When Religion Had Its Place

Founders of Israel Foresaw No Special Role for Ultra-Orthodox



Birth of a Nation: When Israel was founded, even Orthodox leaders foresaw little of the special accomodation for Haredim that has become a hallmark of modern Israeli life.

By Shulamit Binah
Published March 05, 2012, issue of March 09, 2012.

Israel is being torn apart by ideological forces. Ultra-Orthodox zealots are determined to shove women to the back of our common civic bus, while Haredi army recruits defy not only the military code of conduct, but also the very vision of Israel’s founding fathers and mothers who dreamed of a humanistic and pluralistic country. It is also, as always, political horse-trading season, and the privileges of the Haredi sector seem to be forever safeguarded and preserved in the minutest detail. While it is hard to imagine now, Jewish public opinion once held very different convictions.

Throughout the 1930s and ’40s there was much discussion about the nature of the future Jewish state, including among the ultra-Orthodox. In Hanukkah of 1947, soon after the United Nations General Assembly voted for partition, the New York-based Research Institute for the Post-War Problems of Religious Jewry, founded by Agudath Israel, published a collection of articles by rabbinical luminaries, “Material of a Constitution for the Jewish State.” Though ultra-Orthodox in orientation, this collection offers a shockingly moderate worldview in relation to where we stand today.

It’s not that the forbearers of today’s extremism and intolerance were absent from this discussion. Rabbi Moshe Blau, a Haredi leader from Jerusalem, called for a strictly Haredi state to be imposed on everyone, with no negotiation. But there were many other voices. In a secret memorandum prepared for the 1937 Royal Commission of Lord Peel (and reprinted in the 1947 compilation of documents), Isaac Breuer, first president of Agudath Israel and an ordained Orthodox rabbi who also held a doctorate in law, wrote: “Agudath Israel demands that a Jewish state… will recognize the Torah… as a legal foundation of the state and will establish all public life accordingly… and will never give this up.” Nevertheless, Breuer wrote in the same breath that Agudath Israel must recognize the authority of the state and participate in the state’s political life because “a culture-war must not be fought by force but through means of spiritual conviction.” Likewise, while insisting on maintaining the Sabbath, kashrut and ultra-Orthodox autonomy, Breuer highlighted universally acclaimed principles founded in Jewish values. Thus, the attorney in him was anxious lest the Jewish state should exercise the death penalty ”that Agudath Israel must oppose… in the spirit of the Torah.”

In foreign affairs, Breuer advocated that “the state should refrain from the use of power and might in international relations” and that it should “uphold a system built on law and justice.” He supported animal rights and called for fair and just work laws, “because social peace is built on the foundations of social justice of the Torah.” Back in 1937, it was amply clear to Breuer that Haredim must work like everyone else, and to this end he recommended the establishment of vocational schools for Haredi youth, side by side with traditional yeshivas.

http://www.forward.com/articles/152223/