Religious and Political Leadership
Political power is presently vested in the Hasidic rebbes of Ger, Vizhnitz and Belz.
In addition, policy decisions of Agudat Yisrael are ratified by its Council of Torah Sages which includes several other prominent Hasidic leaders and scholars, many being the leading rabbis from the main constituent groups. When participating in government coalitions, the party generally refrains from accepting actual cabinet posts. Its positions on Israeli foreign policy and the Palestinian question has been flexible in the past, since the party formally rejects political secular Zionism and does not view such issues ideologically. Therefore, it has been able to participate in both Likud and Labour led coalitions. In more recent years it has become more sympathetic to the settler movement in the West Bank and thus more security conscious on military issues affecting Israel's survival. Agudat Yisrael supported Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan of 2005.
In 1948, Rabbi Yehuda Meir Abramowicz was appointed as General Secretary.
Rabbi Meir Porush, as well as Yaakov Litzman, and Yisrael Eichler, from the Hasidic courts of Ger and Belz have represented the party in Israel's Knesset recently. Another longtime Agudat MK is Rabbi Shmuel Halpert, a member of the court of Vizhnitz.
Read more about this topic: Agudat Yisrael
Famous quotes containing the words religious and, religious, political and/or leadership:
“When we say “science” we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.”
—Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945)
“It is time that we start thinking about foundational issues: about our attitudes toward fair trials... Who are the People in a multicultural society?... The victims of discrimination are now organized. Blacks, Jews, gays, women—they will no longer tolerate second-class status. They seek vindication for past grievances in the trials that take place today, the new political trial.”
—George P. Fletcher, U.S. law educator. With Justice for Some, p. 6, Addison-Wesley (1995)
“This I do know and can say to you: Our country is in more danger now than at any time since the Declaration of Independence. We don’t dare follow the Lindberghs, Wheelers and Nyes, casting suspicion, sowing discord around the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt. We don’t want revolution among ourselves.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)