Isaac Breuer - Zionism

Zionism

Although Hirsch's neo-Orthodoxy movement had defined itself from the start largely as an opposition to the German Reform movement, Isaac Breuer already regarded the Reform movement of his day as essentially the impotent and dying remnant of the Haskalah (Biemann 2000). Breuer saw the real enemy of Orthodoxy in both political Zionism and Religious Zionism, which he considered especially dangerous because it possessed an authentic Jewish instinct and impulse. The goals of the Zionists paralleled the goals of his own Agudah organization in many areas ("reunification of land and nation"), but without the stress which Agudah laid on adherence to halachah and tradition (Biemann 2000). Indeed, Breuer envisioned a Messianic Torah state in the land of Israel, and could not abide the idea of "reunification of land and nation" coming to pass through the agency of secular Zionist forces in the form of a secular state.