Agudath Israel אגודת ישראל

Discussions had gone on since 1909, and the decisive push was the Tenth Zionist Congress's resolution to include secular cultural work in the movement's programme. Orthodoxy answered with a union of its own: Katowice, 1912.

It was made of three parts little alike: the German neo-Orthodoxy of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch's school, which accepted European learning; Hungarian Orthodoxy; and the Polish-Lithuanian, including the Hasidim, above all Gur. They differed among themselves about secular education, about Yiddish against the state languages, and about European culture—and went on differing inside the common union.

Their constitution they explained plainly: at the head stands a Council of Torah Sages, fifteen rabbis chosen for eminence in Torah, and obedience to that council is what distinguishes Agudath Israel from any other movement.

Its attitude to Zionism was negative, and the argument was not political but of principle: redemption belongs to the Holy One, and the people is not to be reordered apart from that. That argument is treated separately here; what matters at this point is that the union was an answer, not an independent design.

Agudah was strongest in pre-war Poland: ninety-two thousand votes and two deputies as early as 1919. It kept talmud torahs and yeshivot across Eastern Europe and in the Land of Israel—and from 1923 the Bais Yaakov network, which it grew from one seamstress's undertaking into a matter for the whole people.