Significant collection of Broadsides: Mizrachi and Chief Rabbinate

(ISRAEL, LAND OF)

v.p.

Jerusalem

1920s-1940s

Mizrachi and Chief Rabbinate. C. 210 broadsides reflecting the ideology and activities of the Religious Zionist Movement and its affiliate Chief Rabbinate of Eretz Israel. Issues of concern are the dilemma of remaining within “Knesset Israel,” the general Zionist establishment; women’s suffrage; kashruth of meat, milk, and fruits and vegetables grown in the Land and subject to tithes (terumoth u-ma’aseroth). One follows with great interest the rabbinic careers of Chief Aschkenazic Rabbis Kook and Herzog, Chief Sephardic Rabbis Meir and Uziel, and Jerusalem Rabbis Tzvi Pesah Frank and Jacob Moses Charlap. Equally prominent in this archive are the Mizrachi activists Rabbis Meir Berlin, Judah Leib Hakohen Fishman, Ze’ev Gold, and M. Ostrovsky. Of great historical importance is the call by Rabbis Herzog and Uziel to religious young men to enlist in the army to defend the Land. The collection includes several documents of particular interest to the Sephardic community, as well as relics of a little known chapter in history when Agudah and Mizrachi buried the hatchet, so to speak, and their leaders, R. Moshe Blau and R. Moshe Ostrovsky respectively, put up a United Front (“Me’uchedeth”) to win seats in the Jerusalem mayor’s office. An American Jewish historian might thrill to the billboard announcements of the upcoming visit by R. Moses Zevulun Margolies (RaMaZ) of New York!

In many ways, the pronouncements of the Mizrachi and Agudah movements, and their affiliate institutions, the Chief Rabbinate (Rabbanuth ha-Rashith) versus the BaDaTZ of the Edah Chareidis, mirror one another, as indeed they should, for the two groups were competing for the hearts and minds of the Orthodox Jews of the Holy Land, in terms of educational systems, kashruth supervision, etc. A SIGNIFICANT ARCHIVE THAT DOCUMENTS THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL POSITIONS OF IMORTANT SOCIAL / POLITICAL CIRCLES