“WHOMEVER HAS ANY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ZIONISTS… BECOMES A PARTNER IN ACTIONS AGAINST JUDAISM”: 1947 JERUSALEM-PRINTED ANTI-ZIONIST BROADSIDE

(JUDAICA—ZIONISM). Kriath Kodesh [Call to Yeshiva Students]. (Jerusalem): Kislev, 1947-48. Broadside (measures 10 by 13-1/2 inches), printed on recto. $1800.

1947 Jerusalem Orthodox broadside against “the Zionists who wish to uproot the Torah,” illustrative of the conflicts among Zionists and other factions in Jerusalem just prior to the creation of the state of Israel.

This broadside states that it is the scholars of Torah who are the Neturei Karta, “the protectors of the city.” “The forces which were contending over the nature of the new society were divided into three broad groups… Socialist Zionists, known as the Histadrut… middle-class elements [anti-Socialist Revisionists]… and the Orthodox, who could not imagine a Jewish presence in the land which did not exemplify the values and practices of the religious tradition” (Encyclopaedia Judaica). These three factions came to maturity as the Zionist settlement in Palestine increased tenfold, from roughly 60,000 in 1919 to 600,000 in the 1940s.

This broadside goes on to claim, “Whomever has any relationship with the Zionists-even enlisting in the Haganah-becomes a partner in actions against Judaism.” “[Orthodox elements] were dedicated to the building of an institutional power base for religious Jews, so that they could compete as equals with the other groups and provide equal opportunity in the new country for those who shared the Orthodox religious faith. This body of opinion was deeply concerned that the total temper of the Jewish community should not be secularized. They did not want to become a religious ghetto in a non-religious Jewish society, and they believed that it was their duty to bring religion even to those who opposed it… The struggle between the Socialist and the middle-class elements in Israel’s society has been muted in the generation of statehood, for a mixed economy now prevails. The conflict over religion and its relationship to public life has, if anything, become sharper within the sovereign parliamentary life of the Jewish state” (Encyclopaedia Judaica). Text in Hebrew.

Faint fold lines. Fine condition. Scarce.