass., 2019).
2. For example, Yitzhak Kraus, “Shalosh ha-­shevu‘ot ke-­yesod le-­mishnato ha-­
anti-tsionit shel ha-­rabi mi-­Satmar” (M.A. thesis, Hebrew University of Balti-
more, 1990); Kraus, “‘Yehadut ve-­tsionut—­shenaim shelo yelkhu yahdav’: Mishnato
ha-­radikalit shel R. Yoel Teitelbaum ha-­admor mi-­Satmar,” Ha-­Tsionut 22 (2001):
37–60; Refael Kadosh, “Extremist Religious Philosophy: The Radical Doctrines
of the Satmar Rebbe” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cape Town, 2011); Aviezer
Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago, 1996),
211–34.
3. For example, A. Fun Volozin, “Haside Satmar,” in Fifty to Forty-­Eight, ed. A.
Ofir (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1999), 523–34; Oded Shekhter, “Leshonam ha-­tame’
she-­kra’uhu ‘ivrit: Ben leshon ha-­kodesh ve-­ha-­aramit—­le-­geneologiyah shel ha-­
‘ivrit,” Mita’am 2 (2005): 123–38; Lewis Glinert and Yossef Shilhav, “Holy Land,
Holy Language: A Study of an Ultraorthodox Jewish Ideology,” Language in Soci-
ety 20.1 (1991): 59–86; Ḥaim Be’er, “From the Language of G-­d to the Language
of the D ­ evil: On the Strug­gle of Orthodoxy against Hebrew,” BGU Review 1
(2005): 128–44; Steffen Krogh, “The Foundations of Written Yiddish among
Haredi Satmar Jews,” in Yiddish Language Structures, ed. M. Aptroot and B. Han-
sen (Berlin, 2014), 63–103; Ariel Evan Mayse, “The Calf Awakens: Language,
Zionism, and Heresy in Twentieth-­Century American Hasidism,” in Kabbalah in
Amer­ic­ a: Ancient Lore in the New World, ed. B. Ogren (Boston, 2020), 269–91.
4. For example, David Sorotzkin, “ ‘Ge’ulah shel ḥoshekh ve-­afelah’: Rabi Yoel
Teitelbaum ha-­rabi mi-­Satmar,” in The Gdoilim: Leaders Who S ­ haped the Israeli Haredi
Jewry, ed. B. Brown and N. Leon (Hebrew; Jerusalem 2017), 371–401; Motti
Inbari, Jewish Radical Ultra-­Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity, Zionism and W ­ omen’s
-1— Equality (New York, 2016); Eli Gurfinkel, “Netzaḥ Yisra’el la-­Maharal mi-­Prag u-­
0— tefisat ha-­ge’ulah shel RIT (rabi Yoel Teitelbaum) mi-­Satmar,” Daat 78 (2015):

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 481

only summarize the greater horizon of the work as a w ­ hole, while focus-
ing on the following questions: What is the history of Jewish anti-­Zionist
texts prior to Teitelbaum’s? Who was he and what was his motivation for
writing the book? What religious princi­ples support the book’s ­theses?
What was the Jewish public’s, and particularly the religious leaders’, re-
action to the book? And how and why did it eventually become a canoni-
cal text within Jewish Orthodoxy’s most radical wing, which in this essay
is named Extreme Orthodoxy?5
The essay’s main claim is that the book achieved canonicity not by vir-
tue of its ideas, since they had been voiced in many previously published
texts, but b
­ ecause of its social and p
­ olitical role. Va-­yo’el Moshe seeks to mark
a clear boundary between mainstream Orthodoxy and Teitelbaum’s Ex-
treme Orthodox worldview. The book not only explains the theoretical dif-
ferences between ­these two camps but also translates them into halakhic
commands—­and this transformation is what turned it into a canonical text
among the groups dependent on such separation to establish their distinct
identity.

EARLY ANTI-­Z IONIST TEXTS

Although Va-­yo’el Moshe is prob­ably the best-­known anti-­Zionist text, it is

by no means the first or only one. The gathering of the First Zionist Con-
gress in Basel in 1897 drove several Orthodox activists, including rabbis
Shlomo Teplitzky, Meir Rosenfeld, Toresh Doberish, and Rabbi Eliyahu
Akiva Rabinowitz, to publish their own anti-­Zionist texts.6 The most in-
fluential publication of that period, Or la-­yesharim (Light to the honest
ones), was issued by yet other rabbis, Shlomo Zalman Landa and Yosef
Rabinowitz.7 In the ensuing years more such works appeared, adding to

77–91; Menachem Keren-­Kratz, “Redemption and Anti-­redemption in the Writ-

ing of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum—­the Satmar Rebbe following the Holocaust, the
Establishment of Israel, and the Six Days War,” in Zionism: Between Normalization
and Messianism, ed. A. Yedidya and S. Rosmarin (Hebrew; Jerusalem 2021),
109–43.
5. For a more comprehensive analy­sis of Teitelbaum’s radical anti-­Zionism, see
Sorotzkin, Orthodoxy, 378–420.
6. Shlomo Teplitzky, Magen ha-­emunah (Berdyczów, 1898); Aharon Lewit, Sefer
‘al ha-­tsiyonit (Warsaw, 1899); Eliyahu Akiva Rabinowitz, Sefer tsion be-­mishpat
(Warsaw, 1899); Meir Ha-­Cohen Rosenfeld, Migdal Bavel ha-­ḥadash (Warsaw,
1900).
7. Shelomo Zalman Landa and Yosef Rabonowitz, Sefer or la-­yesharim (War-
saw, 1900). On this work, see Dalia Levi, “ ‘Or la-­ yesharim’—­ manifest anti
tsioni—­u-­teguvot ahadot,” Ha-­Tsiyonut 19 (1995): 31–65; Yair Shifman, “Mi-­
‘shivat tsion’ ‘ad ‘Or la-­yesharim’: Hitgabshut ha-­‘emdah ha-­ḥaredit klape ha-­ —-1
tsiyonut ha-­medinit,” Tsiyonut ve-­ḥinukh le-­tsiyonut 7 (1998): 89–108; Yosef Salmon, —0

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 482 JQR 113.3 (2023)

the reasons why Zionism was not only a g­ reat sin but also a p
­ olitical m
­ istake
and a corrupt movement.8 Orthodox publications ­were accompanied by
nonreligious ones, the majority of which ­were issued by the Bund—­the sec-
ular Jewish socialist movement.9 The religious debate over Zionism and
the Zionist movement also spread over the pages of the Orthodox monthly
magazine Ha-­peles, published in Poltava by its chief rabbi Eliyahu Akiva
Rabinowitz, who was once a keen Zionist but ­later on renounced his ­earlier
views and became an anti-­Zionist activist.10
Most of the rabbis in Poland joined Agudat Israel. This international
Haredi movement was established in 1912 but began its activities only a­ fter
World War I. In Poland, Agudat Israel began operating in 1916 and be-
came a p ­ olitical party that took part both in municipal and national poli-
11
tics. Seeking to prevent the Land of Israel from being settled only by
Zionists, the movement encouraged its members to s­ettle t­here and as-
sisted them by allocating immigration certificates, collecting funds, pur-
chasing land, and establishing preparatory camps for the potential
settlers. Consequently, in many cases Agudat Israel needed to cooperate
with Ha-­Mizrahi—­the religious-­Zionist movement ­popular among Or-
thodox Jews—­against the secular parties.12 The result was a cessation of
Jewish anti-­Zionist propaganda both in the USSR and Poland. Even Or-

Dat ve-­tsiyonut: Imutim rishonim (Jerusalem, 1990), 252–313; Sorotzkin, Orthodoxy,

382–90.
8. Dobrish Toresh, Bar Hadiya o Ḥalom Herzel (Warsaw, 1901); Ya‘acov Lifshitz,
Ma’amar devarim ke-­ktavam (Berlin, 1902); Ephraim Eliyahu Lifshits, Sefer higayon
lev ‘ivri (Piotrków Trybunalski, 1902); Avraham Barukh Steinberg, Da‘at ha-­
rabanim (Warsaw, 1902); Steinberg, Kol kore’: Hu kontres aḥaron (Vilnius, 1903);
Mordehai Kravinski, Der futerner oyven (Piotrków Trybunalski, 1904).
9. For example, Shemuel Gozhanski, Der tsionizm (London, 1903). On the
Bund’s anti-­Zionist stands, see, for example, Gertrud Pickhan, “Jewish, Socialist,
Anti-­Zionist: The Bund and Its Transnational Relations,” in Transnational Strug­
­ entury, ed. D.
gles for Recognition: New Perspectives on Civil Society since the Twentieth C
Gosewinkel and D. Rucht (New York, 2017), 161–83.
10. Ya‘acov Barnai, “Ha-­temurah be-‘­emdat ha-­rav Rabinovits mi-­Poltava la-­
tsiyonut,” Sinai 36 (1973): 272–78; Yosef Salmon, “Rabbi Eliyahu Akiva Ra­bino­
vich of Poltava, Harbinger of Jewish Orthodoxy in Imperial Rus­sia” (Hebrew),
Shevut 11 (2003): 27–39.
11. Gershon C. Bacon, The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939
(Jerusalem, 1996).
12. Gershon C. Bacon, “Imitation, Rejection, Cooperation: Agudat Yisrael and
the Zionist Movement in Interwar Poland,” in The Emergence of Modern Jewish Poli-
tics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern ­Europe, ed. Z. Gitelman (Pittsburgh, 2003),
85–94; Daniel Mahla, “No Trinity: The Tripartite Relations between Agudat Yis-
-1— rael, the Mizrahi Movement, and the Zionist ­Organization,” Journal of Israeli His-
0— tory 34.2 (2015): 117–40.

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 483

thodox leaders who openly opposed Zionism, most notably the two rabbis
Shalom Dov-­Ber Schneerson of Lubavitch and Ḥaim Soloveitchik of
Brisk (Brest-­Litovsk), refrained from expressing their anti-­Zionist world­
views in print and settled for a few public letters.13
It was in that time that anti-­Zionist agitation moved into Hungarian
speaking territories. Although most of Hungary’s rabbis opposed Zionism,
no anti-­Zionist work was published t­here prior to the First World War.
Following Hungary’s defeat in the war, some two-­thirds of its former ter-
ritory was annexed to other countries. T ­ hese territories included Transyl-
vania, which was annexed to Romania, and Slovakia, PKR (Podkarpatská
Rus, also known as Karpatorus or Carpathian Ruthenia), which ­were an-
nexed to the newly formed state of ­Czechoslovakia—­areas in which most
of Hungary’s Extreme Orthodox rabbis lived and in which the objection
not only to Zionism but also to the religious movements of Ha-­Mizrahi and
Agudat Israel was the highest.
In 1921, Rabbi Issachar Ber Kahan of Sângeorgiu de Pădure (Erdősz-
entgyörgy), Transylvania, published an anti-­Zionist pamphlet titled Shav
lakhem mashkime kum (Nothing to you early risers).14 The pamphlet, which
is only a few pages long, discussed the settlement of the Land of Israel in
light of the Three Oaths midrash. According to this talmudic text, God
swore the p ­ eople of Israel to not provoke the gentiles and not hasten the
coming of the redemption. The third oath was with the gentiles, whom God
swore to not oppress the p ­ eople of Israel “too much.” Throughout the gen-
erations, the Three Oaths midrash was the main religious justification to
object to or abstain from the Jewish return to the Land of Israel.15
In 1926, Rabbi Shaul Brakh of Kosice, ­Czechoslovakia, published his
commentary on the tract of Avot titled Avot ‘al banim (­Fathers on sons).16
The book’s long introduction pre­sents Brakh’s criticism on vari­ous issues
concerning the conflict between the modern and the traditional world, and
expresses the author’s strict anti-­Zionist views. Another anti-­Zionist com-
pilation titled Tikun ‘olam (Repairing the world) was published in 1936 on
behalf of Rabbi Ḥaim Elazar Shapira—­the Munkácser Rebbe—­the most
famous anti-­Zionist activist during the interwar period.17 The book takes
anti-­Zionism for granted and focuses on the objection of the Hungarian

13. Shalom Ratsabi, “Anti-­tsiyonut u-­metaḥ meshiḥi be-­haguto shel rav Sha-
lom Dover,” Ha-­Tsionut 20 (1996): 77–101.
14. Issachar Ber Kahan, Shav lakhem mashkime kum (Bistrita, 1921).
15. On the impact of the three oaths in Jewish history, see Ravitzky, Messian-
ism, 211–34.
16. Shaul Brakh, Avot ‘al banim (Seini, 1926). —-1
17. Moshe Goldstein, Sefer tikun ‘olam (Munkacz, 1936). —0

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 484 JQR 113.3 (2023)

rabbis to Agudat Israel expressed at a rabbinical assembly held in 1922 in

the town of Chop (Csap), which Shapira o­ rganized and headed. In the
same year, Rabbi Yeshayahu Shpitz of Trnava, C ­ zechoslovakia, also pub-
lished an anti-­Zionist pamphlet titled Tsave yeshu’ot (Order salvations).18
In 1939, following a twenty-­five-­year pause, Rabbi Elḥanan Wasserman
of Baranavichy (Baranowitz), Poland, published an anti-­Zionist book ti-
tled Ikveta de-­meshiḥa (The messiah’s footprints).19 Wasserman, who
headed the town’s yeshiva and was a known activist in Agudat Israel, ex-
pressed his opposition to Jewish nationalism and claimed that Jews
should remain in the diaspora ­until God decides to redeem them.
In 1948 Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel published anonymously the
first anti-­Zionist text a­ fter the Holocaust, which was titled Mi natan Yisra’el
la-­bozezim (Who gave Israel to the looters).20 In 1960 Weissmandel pub-
lished Min ha-­metsar (From the straits), which dealt with the incompetence
of the Zionist ­organization to save Jews, and particularly Orthodox Jews,
during the Holocaust.21 Weissmandel was the best-­known Haredi authority
in the field of rescue during the Holocaust, which gave his publications a
good deal of credibility. His writings, and the public impact they prompted,
­were a basis for a new Haredi literary category that laid the blame for the
Holocaust and its terrible outcomes at the feet of the Zionists.22
Following the establishment of Israel, the conflicts between the state and
the more radical ele­ments of the Haredi community reached their peak,
and anti-­Zionist and anti-­Israeli texts ­were published regularly in Neturei
Karta’s weekly journal.23 One of the journal’s prominent editors, Moshe
Ḥaim Ephraim Bloch, compiled dozens of anti-­Zionist letters for publica-
tion in the journal as well as the 1957 book titled Mi natan le-­meshisa Ya‘akov
ve-­Yisra’el la-­vozezim? (Who abhorred Israel and gave Jacob to the loot-

18. Yeshayahu Shpits, Tsave yeshu’ot (Satu Mare, 1936).

19. Elchanan Wasserman, Ikveta de-­meshiḥa (Yiddish; New York, 1939 / He-
brew; Jerusalem, 1942).
20. Michael Dov Weissmandel, Mi natan Yisra’el la-­bozezim (n.p., 1948). The
first to refer this text to Weissmandel was Moshe Schoenfeld, who included it in
his own book, Serufe ha-­kivshanim ma’ashimim (Bnei Brak, 1975).
21. Michael Dov Weissmandel, Min ha-­metsar (New York, 1960).
22. For example: Dina Porat, “ ‘Shutafav shel Amalek’: Ha’ashamot ha-­ḥaredim
ba-­arets be-­shenot ha-­shemonim klape ha-­tsionut be-­tekufat ha-­sho’ah,” Ha-­
tsionut 19 (1995): 295–324; Haim Nirel, Haredim and the Holocaust: Ultra-­Orthodox
Accusations of Zionist Responsibility for the Holocaust (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1997).
23. Menachem Keren-­Kratz, “Walls of Separation: Neturei Karta’s Magazines
-1— 1944–1958” (Hebrew), Kesher 50 (2018): 71–88.
0—

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 485

ers?).24 Between 1959 and 1965 Bloch also published a three-­volume set
of anti-­Zionist texts titled Dovev sifte yeshenim (Make the lips of the sleep
speak).25
Reviewing this long tradition of anti-­Zionist texts, one can understand
that Va-­yo’el Moshe was a continuation of an already established tradition,
yet this book had a far greater impact not only at the time it was published
but also during the ensuing ­decades. To understand why Va-­yo’el Moshe
gained so much influence, one must first comprehend the Hungarian con-
text of Extreme Orthodoxy. The following section delineates the establish-
ment of this version of Orthodoxy and its restoration in Amer­i­ca ­after the
Holocaust.

EXTREME ORTHODOXY—­H UNGARY’S

SINGULAR RELIGIOUS STRAIN

A note on the term Extreme Orthodoxy. Scholars of Jewish history and

thought have referred to the most radical religious Jewish groups by vari­
ous names, including ultra-­Orthodox, zealots, extremists, fundamental-
ists, radicals, and combinations of t­hese terms. Samuel Heilman, Kimmy
Caplan and Emanuel Sivan have used “ultra-­Orthodoxy” to describe the
entire Haredi society,26 while Michael Silber and Moshe Samet have
used it to label only its most radical groups.27 Eliezer Goldman, David
Sorotzkin, and Motti Inbari employ the terms “radical,” “radical Ortho-
doxy,” and even radical “ultra-­Orthodoxy.”28 Solomon Poll used the term

24. Ḥaim Bloch, Mi natan li-­meshisah Yaʻakov ve-­Yisra’el le-­vozezim? (Brooklyn,

1957).
25. Ḥaim Bloch, Dovev sifte yeshenim, vols. 1–3 (New York, 1959–65). Shmuel
Weingarten claimed that some of the letters Bloch published w ­ ere forged: Wein­
garten, Mikhtavim anti-­tsiyonim me’et gedole Yisra’el [. . .] mezuyafim hem (Jerusalem,
1956); Weingarten, Mikhtavim mezuyafim neged ha-­tsiyonut ʻal shemam shel gedole Yis-
ra’el (Jerusalem, 1981).
26. Emmanuel Sivan and Kimmy Caplan, eds., Hishtalvut be-lo’ temi’ah (Jerusa-
lem, 2003), 225–26; Samuel Heilman, Defenders of the Faith (New York, 1992),
11–12.
27. Michel K. Silber, “The Emergence of Ultra-­Orthodoxy: The Invention of a
Tradition,” in The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era, ed. J. Wert-
heimer (New York, 1993), 23–84; Moshe Samet, Chapters in the History of Ortho-
doxy (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2005), 30–31.
28. Eliezer Goldman, Dani Statman, and Avi Sagi, eds., Expositions and Inqui-
ries: Jewish Thought in Past and Pre­sent (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1997), 152; Ravitzky,
Messianism; Sorotzkin, “Building the Earthly,” 133–67; Motti Inbari, “Messianic
Activism in the Work and Thought of Chaim Elazar Shapira, the Munkacser
Rebbe, between Two World Wars” (Hebrew), Cathedra 149 (2013): 77–104. —-1
—0

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 486 JQR 113.3 (2023)

“ultrareligious,”29 Shalom Rosenberg and Charles Liebman speak of ex-

treme Orthodoxy,30 while Menachem Friedman, Gideon Aran, and Adam
Ferziger prefer the term “zealous” or “religious zealotry.”31 Although
­these prob­lems ­were perceived by scholars such as Yosef Salmon, Michael
Silber, and Shalom Rosenberg, no attempt has thus far been made to ad-
dress them.32 I prefer the term “Extreme Orthodoxy” first b ­ ecause it has
a Hebrew equivalent, kitsoni, and also b ­ ecause unlike the prefix “ultra”
it suggests a superlative degree of comparison that corresponds to the
way ­these groups consider themselves, not as better Jews but as the only
“true” Jews.

* * *

In 1867 Hungarian Jews ­were awarded equal civil rights. Shortly there-
after a general national conference was summoned to draft regulations for
the semiautonomous Jewish communities and to form a single representa-
tive Jewish body. However, ideological conflicts between the representa-
tives of the Orthodox and the Neolog (i.e., the Hungarian Reform
movement) communities thwarted the establishment of a single Jewish
­organization, and Hungarian Jewry was divided into three major groups.
Consequently, the Orthodox, the Neolog, and the Status Quo (namely, the
communities that joined neither the Orthodox nor the Neolog ­organizations)
­were awarded the right to establish their own separate communities and
to be represented by their own ­organization.33

29. Solomon Poll, The Hasidic Community of Williamsburg (New York, 1969), 3.
30. Shalom Rosenberg, “Masoret ve-­ortodoksiyah,” in Orthodox Judaism: New
Perspectives, ed. Y. Salmon, A. Ravitzky, and A. Ferziger (Hebrew; Jerusalem,
2006), 70; Meir Litvak and Ora Limor, ed., Religious Radicalism (Hebrew; Jerusa-
lem, 2008), 27; Motti Inbari, “The Modesty Campaigns of Rabbi Amram Blau
and the Neturei Karta Movement, 1938–1974,” Israel Studies 17.1 (2012):
105–29.
31. Menachem Friedman, “Religious Zealotry in Israeli Society,” in On Ethnic
and Religious Diversity in Israel, ed. S. Poll and E. Kraus (Ramat Gan, 1975), 91–
111; Gideon Aran, “Kana’ut datit: Hebetim sotsiologim,” in Rule of Law in a Polar-
­ egal, Social, and Cultural Aspects, ed. E. Yinon (Hebrew; Jerusalem,
ized Society: L
1999), 63; Adam Ferziger, “Ha-­kanay ha-­dati ke-­posek halakhah: Ha-­rav Ḥaim
Sofer,” in Litvak and Limor, Religious Radicalism, 85.
32. Yosef Salmon, “Ha-­ortodoksiyah ha-­yehudit be-­mizraḥ Eropa: Kavim le-­
aliyatah,” in Orthodox Judaism, 367n22; Silber, “The Emergence of Ultra-­
Orthodoxy,” 299–300n4; Rosenberg, “Masoret ve-­ortodoksiyah,” 75.
33. Jacob Katz, A ­House Divided: Orthodoxy and Schism in Nineteenth-­Century
-1— ­Central ­European Jewry (Hanover, N.H., 1998). Hungarian Neology’s religious re-
0— forms ­were less radical than ­those of Germany. See Howard Nathan Lupovitch,

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 487

A ­decade or two ­after the Orthodox/Neolog separation, another split

began to appear, this time within the Orthodox camp itself, into two dis-
tinct factions. The larger one was that of non-­Hasidic Orthodox Jews,
most of whom originated from the German-speaking countries to the west
of Hungary and w ­ ere thus called Ashkenazim (meaning Germans). Al-
though strictly observing the halakhah, they w ­ ere receptive to modernity
and con­temporary culture, acquired broad education, embraced a more
con­temporary appearance, and by and large belonged to the higher socio-
economic strata. They w ­ ere centered in Hungary’s western counties in an
area the Jews called “Oberland.” The smaller faction was located in the
eastern counties, also known as “Unterland.” Most of its members origi-
nated in nearby Galicia, shunned modernity, w ­ ere poorly educated, and
belonged to a lower socioeconomic stratum, and many of them took on
Hasidism.
It is within this second group that a new and radical version of Ortho-
doxy developed, one that gave Hungarian Orthodoxy its unique flavor.34
Extreme Orthodoxy’s leaders held a hard line not only against the non-­
Orthodox but also against Oberland’s mainstream Orthodoxy, which they
condemned as too lenient and compromising. Although participating in the
Hungarian Orthodox Bureau, Extreme Orthodox leaders presented an ag-
gressive ­political opposition to the ruling Ashkenazi majority.
Before World War I Extreme Orthodoxy constituted only a small group
among Hungarian Orthodoxy, which was dominated by its mainstream
leaders. This, however, was not the case in PKR and Transylvania. In t­ hese
two territories that ­were annexed to ­Czechoslovakia and Romania, the Ex-
treme Orthodox comprised a far larger portion of the Jewish population.
Seeking to fulfill their separatist agenda, Extreme Orthodox leaders sought
to distinguish themselves and their followers from the more lenient main-
stream Orthodoxy, creating the social framework of an enclave within an
enclave.35
Consequently, while most eastern ­European, and even many Hungar-
ian, rabbis joined Agudat Israel, Extreme Orthodox rabbis, among them
Yoel Teitelbaum, banned the movement and accused its leaders of being
overly compromising and modern and openly cooperating with the Z ­ ionist

“Neolog: Reforming Judaism in a Hungarian Milieu,” Modern Judaism 40.3 (2020):

327–54.
34. Menachem Keren-­Kratz, “Maramaros, Hungary—­the Cradle of Extreme
Orthodoxy,” Modern Judaism 35.2 (2015): 147–74.
35. On the stands of radical Hungarian rabbis in ­these territories, see Men-
achem Keren-­Kratz, “Zealotry Has Many F ­ aces: The Views and Modes of Op-
eration of Four Hungarian Rabbis” (Hebrew), Moreshet Yisra’el 19.2 (2021): —-1
321–48. —0

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 488 JQR 113.3 (2023)

movement.36 As a result of the Extreme Orthodox ultraconservative world­

views only a small number emigrated to other countries before the Holo-
caust. Consequently, only a handful of Extreme Orthodox Jews survived,
and ­after the Holocaust the ­whole concept of Extreme Orthodoxy was on
the brink of extinction. The one person that saved that tradition from total
annihilation was Teitelbaum—­the Satmar Rebbe.

THE REINVENTION OF EXTREME ORTHODOXY IN AMER­I ­C A

Teitelbaum descended from a well-­established Hasidic dynasty.37 His
­father was chief rabbi of Sighet (Máramarossziget), Hungary, a prominent
Hasidic leader and head of a yeshiva, but as the youn­gest son, he was not
destined to succeed him; that right was reserved for his elder b ­ rother
Rabbi Ḥaim Zvi. Following the older ­brother’s untimely death in 1926,
young Teitelbaum expected to replace him and thereby to secure his place
in the f­ amily dynasty a­ fter all. To his disappointment, his own hometown’s
leaders bypassed him and chose his fourteen-­year-­old nephew instead.
From that time onward, he resolved to do every­thing in his power to gain
all the public positions of which he believed he had been deprived. Em-
ploying vari­ous ­political tactics, he waged a six-­year-­long campaign to be
appointed Satmar’s chief rabbi. It took him a further three years of cun-
ning diplomacy to get himself elected to the governing body of the Ortho-
dox Jews in the province of Transylvania.38
Shortly ­after he achieved t­ hese ­political aims, the Holocaust descended.
Much to his congregation’s consternation, he made several attempts to es-
cape. Eventually he fled Satmar in the m ­ iddle of the night, but he was
caught and sent to another ghetto. ­There Teitelbaum boarded the rescue
train ­organized by the Zionist activist Israel Kasztner. A ­ fter a few months’
incarceration in Bergen-­Belsen he was released to Switzerland.39 Soon
thereafter he settled in Jerusalem and established his own Hasidic com-
munity. A ­ fter the institutes he established accumulated tremendous debt,

36. Menachem Keren-­Kratz, “Inclusion versus Exclusion in Intra-­Orthodox

Politics: Between Agudat Israel and Hungarian Orthodoxy,” Modern Judaism 40.2
(2020): 195–226.
37. On Teitelbaum, see Menachem Keren-­Kratz, The Zealot: The Satmar Rebbe—­
Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2020).
38. Menachem Keren-­Kratz, “The Politics of a Religious Enclave: Orthodox
Jews in Interwar Transylvania, Romania,” Modern Judaism 37.3 (2017): 363–91.
39. Menachem Keren-­Kratz, “Hast Thou Escaped and Also Taken Possession?
The Responses of the Satmar Rebbe—­Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum—­and His Follow-
-1— ers to Criticism of His Conduct during and a­ fter the Holocaust,” Dapim: Studies on
0— the Holocaust 28.2 (2014): 97–120.

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 489

Teitelbaum, pursued by his creditors, was forced to travel to the United

States, a country he detested, in hope of raising money to pay his debts.40
Upon his arrival in Amer­i­ca in September 1946, Teitelbaum soon found
that his anti-­Zionist views w
­ ere not well received, especially among the
more established American Orthodox Jews, who w ­ ere for the most part
pro-­Zionist. Consequently, although he raised funds in vari­ous Orthodox
congregations for almost two years, it was not enough to allow him to re-
turn to Palestine and to save his crumbling institutions.41 It was during
that period he discovered that the very same anti-­Zionist views he ex-
pressed in his sermons struck a chord with some Holocaust survivors. His
ultraconservative concepts and anti-­Zionist tirades reminded them of t­ hose
they had heard in their former homes in eastern ­Europe, the ones that no
longer existed. ­These survivors assembled around him, encouraging him
to establish his own congregation in Amer­i­ca. This prompted Teitelbaum
to decide against returning to Palestine, and in 1948 he settled in Williams-
burg, New York.42
During the 1940s some dozen Hasidic rabbis who had e­ ither fled be-
fore the Holocaust or had survived it established their own courts in New
York. Most w ­ ere invited to serve as rabbis in existing congregations of
Jews originating from the same E ­ uropean town (Landsmanshaften). How-
ever, since Teitelbaum forbade his Hasidim to immigrate to Amer­i­ca and
many had perished in the Holocaust, no existing congregation awaited him.
To establish a Hasidic court of his own, not only did he have to compete
with other rabbis, but he had to establish a congregation from scratch.
To succeed in this mission, he had to offer his potential followers a unique
spiritual identity that was not based primarily on mutual geo­graph­i­cal
origins.
To this end Teitelbaum presented himself as the only religious leader
­after the Holocaust still fully committed to Extreme Orthodoxy, the most
separatist, conservative, and anti-­modern eastern E ­ uropean tradition.
However, and without actually admitting it, he also introduced certain
“American novelties” that ­were inconceivable in the very same eastern
­European shtetls he claimed to imitate, for example, introducing secular
studies into the curriculum of the yeshiva he established for boys, found-
ing schools for girls, o­ rganizing summer camps for his community’s
­children, encouraging w ­ omen to work outside the home, and publishing

40. Keren-­Kratz, The Zealot, 200–209.

41. Shlomo Ya‘akov Gelbman, The Redeemer of Israel, vol. 5 (Hebrew; Monroe,
N.Y., 1995), 146. —-1
42. Alexander Sender Deutsch, Butsina kadisha (Brooklyn, 2000), 2:61. —0

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 490 JQR 113.3 (2023)

Satmar’s own newspaper.43 A few years ­after its establishment, his Ha-
sidic congregation was already considered one of the largest and most pros-
perous in post-­Holocaust Amer­i­ca.44
Part of this success can be attributed to the fact that no other rabbi dared
to express such vehemently anti-­Zionist views—­blaming Zionism for the
outbreak of the Holocaust and accusing the Zionists of collaborating with
the Nazis. This attracted an ever-­growing number of Hasidim45 who, pre-
sumably, found comfort in an Orthodox authority of Teitelbaum’s magni-
tude who offered them an unequivocal theological explanation of the
Holocaust.46 Noticing this rapid expansion, other rabbis de­cided to adopt
the same anti-­modern and anti-­Zionist outlook. In 1955 Teitelbaum con-
vened ­these rabbis and established the Central Rabbinical Congress. U ­ nder
his guidance the CRC promoted vari­ous anti-­modern and anti-­Zionist
activities.

DECIDING TO WRITE VA-­Y O’EL MOSHE

In 1958, the State of Israel celebrated its first ­decade of ­independence.

During that period it became a prosperous, modern, demo­cratic state. It
won the 1956 Sinai campaign and opened its doors to almost one million
immigrants, many of whom ­were Holocaust survivors.47 This demon-
strated that Israel had on some level overcome the many challenges it
faced and that it was not g­ oing to dis­appear, as some Orthodox leaders an-
ticipated. Although prior to its establishment Haredi leaders had feared
that the Zionist regime would suppress religious life, time proved them
wrong. During that d ­ ecade many Haredi neighborhoods and institutions
­were built with the support of the Israeli government. At the same time,
generous social benefits allowed the Haredi population to bear more
­children and to send a growing number of men to spend many years in the
yeshiva. The majority of the Haredim shared the patriotic spirit of the new
state, and most Haredi men served in the Israeli army.48

43. Hertz Frankel, The Satmar Rebbe and His ­English Principal: Reflections on the
Strug­gle to Build Yiddishkeit in Amer­i­ca (Brooklyn, 2015).
44. Israel Rubin, Satmar: An Island in the City (Chicago, 1972), 3–8.
45. Menachem Keren-­Kratz, “Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum—­the Satmar Rebbe—­
and the Rise of Anti-­Zionism in American Orthodoxy,” Con­temporary Jewry 37.3
(2017): 457–79.
46. Gershon Greenberg, “­Wartime American Orthodoxy and the Holocaust:
Mizrahi and Agudat Israel Religious Responses,” Michael 15 (2000): 59–94.
47. For example, S. Ilan Troen and Noah Lucas, eds., Israel: The First ­Decade of
­Independence (Albany, 1995).
-1— 48. Menachem Friedman, The Haredi (Ultra-­Orthodox) Society: Sources, Trends,
0— and Pro­cesses (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1991); Yair Ha-­Levi, “The ‘New Haredism’

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 491

­These impressive achievements, which ­were highlighted during the of-

ficial cele­brations of Israel’s first d
­ ecade, prompted Teitelbaum to amplify
his opposition. On top of his usual anti-­Zionist sermons, this is when he
began openly to accuse Zionism of having been the major cause of the Ho-
locaust. He furthermore declared that whereas the Nazis had sought to
physically exterminate Jews, the Zionists’ undisclosed mission was to an-
nihilate the very spirit of Judaism. While the Nazi extermination program
ended when they lost the war, the Zionists had merely grown stronger in
their agenda to destroy Jewish tradition.49
This anti-­Zionist campaign included a series of mass demonstrations in
New York that attracted the attention of both the Israeli and international
press.50 During ­these protests, yeshiva students even painted swastikas on
the walls of “Zionist” synagogues and on the Israeli consulate in New
York. The CRC’s most impressive demonstration took place in 1958 in
front of the White H ­ ouse. It attracted the attention of the international
press as Jewish Haredi protestors in Washington waved posters compar-
ing the newly established State of Israel to Nazi Germany.51
The Jewish press, as well as spokespersons from a wide range of Jew-
ish camps, condemned this appalling comparison and called for action
against the provocateurs. The Israeli government’s and the public’s fury
against Teitelbaum was such that the f­ uture of his plans to build two Ha-
sidic neighborhoods, one in Bnei Brak and one in Jerusalem, was in jeop-
ardy.52 This message was conveyed to Teitelbaum by Ḥaim Moshe Shapira,
Israel’s interior minister, on behalf of the religious-­Zionist party during his
visit to New York in late 1958. Previously, Shapira had been instrumental
in assisting Teitelbaum to obtain the permits required to build his neigh-
borhood in Bnei Brak. However, during their meeting he explained that
should he pursue his blunt anti-­Zionist agenda, Shapira and the Israeli gov-
ernment would cease the behind-­the-­scenes cooperation he had enjoyed
up to then.53

Revolution in Israel in the 1970s” (Hebrew; Ph.D. diss., Bar-­Ilan University,

2019).
49. Mishmeret ḥomatenu, Av 5, 5718 (1958), 289–93; Deutsch, Butsina, 1:310–12.
50. Der Yid, March 21, 1958, 1, 4; Der Tog / Morgen Journal, March 24, 1958, 1;
Mishmeret Ḥomatenu, Iyar 4, 5718 (1958), 177, 180; New York Times, March 24,
1958.
51. Davar, June 18, 1958, 2; Der Tog / Morgen Journal, June 20, 1958, 1; New York
Times, June 20, 1958; Forverts, June 20, 1958, 1; Ma‘ariv, June 22, 1958, 3.
52. Davar, April 28, 1958, 1; Ma‘ariv, May 18, 1958, 3; June 30, 1958, 6; For-
verts, June 23, 1958, 1, 7; June 24, 1958, 1. —-1
53. Deutsch, Butsina, 1:348–50. —0

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 492 JQR 113.3 (2023)

Ten years ­after establishing his community and making it the leading
force in Amer­i­ca’s Hasidism, Teitelbaum de­cided the time had come to
transform it from a radical and reactionary movement and to set it on a
more conservative and staid trajectory. A ­ fter all, he was seventy-­two years
old with no son to succeed him, and the main bond that united his com-
munity was an ideology that was only passed on orally. Teitelbaum real-
ized that for his community to exist a­ fter his death and for it to perpetuate
the separatist, anti-­Zionist, and anti-­modern Extreme Orthodox ideology,
he needed to do something he had never done before—­write a book.
From the time he made this decision, Teitelbaum dedicated several hours
a day to this end.54 He asked the ­senior students of his yeshiva to proof-
read the manuscript, while the printers, Sender Deutsch and his son, w ­ ere
55
asked to verify the book’s prodigious references. The final draft was com-
pleted in the summer of 1959, and during his voyage to Israel that year,
Teitelbaum compiled the index. In 1960, he published the first part of the
book, which dealt with the Three Oaths midrash.56 ­After completing the
writing of the second section and editing an already existing responsum
that became the third section, the text appeared in its familiar form at the
end of 1961. ­After writing this book, Teitelbaum lived on for almost an-
other twenty years ­until his death in 1979.

THE BOOK AND ITS CONTENTS

Seeking to strengthen Extreme Orthodox ideology and to accentuate its

unique stance vis-­à-­vis mainstream Orthodoxy, Teitelbaum never both­ered
to comment on the ordinary topics that ­were discussed in mainstream rab-
binical lit­er­a­ture. For example, the book did not call for greater observance
of the mitzvot, nor did it deal with the many other subjects that previous
anti-­Zionist texts dealt with. Instead, it focused solely on the three major
issues that represented the ideological gap between his own Extreme Or-
thodox worldview and that of mainstream Orthodoxy represented by Agu-
dat Israel.
The book is divided into a short introduction and three sections: The first
asserts that the basic princi­ples of Zionism violate the Three Oaths mid-
rash and thus constitute a severe form of heresy that, indirectly, justifies
God’s severe punishment of the Holocaust. The Zionists, in short, are evil
and anybody who cooperated with them—­namely, Agudat Israel—­cannot

54. Yakobovitz, Zekhor yemot, vol. 4, 79; Pitgamin kadishin, 26 Av 5, 768 (2008),
32.
55. Mivtsar torah ve-­yir’ah, 1:313–14; Butsina, 1:369–71, 385.
-1— 56. Yoel Teitelbaum, Sefer va-­yo’el Moshe: Le-­va’er dine ha-­shalosh shevu‘ot (Brook-
0— lyn, 1960).

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 493

be considered a God-­fearing Jew. The second section claims that, contrary

to common belief, t­here is no halakhic obligation to s­ ettle in the Land of
Israel, at least not for the time being. This too is a direct attack on Agudat
Israel’s policy. The third section states that the use of Hebrew as an every-
day language—as in many of Agudat Israel’s schools, yeshivas, newspa-
pers, and conventions—is forbidden by the halakhah.

The introduction
The book’s introduction begins by addressing the g­ reat sin of Zionism,
which resulted in the many catastrophes that have befallen the Jewish
­people. The grave sin of breaching of the Three Oaths midrash was
the main reason that God inflicted the greatest chastisement of all, the
Holocaust:

And now in our generation t­ here is no need to look in hidden places for
the reason that brought about this misfortune, b ­ ecause it is vis­i­ble and
explicit [. . .] by disregarding the Three Oaths that demand that the
­people of Israel should not hasten redemption by reclaiming the Land
of Israel and ­will not rebel against the other nations (God forbid), God
permitted the nations to devour us like predators who capture deer and
gazelles in the open graze. And ­because of our grave sins, so it was.57

Beside the theological reasoning, the introduction also accounts for the Zi-
onist leadership’s ­actual shortcomings and failures during the Holocaust.
It claims that insisting on establishing a Jewish state drove both Mandate
Palestine’s authorities and ­those of other countries to close their borders
to Jewish refugees. It likewise asserts that the Zionists did not do enough
to save ­European Jews in general and Haredi Jews in par­tic­u­lar. More-
over, the direct link drawn between the breach of the Three Oaths and the
Nazis’ “final solution” serves as a warning of what might still happen if
Jews do not renounce Zionist ideology.
On top of being in itself a g­ reat sin, the Zionist idea also had the capac-
ity to corrupt honest Torah-­loving and mitzvot-­observing Jews and to dis-
tract them from the right path:

It is a few years ago now, that this impure idea was started by the Zionists
[. . .] and unfortunately the majority of the Jewish p­ eople in all its sects,
even among the kosher ­people of Israel, ­were means to promote it
[. . .] Zionism attracted many God-fearing Jews ­because the false idea

—-1
57. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 5. —0

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 494 JQR 113.3 (2023)

blinded their eyes [. . .] ­Because the Zionists ­were joined by [religious]

groups that claimed the purpose and intention of connecting with them
was to correct the unfaithful and to bring them back to the path of To-
rah, this was the excuse to continue to attract other kosher Jews [. . .]
who believed that t­ here are [Zionist] p­ eople who are dedicated to pro-
moting the Torah. But a­ fter they w­ ere allured to cross the bridge by the
religious Jews, they fell into the net of Zionist heresy.58

Chapter 1: The Three Oaths midrash

The book’s first section reviews the Three Oaths midrash (bKet 111a),
which is the only significant talmudic source that justifies the claim that
despite the Jewish ­people’s countless hardships, which included slander,
pogroms, expulsions, discrimination, blood libels, and so on, they must re-
main in the diaspora u ­ ntil God decides the time has come. Any active ini-
tiative on behalf of the Jewish collective is thus reviewed as an expression
of despair and disbelief in God’s intention or ability to keep his promise to
the Jewish p ­ eople and to redeem it. The midrash names two oaths God
demanded of the Jewish ­people: that Israel not “go up as a wall” (to has-
ten the time of redemption) or “provoke the nations of the world.” The third
oath addresses the world’s nations whom God swore “to not overly enslave
and torment the ­people of Israel.”
For hundreds of years, this midrash served as the only source to justify
opposition to the resettlement of the Land of Israel. However, in light of
the series of events that tran­spired between the founding of the Zionist
movement in the late nineteenth ­century and the establishment of the State
of Israel, the validity of the Three Oaths midrash required a total reassess-
ment. Following World War I, the countries that joined the League of
Nations, headed by G ­ reat Britain, recognized the right of the Jewish
people to establish a “national home” in Palestine. Furthermore, the
­
world’s nations allowed and even encouraged the immigration of Jews to
Palestine and assisted them in building a prosperous Jewish settlement.
The Holocaust itself represented a clear violation of the third oath appli-
cable to the nations. The establishment of the Jewish state shortly a­ fter
the Holocaust and its a­ cceptance into the United Nations constituted a
proof of the nations’ consent to its existence. The victory in Israel’s 1948
War of ­Independence was regarded as a heavenly miracle and a proof of
God’s support of the new Jewish state.59
Most religious and Haredi leaders interpreted ­these unpre­ce­dented his-
torical events as demonstrating that the three oaths ­were no longer relevant.

-1— 58. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 7.

0— 59. Keren-­Kratz, “Redemption and Anti-­redemption.”

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 495

Consequently, the halakhic ban on establishing a Jewish state based on

the same midrash was no longer applicable.60 The task Teitelbaum took
upon himself in this chapter was to prove that despite t­hese historical
changes, the three oaths ­were still binding and thus the ­organized settle-
ment in the Land of Israel constituted a decisive transgression. The article
spanned more than 150 pages reviewing the vari­ous sources and opinions
on the m ­ atter. It includes many allegations that Zionism intended to de-
molish the princi­ples of the Jewish religion, endangered the very exis-
tence of the Jewish ­people, and intentionally used false claims to lure the
Haredi community from the right path.
The text challenges the claim that the gentiles invalidated the three oaths
by violating their own in punishing the Jewish ­people “too severely” in
the Holocaust: “And ­there are heretics who claim that the nations did not
fulfill their oath. Consequently, we too [i.e., the Jews] have the right to
disregard our oaths. This is nonsense b ­ ecause the oaths are not interde-
pendent.”61 Moreover, it concurs with the Maharal’s (Rabbi Yehuda Loew
of Prague) claim that even if the gentiles had forced the Jews out of the
diaspora and ordered them to ­settle in the Land of Israel, the Jews should
have resisted even at the price of their own lives.62
Since one of the main reasons for writing the book was to draw a clear
line between Teitelbaum’s Extreme Orthodoxy and mainstream Ortho-
doxy, the book attacked the latter’s ­political representatives in Agudat
Israel:

Regretfully, the religious parties who cooperate with the heretical [Is-
raeli] government, including Agudat Israel, are covering their sins to
help save them from any harm and loss and shame. They, moreover, at-
tack t­hose God-­fearing Jews who fight fearlessly for God’s honor and
for his holy Torah [. . .] and the ­thing they say, that they are d
­ oing it all
for heaven’s sake, to make amends in religion and to make compromises,
which are in fact sins, it is nothing but astonishing [. . .] It is clear that
even if all ­these five Agudat Israel [Knesset members] who are sitting
around the same t­ able with the sinners w ­ ere completely ­righteous who
have no other purpose but to serve God, it was still impossible for them
to act and to influence a hundred heretics who only want to secularize
the Jewish ­people.63

60. Elie Holtzer, “The Evolving Meaning of the Three Oaths: Within Religious
Zionism” (Hebrew), Daat 47 (2001): 129–45.
61. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 90.
62. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 92–93; Sorotzkin, Orthodoxy, 393. —-1
63. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 127. —0

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 496 JQR 113.3 (2023)

To leave a lasting impression, Teitelbaum rerouted the traditional discus-

sion of the settlement of Israel from theological abstraction and Kabbalis-
tic ideas into the field of halakhah. Establishing a halakhic ruling that
forbade Jews from voting for the Knesset and Haredi delegates from serv-
ing as parliament members would spark an open halakhic debate. This
would give him the opportunity to pre­sent his views in detail and to force
his counter­parts to address them:

It is clear that from a halakhic perspective anyone who becomes a Knes-

set member is guilty of executing many terrible sins, each of whom
should be prepared to give his own life rather to commit it [. . .] We can
therefore understand the severity of the ban on participating in the elec-
tions [. . .] ­because the voters are the reason and the ­causes of all the
sins, which include blasphemy, heresy, and the violation of the oath not
to hasten redemption [. . .], even the lay person who goes to elect the
delegates to this impure government becomes an accomplice.64

­ oward the end of this section, the text accused those who supported set-
T
tling in Israel of falsely using Hasidic texts and ideas:

Our generation is one of the messiah’s footsteps [ikveta de-­mishiḥa], and

a generation of forgetting the Torah [. . .] and the perspective of the holy
Besht [Hebrew acronym for Ba’al Shem Tov, the title given to the
­founder of the Hasidic movement] is completely forgotten from this gen-
eration. Anyone who wants to take the Besht’s name for his own enjoy-
ment and benefit says: “this is the Besht’s way,” according to his desire
and his w­ ill. And the thoughtless lay p
­ eople believe such nonsense [Ha-
sidic] stories that most of them are false and lies [. . .] and believe that if
­those lies ­were written in a book, it must be a holy book.65

Chapter 2: Settlement in the Land of Israel

The book’s second chapter deals with a halakhic question: Is the settlement
of the Land of Israel a religious duty (mitzvah) specified in the Torah, as
Nahmanides and other decisors have ruled? If this is indeed a biblical com-
mand, is it applicable in the current generation as well, or was it only valid
before the majority of the Jewish p ­ eople ­were exiled? Already in the first
paragraph, Teitelbaum reveals his opinion that the settlement in the Land
of Israel is not necessarily a religious duty, and that in modern times this

-1— 64. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 144.

0— 65. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 175.

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 497

topic was used for purposes totally dif­fer­ent from ­those intended by
Nahmanides:

And this is not the opinion of the rishonim [the first generation of hal-
akhic decisors] [. . .] [and] even in the Shulḥan ‘arukh t­here is no men-
tion of it. And the heretics used this mitzvah to tempt the p
­ eople of Israel
to blasphemy (God ­will save us), to establish their own strong govern-
ment, and to abolish (God forgives) the w ­ hole Torah. And many Torah
scholars did not fully understand the true meaning of the decisors who
dealt with this halakhic issue.66

The text goes on to argue that tens of thousands of Jews who immigrated
to Israel lost their religious faith on account of this misunderstanding:

If they would only refrain from coming with the Zionists to the Land of
Israel, they would retain their belief in the Torah and mitzvot and to fear
God [. . .] but the unfortunate immigrants did not understand that [. . .]
and ­were lured by the voices calling for Eretz Israel and consequently
fell into the broken cisterns and to the net of heresy set by the
Zionists.67

The text then continues to attack Agudat Israel’s response to Teitelbaum’s

claims: “And the hypocrites say that if all the observant Jews would be in
Israel, they would be more able to fight against the Zionists.”68 Their claim
only demonstrates how oblivious they are to the tricks of the Zionists,

who cry all day long that every­body should come to Israel, and they use
all sorts of trickery and manipulation anywhere they can reach, all in
order to attract more Jews to Israel. And it is especially impor­tant for
them [. . .] to attract ­those who cry and are dressed in the garments of
Torah, and t­ hose who observe the mitzvot, that all the Haredim w
­ ill come
to Israel.69

Teitelbaum concludes that t­ here is no halakhic obligation to s­ ettle in Eretz

Israel, at least not for the time being. Yet, referring to his own Hasidim’s
settlement ­there, he states that Jews are allowed to live in Eretz Israel only
if they are devoted to the work of God, dedicate their lives to the study of

66. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 197.

67. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 354.
68. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 356 —-1
69. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 356. —0

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 498 JQR 113.3 (2023)

Torah (namely, the Talmud), rather than to the building of the nation or
other ­political ideology. Such Jews should be supported in order to allow
them to maintain a holy lifestyle:

And surely we must strengthen the pious and the fearful [haredim] who
live in the Land of Israel [. . .] and despite g­ reat challenges are fully com-
mitted to keep the Torah and the mitzvot [. . .] although unfortunately
only a few of us did not kneel to the Ba‘al [false gods, which in this case
refers to Zionism] [. . .] yet, by sending our money to support t­ hose who
fully keep the Torah and the mitzvot, we are surely performing the mitz-
vah of the settlement of the Land of Israel.70

Chapter 3: The holy tongue

The third article was originally written as a responsum to Pinḥas
Hirschprung, a Montreal rabbi who asked Teitelbaum about how to teach
Jewish Orthodox girls. In the responsum Teitelbaum agreed that girls
must be taught Hebrew, so that they could read the prayer book (siddur)
and the Pentateuch (ḥumash), but he also addressed the differences be-
tween biblical Hebrew, which he titled the holy tongue, and modern He-
brew, which he considered a deviation from the original language:

In this dark and low generation, in the days of messiah’s footprints, as

the world is being filled with heresy [. . .] the impure forces use the holy
language [. . .] and even though their profane language is mixed with
foreign and fictitious words they borrow from the gentiles that are not
by any means holy tongue, the Samael [i.e., the Satan] and his subor-
dinate troops [i.e., the Zionists] know exactly how much of the holy
language they should keep in order to have a grip on the powers of
impurity.71

Teitelbaum’s conclusion was that modern Hebrew—­while based on the

holy language and consequently enjoying some of its extraordinary mysti-
cal powers—­served as a demonic tool in the hands of the impure. The Zi-
onists used modern Hebrew to signal a connection to the Jewish tradition,
while their real aim was to cause all the Jews to lose their faith. Conse-
quently, he called upon “true Jews” not to speak modern Hebrew as a daily
language and to use the holy tongue only during the study of the Torah
and in time of prayer.

-1— 70. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 371.

0— 71. Teitelbaum, Va-­yo’el Moshe, 426–27.

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 499

At the close of each of the three chapters is a ­table of contents with a

detailed summary of the chapter’s main topics. At the end of the book ­there
is a long and detailed list of sources, demonstrating the rabbinical data on
which its claims are based. The book concludes with an index of topics dis-
cussed, yet without any summary or general insights.

RESPONSES TO THE BOOK

Va-­yo’el Moshe’s publication caused a stir among Satmar Hasidim and among
the Extreme Orthodox members of the CRC and the Edah Haredit of Je-
rusalem, and several enthusiastic yeshiva students initiated protests
against Israeli institutions in the United States. Outside t­ hese circles, and
despite its provocative content, the book was received indifferently.72 The
book review sections of all the Haredi rabbinical journals completely ig-
nored the publication of Va-­yo’el Moshe, as did the rabbis to whom it was
sent for comments.73 A few allegations against the book came from Chabad
Hasidim, who suspected that the remarks about forgetting the Torah of the
Besht ­were aimed at them.74
The first person to openly confront Satmar’s radical anti-­modern and
anti-­Zionist ideology at the time was Ḥaim Lieberman—­a journalist for the
Forverts, the ­popular Yiddish newspaper. A book he published in 1959 ti-
tled The Rabbi and the Satan attacked the radical ele­ments in Satmar and in
Neturei Karta. On its first page it stated, “The State of Israel has many
enemies in the world [. . .] Among its prominent haters are members of
Neturei Karta of Jerusalem headed by the Satmar Rebbe and his Hasi-
dim in Williamsburg [. . .] They are launching an inconceivable war
against the ­great heavenly miracle and the earthly won­der, namely the Jew-
ish state.”75 In response to Lieberman’s book and articles, Satmar Hasi-
dim called for a boycott of the newspaper.76
The book aroused attention among the Israeli public in the early 1960s
­after a few Haredim kidnapped a child, Yosele Schumacher, and refused
to return him to his parents, fearing he would not be raised in a Haredi

72. Ma‘ariv, November 2, 1959, 3.

73. Ha-­Ma’or, Tishre 5720 (1960), 29–31; Yakobovitz, Zekhor, 4:78–79, 84, 89;
Deutsch, Butsina, 1:389–402.
74. Deutsch, Butsina, 1:375–80. On the tense relations between the two courts,
see Ḥaim Dalfin, Satmar and Lubavitch (New York, 2017).
75. Ḥaim Lieberman, Der Rebbe un der Satan (Yiddish; New York, 1959), 1.
76. Forverts, November 19, 1958, 2, 5; November 21, 1958, 2, Der Yid, Novem-
ber 28, 1958, 1, 5, 8. Lieberman based his claims on the teachings of Rabbi Yosef
Eliyahu Henkin—­a well-­known head of yeshiva and halakhic decisor—­who was
very critical of Neturei Karta’s anti-­Zionist ideology. See, for example, Yosef Eli- —-1
yahu Henkin, Kitve ha-­ga’on (New York, 1989), 2:223–34. —0

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 500 JQR 113.3 (2023)

fashion.77 The journalists who tried to explain the reason for the kidnap-
ping addressed Teitelbaum’s radical ideology, and in par­tic­ul­ ar his accusa-
tions that Zionism was the cause of the Holocaust.78 An Israeli journalist
named Dezső Schön (a.k.a. David Shen), who used to live in Sighet and
knew Teitelbaum and his f­ amily, published a series of articles that attacked
him and his anti-­Zionist ideology in the local Hungarian language news-
paper Uj kelet. He also mentioned Teitelbaum’s escape on the Kasztner train
while leaving his followers ­behind. Consequently, the newspaper, which
was ­popular among the Hungarian-­speaking Hasidim, was also banned.79
Contrary to Teitelbaum’s expectations, the book failed to reach other
Haredi audiences or to spark public debate. Instead, it was simply ignored
by most rabbis who, likewise, disregarded his halakhic rulings against vot-
ing in Knesset elections, even for Haredi delegates. In 1967, following the
Six-­Day War, Teitelbaum published another book, titled ‘Al ha-­ge’ulah ve-­
‘al ha-­temurah (On redemption and on transformation), in which he con-
tinued to develop the ideas expressed in his first book.80 Only following
the publication of this book did certain rabbis address the theological is-
sues they presented.
The only Haredi authority outside of the Extreme Orthodox circle to
indirectly address Teitelbaum’s theological and kabbalistic allegations was
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher. In his book Ha-­tekufah ha-­gedolah (The
­great era), which was published in 1969, he explored the eschatological
meaning b ­ ehind the events that the Jewish p ­ eople had experienced from
the Holocaust u ­ ntil the Six-­Day War. In the introduction’s first pages, he
explains that t­ here are three rabbinical approaches to interpreting the con-
nection between t­hese historical events and the advancement of the
­process of redemption (ge’ulah). Then Kasher briefly mentions another
approach:

­ here is, however, also a fourth opinion which was ­adopted by a small
T
circle [of rabbis] that categorically denies all the positive discoveries in
­these events, and for them it would have been better not to have occurred
at all. What is seen by o­ thers as heavenly revelations and as the glorious

77. Motti Inbari, “The Yossele Schumacher Affair: A Case Study of Israel’s
Response to Ultra-­Orthodox Ideological Crime,” Journal of State and Church 61.1
(2019): 20–40.
78. Ma‘ariv, May 11, 1962, 3; Davar, May 25, 1962, 2; July 6, 1962, 2–3.
79. Ha-­boker, May 20, 1962, 2; Ma‘ariv, May 22, 1962, 15; Ha-­tsofeh, May 22,
1962, 4.
80. Yoel Teitelbaum, ‘Al ha-­ge’ulah ve-­‘al ha-­temurah (New York, 1967). Teitel-
-1— baum wrote the book’s introduction and reviewed and edited the book chapters
0— that ­were written by his students.

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 501

hand of God, they interpret as a heavy and suffocating fog which clogs
the Jewish horizon. ­These events [they claim] are delaying our redemp-
tion and are being directed by Satan. And he [God] the merciful ­will
atone for our [meaning their] sins.81

This brief passage is prob­ably the only printed reference to Teitelbaum’s

ideology by a Haredi rabbi, and even it does not mention him by name.
Another book published in 1976 by religious-­Zionist rabbi Shmuel Ha-­
Kohen Weingarten reexamines the Three Oaths midrash from a religious-­
Zionist perspective. Despite this being a major theme in Va-­yo’el Moshe,
Weingarten never refers to Teitelbaum’s claims.82
One of the only direct references to Teitelbaum and his ideology by a
prominent Haredi rabbi came only ­after his death. Rabbi Elazar Menachem
Mann Shakh, who was at the time Israel’s foremost Haredi leader and a
prominent member of Agudat Israel, delivered a eulogy in which he re-
ferred to Teitelbaum as a g­ reat man but one whose ideas w ­ ere difficult to
83
comprehend and accept. The uniqueness of this reference only demon-
strates how throughout his life, Teitelbaum, and his ideology, w ­ ere ig-
nored by all mainstream Orthodox rabbis.84
An eighty-­page book published in 1984, five years ­after Teitelbaum’s
death, refers directly to Va-­yo’el Moshe’s contents. The booklet is anonymous,
indicating only that it was penned by one of Teitelbaum’s disciples. Its
opening page states its main goal to uncover the conspiracy that led to the
writing of Va-­yo’el Moshe, against Teitelbaum’s wishes:

[This book] ­will expose that the hands of evildoers dominated the book
Va-­yo’el Moshe [. . .] and it was terribly forged and distorted by a group
of corrupt and mindless p ­ eople who are far from basic understanding of
the Torah [. . .] This ­will exonerate the Admor Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum
of Satmar from the terrible defamation made by unworthy p ­ eople as if
he wrote words of ignorance and folly, and from the slandering and in-
sults against the ­great sages.85

81. Menachem Mendel Kasher, Ha-­tekufah ha-­gedolah (Jerusalem, 1968),

1:1–2.
82. Shmuel Ha-­Cohen Weingarten, Hishba’ati etkhem (Jerusalem, 1976).
83. Elazar Menachem Mann Shakh, Misped she-­nasa maran [. . .] shakh [. . .] ‘al
[. . .] maran mi-­Satmar (Bnei Brak, 1979), 2–3.
84. On the ideological differences between Teitelbaum and Shakh, see Sorotz-
kin, Orthodoxy, 398–400.
85. Pokeaḥ ‘ivrim (New York, 1984), cover page. ­Because the first letter in the —-1
book is by Rabbi Benjamin Mendelson, the rabbi of the village of Komemi’ut, —0

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 502 JQR 113.3 (2023)

A second publication issued ­after Teitelbaum’s passing is also anonymous:

a sixty-­page, hand-­typed, unbound booklet titled Samim or le-­ḥoshekh ve-­
ḥoshekh le-­or (Making light darkness and darkness light).86 The author
was l­ater revealed to be Rabbi Yoel Cohen, a Chabad rabbi. By analyzing
vari­ous rabbinical sources, including ­those mentioned in Va-­yo’el Moshe, the
book refutes Teitelbaum’s assertion that the Zionists’ major sin was the vi-
olation of the three oaths, and asserts that this claim has nothing to do
with the con­temporary situation, namely ­after the Holocaust and the es-
tablishment of Israel. Instead, he pre­sents the Lubavitch rabbis’ arguments
against Zionism, which bear greater weight than Teitelbaum’s. Some twenty
years following its first publication, this text was reprinted along with some
other supporting materials and was mainly distributed on the internet.87
The first book to systematically comment on Va-­yo’el Moshe’s assertions
was published only in 2012 by Rabbi Mordechai Tsion. It was based on
the teaching of Rabbi Shlomo Ḥaim Aviner, a well-­known religious-­Zionist
rabbinical author and p ­ hilosopher. The four-­hundred-­page book, whose
subtitle pre­sents it as a response to Va-­yo’el Moshe, discusses in ­great detail
each of Teitelbaum’s assertions and its reasoning and then refutes it with
an alternative approach.88
On the one hand, besides t­ hese sources and a few other marginal publi-
cations and incidental remarks, most rabbis, both Zionist and Haredi, pre-
ferred to ignore the book both during Teitelbaum’s lifetime and ­after. On
the other hand, the book was ­wholeheartedly accepted by his followers,
for whom it served as a moral and religious compass. It was reprinted
­every ­couple of years, and in time it appeared in other forms and languag-
es.89 It likewise served as a basis for hundreds of polemical books and

which was established by Agudat Israel, who was also a devoted disciple of Teitel-
baum, it was generally assumed that he edited the w ­ hole volume.
86. Kuntres samim or le-­ḥoshekh ve-­ḥoshekh le-­or (n.p., ca. 1980).
87. Yoel Cohen, Igeret ma’ane ḥakham, unbound vol. (Jerusalem?, 2007; addi-
tional editions in subsequent years).
88. Shlomo Aviner and Mordechai Tsion, Alo na’aleh: Ma’aneh le-­sefer Va-­yo’el
Moshe (Beit El, 2012; additional edition in 2015). Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, Avin-
er’s mentor, also responded to Teitelbaum’s arguments, especially to this reading
of the Three Oaths midrash and the theodicy of the Holocaust. On this see Motti
Inbari, “Messianism as a ­Political Power in Con­temporary Judaism—­a Compari-
son: Radical Ultra-­Orthodoxy and Messianic Religious Zionism,” in Oxford Hand-
book of Apocalyptic Lit­er­a­ture, ed. J. J. Collins (New York, 2014), 391–406.
89. Some of the additional editions ­were published in 1961, 1962 (in Jerusa-
lem), 1974, 1978, 1982, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1995, 2000, 2003, 2008. Some of the
books based on Va-­yo’el Moshe are Kuntras emes ve-­emunah (Bnei Brak, 1987); Inya-
-1— nim fun sefer Va-­yo’el Moshe (New York, 1988); Yalkut mamarim Va-­yo’el Moshe (New
0— York, 2002); Oystsugen fun sefer Va-­yo’el Moshe oyf Yiddish (New York, 2000); Kun-

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 503

booklets published in the ensuing years as well as textbooks that teach its
princi­ples to students at vari­ous levels.90 During the past sixty years, the
book has reappeared in more than a dozen full editions and been trans-
lated into several languages.

CONCLUSION

During his many years in office in numerous capacities before the Holo-
caust, Teitelbaum gained a reputation as a shrewd and fearless person who
let nothing stop him from attaining his p­ olitical goals. Although he was part
of a small group of rabbis who fostered Extreme Orthodox princi­ples and
who consequently expressed anti-­modern and Anti-­Zionist views, ­because
he was youn­ger than most of them, he was never a leading force among
them.91 This, however, changed in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and es-
pecially ­after World War II, as the older generation of Extreme Orthodox
rabbis who had survived the Holocaust passed away. It was then that Te-
itelbaum de­cided that even if all the remaining rabbis recognized the im-
portance of a Jewish state that warmly accepted the religious and Haredi
Holocaust survivors and assisted them in reestablishing the Torah world,
he would not give up on the Extreme Orthodox princi­ples and would
continue his forefathers’ fight against Zionism and modernity.
Looking back at the failure of his anti-­Zionist ­predecessors, who w ­ ere
unable not only to stop Zionism but even to prevent Agudat Israel from
silently cooperating with its actions, Teitelbaum de­cided to take another
path. He realized that merely publishing another book would not make a
lasting impact on the tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews who had just
survived the Holocaust and ­were hoping for a state of their own to protect
them. Instead, he was determined to establish a community of followers of
his own whom he could teach the princi­ples of Extreme Orthodoxy. They,
in their turn, would teach it to their c­ hildren and pupils and thus spread
this notion to further generations.
Although he failed to establish his own Hasidic community in Jerusa-
lem, he managed to succeed in the second attempt in New York. Despite
having to compromise on many of his former princi­ples, like introducing
secular studies in his education system and establishing schools for girls,

tres yalkut mamarim (Jerusalem, 2006); Meir Weinberger, Sefer Va-­yo’el Moshe im
perush Or ki tov (Antwerp, 2010).
90. For example, Arye Ashkenazi, Likut divre emet, vols. 1–2 (Jerusalem, 1965–
67); Kuntres ha-­sbara (Jerusalem, 1968); Moshe Dov Ha-­Levi Beck, Mikhtav
hit’orerut (Brooklyn, 1981); Yalkut she-lo’ shinu et leshonam (Jerusalem, 1987);
Shlomo Halbernats, Sefer derekh hatsalah (Quebec, 2002); Yoel Elhanan, Dat ha-­
tsiyonut (Petah Tikva, 2008). —-1
91. Keren-­Kratz, “Zealotry Has Many ­Faces.” —0

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 504 JQR 113.3 (2023)

he was happy to have gathered around him hundreds of Hasidic families

that a­ dopted his ideas. They soon became the vanguard of Hungarian Ha-
sidism in New York and the forebearers of Extreme Orthodoxy in Amer­
i­ca. Moreover, by collecting and donating large sums of money, he took
over the leadership of the Edah Haredit, the top ­organization of Extreme
Orthodox anti-­Zionist Haredi groups in Israel. He also established the
CRC, which became the o­ rganization of the Extreme Orthodox commu-
nities in the United States. Having saved Extreme Orthodoxy from obliv-
ion and leading its two o­ rganizations, the time had come to formulate its
ideology and to immortalize it.
Unlike the former authors of anti-­Zionist texts intended for secular and
religious Zionist readers, Teitelbaum’s audience was his own flock, who
­were already convinced that Zionism was the greatest sin of all. Argu-
ments they had only heard in his sermons, they could now read in a book,
the only book their admired rebbe had ever written.92 This and its
composition—­focusing on only three issues yet meticulously reviewing
thousands of relevant sources—­gave it its unparalleled impact.
Teitelbaum lived for many years ­after the book’s publication and con-
tinued to hammer away at the same ideas. This left a permanent impres-
sion on the minds of his followers for several generations, who could now
not only listen to their spiritual leader but also quote and interpret his
words. The fact that the book was so identified with Teitelbaum and with
his community created a mystical rabbi-­book-­community triangle and made
the work so resilient over time.93 Even ­after Teitelbaum’s death, the book,
and its ideas, still connected his devotees to his memory, becoming the com-
munity’s ideological backbone.
Teitelbaum’s successors realized the book’s importance to the court’s core
identity, so despite adopting individual leadership style and ideological nu-
ances, each insisted that he was just interpreting Teitelbaum’s ideas. Con-
sequently, boys and girls of all ages who attend Satmar’s education
institutions have special classes dedicated to the study of Va-­yo’el Moshe.
This unique piece in their curriculum established a sense of continuity with
the past and strengthened the sense of belonging to the Hasidic court. In
con­temporary times, when so many issues of identity are shaken, the book
creates a frame that binds the community together.

92. All other books ascribed to Teitelbaum ­were written by his disciples based
on his oral sermons.
93. The fundamental role specific texts play in creating religious and particu-
larly Hasidic identities deserves separate research. Such canonical texts include,
-1— for example, Shivḥe ha-­Besht (for Hasidism in general), Sefer ha-­tania (for Chabad-­
0— Lubavitch), and Likute moharan (for Braslav).

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 The Most Anti-­Zionist Text—­Keren-­Kratz 505

The passing of time did not diminish Va-­yo’el Moshe’s influence among
the Extreme Orthodox groups. Moreover, the book is now available in
many Haredi yeshiva libraries, and an ever-­growing number of yeshiva stu-
dents are exposed to its arguments. In addition, several Haredi leaders of
Hasidic and non-­Hasidic groups associated with Agudat Israel began
adopting the book’s ideology. Consequently, some Hasidic groups that once
regarded Israel in an almost Zionist way nowadays regard the Jewish state
as the utmost threat to Jewish tradition.
One example is Rabbi Yitzhak Friedman of Bohush (Buhuşi), a Hasidic
rebbe who settled in Tel Aviv ­after the Holocaust and used to celebrate
Israel’s ­Independence Day and the liberation of Jerusalem in the Six-­Day
War. His grand­son and successor, however, Rabbi Ya‘akov David Mendel
Friedman, ­adopted Teitelbaum’s separatist and anti-­Zionist ideology. Nev-
ertheless, while Va-­yo’el Moshe still constitutes a canonical text among the
Extreme Orthodox, most mainstream Orthodox groups—­namely, ­those
participating in the Israeli elections—­still find it too difficult to digest.

M E N A C H E M K E R E N - ­K R AT Z is an ­independent scholar.

—-1
—0

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