Voting in WZO Election and When Agudas Yisroel Signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence 1948

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

Just a quick reality check.  After the tragic events of the Holocaust and the displacement and murder of the Kedoshim, Agudas Yisroel did join with Zionist leaders in signing Israel’s Declaration of Independence.   The signer on behalf of Agudah was Rav Yitzchok Meir Levine zt”l, the son-in-law of the Gerrer Rebbe.  Ostensibly, this was done with the agreement of Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l whom at the 4th Knessia Gedolah in Jerusalem 6 years later, sat next to Rav Levine and the Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe Sharret. 

Agudah’s primary motivation in signing, it would seem, was to vouchsafe the continuity of Torah and its study in the newly formed State of Israel.  It would also seem that Agudah signed as representatives of the Jewish community in Eretz Yisroel and not as members of the Zionist movement. However, all the signers were members of the People’s Council (see paragraph 11) and joined together with the leaders and members of the Zionist Movement. 

AT the 4^th Knessiah of Agudath Yisroel held in Jerusalem in 1954, Rav Aharon Kotler zt”l sat next to Rav Yitzchok Meir Levine zt”l, who sat next to Moshe Sharret – the Prime Minister of Israel.

Under these conditions 70 years ago, Agudath Yisroel did join together with leaders of the Zionist Movement with the express purpose of vouchsafing Torah and its values and ideals. To say otherwise is historically inaccurate.  The situation then is analogous to the situation today if not more so.  Shouldn’t we follow the example of Klal Yisroel’s leadership when these challenges first arose?  Or should we shift gears and allow the anti-religious secularists to do what they will?   There are letters from Gedolei HaRoshei Yeshivaand Poskim in Eretz Yisroel that I have seen saying that it is a most worthy endeavor for Bnei Torah to vote for the Shomrei Torah slate in this WZO election.  There is also a video of Rav Chaim zt”l to this effect below.

It is because of the votes made five years ago, that this past December 8 million dollars was alotted to Yeshivos and Seminaries, including one Million dollars ro the Mir Yeshiva.

What follows is the text of the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel and its signees.

Issued at Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948 (5th of Iyar, 5708) [NOTE: paragraph numbering is the author’s]

1. ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) – The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.
2. After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.
3. Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, ma’pilim [(Hebrew) – immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive legislation] and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country’s inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.
4. In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.
5. This right was recognized in the Balfour Declarationof the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.
6. The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people – the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe – was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.
7. Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.
8. In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.
9. On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolutioncalling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.
10. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.
11. ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE’S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.
12. WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People’s Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People’s Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called “Israel”.
13. THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
14. THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolutionof the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.
15. WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.
16. WE APPEAL – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
17. WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
18. WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream – the redemption of Israel.
19. PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE ALMIGHTY, WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY, 1948).

David Ben-Gurion
Daniel Auster
Mordekhai Bentov
Yitzchak Ben Zvi
Eliyahu Berligne
Fritz Bernstein
Rabbi Wolf Gold
Meir Grabovsky
Yitzchak Gruenbaum
Dr. Abraham Granovsky
Eliyahu Dobkin
Meir Wilner-Kovner
Zerach Wahrhaftig
Herzl Vardi Rachel Cohen
Rabbi Kalman Kahana
Saadia Kobashi
Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levin – Agudas Yisroel

Meir David Loewenstein

Zvi Luria
Golda Myerson

Nachum Nir
Zvi Segal
Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Fishman
David Zvi Pinkas
Aharon Zisling
Moshe Kolodny
Eliezer Kaplan
Abraham Katznelson
Felix Rosenblueth
David Remez
Berl Repetur
Mordekhai Shattner Ben Zion Sternberg
Bekhor Shitreet
Moshe Shapira
Moshe Shertok