Agudat Yisrael - History

History

Agudat Yisrael was founded in Katowice (Upper Silesia, now in the southwestern part of Poland), in 1912, with purpose of providing an umbrella organization for observant Jews, who opposed the Zionist movement. In Palestine, Agudat Yisrael was established in opposition to the organized Jewish community (Yishuv). One of its most authoritative spokesmen against the formation of a Jewish State, the Dutch poet Jacob Israël de Haan, was assassinated by the Haganah in 1924. In 1933, it entered into an agreement with the Jewish Agency there, according to which Agudat Yisrael would receive 6.5% of the immigration permits. Eventually, at the eve of the Israeli Declaration of Independence (1948), Agudat Yisrael yielded to pressure from the Zionist movement and has been a participant in most governments since that time.

In the 1980s Rabbi Elazar Shach, leader of Israel's "Lithuanian" Haredi Jews and its pre-eminent rosh yeshiva ("yeshiva dean") at the time, split from Agudat Yisrael and created the new Degel HaTorah ("Flag of the Torah") party, that was controlled by Lithuanian-style Haredi leaders as opposed to the Hasidic leaders who controlled Agudat Yisrael. Rabbi Shach later assisted Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in splitting from Agudath Israel and creating a Sephardic Haredi party known as Shas. Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah have not always agreed with each other about policy matters; however, over the years the two parties have co-operated and united as a voting bloc in order to win the maximum amount of seats in the Knesset since many extra votes can be wasted if certain thresholds are not attained under Israel's proportional representation parliamentary system. The two parties chose to function and be listed under the name of United Torah Judaism (Yahadut HaTorah).

When both parties joined the government coalition of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 the UTJ union was broken due to rivalries. For the Israel legislative election, 2006 Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah once again put their differences aside and have officially revived their United Torah Judaism alliance in order to win the maximum amount of seats in the 17th Knesset.

Though Agudat Yisrael has never elected more than a handful of members in the Knesset, it has often played crucial roles in the formation of Israel's coalition governments because Israel's system of proportional representation allows small parties to wield the balance of power between the larger secular parties. This political leverage has been used to obtain funding for yeshivas and community institutions and to pass legislation regarding observance of the Shabbat and kosher ("dietary") laws, often to the consternation of secular Israelis.