Top ultra-Orthodox rabbi urges Haredi parties to shun Zionist institutions
Statement could have implications for Haredi participation in the World Zionist Congress elections next month
Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
A leading Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox rabbi has called on Haredi political parties to refrain from participating in Zionist institutions like the Jewish Agency and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund.
The letter by Rabbi Dov Landau, published Tuesday in Yated Ne’eman, a newspaper affiliated with the non-Hasidic Degel Hatorah faction in United Torah Judaism, is seen as a strategic move in his ongoing campaign to exempt ultra-Orthodox men from service in the IDF.
“Zionism is a movement that aims to place the people of Israel on a purely secular basis, which is heresy and rebellion against divine rule,” Landau wrote. “All national institutions are built on this, and there is no permission to participate with them or hold any office among them or vote in elections for national institutions, in any way whatsoever.”
“Doing so would constitute heresy and the desecration of the name of God. And the fact that we are participating in Knesset elections according to the instruction of our rabbis has nothing to do with any of the above,” he added.
The statement may have implications for the World Zionist Congress elections, which will be held online for Jews in the United States between March 10 and May 4. The vote will help establish how a budget of more than $1 billion a year will be divvied up by Jewish institutions over the next five years and influence Zionist organizations.
Ultra-Orthodox parties have traditionally avoided participating in the Congress, which was established by Theodor Herzl in Basel in 1897 to drum up support for the founding of a Jewish state.
However, in the previous elections in 2020, a party associated with Israel’s United Torah Judaism party, Eretz HaKodesh, joined for the first time in the United States and won an impressive 25 out of 152 seats.
Haredi parties don’t make use of their portion of Israel’s 200 seats in the Congress, which are otherwise automatically divided along the lines of political parties’ strength in Knesset.
Eretz HaKodesh is set to run again in this year’s election, and it is not yet clear how Landau’s ruling will influence its future.
Following the letter’s publication, Dr. Yizhar Hess, vice chairman of the World Zionist Organization and representative of Mercaz, the slate of the global Masorti/Conservative Movement, said he had developed excellent relationships with Degel HaTorah/Eretz HaKodesh members during the past term, and that he would be sad if his party’s rival was forced to withdraw from the vote.
“The fact that Haredim, Reform, and Conservative Jews have been able to overcome differences and sign a joint coalition agreement — that we learned to get to know each other, to argue, and to agree on many things at the same time — filled me with optimism,” Hess wrote.
“When you work in one place and for common goals, you get closer,” Hess continued. “I have often wondered whether Shmuel Litov (Degel Hatorah/Eretz Hakodesh) and Ronit Boitner (Women of the Western Wall/Reform Movement) would have had the opportunity to meet, let alone become friends, if they had not sat together around the same table in dozens if not hundreds of meetings and gone on joint tours of projects.”
