History

For centuries, Jerusalem has been home to a community of pious Jews who lived in poverty and devoted their lives to studying and practicing the Torah. These Jews lived peacefully alongside their Arab neighbors and had no nationalistic aspirations. As the twentieth century dawned, the newly founded Zionist movement established agricultural settlements in Palestine and…

A few years ago, the newspapers Hamodia (6/9/2021) and Yated Neeman (6/25/2021) published accounts of the “Status Quo” agreement reached between Agudath Israel and the Zionists in summer of 1947, in which the Zionist leadership made four promises relating to religion in the state they planned to found, in exchange for Agudah’s commitment not to…

The following is taken from the Hebrew Mishpacha Magazine, 8 Av 5769 (2009).  Rabbi Dov (Benny) Cohen was brought up in Seattle, Washington. In 1926, shortly after his thirteenth birthday, his parents sent him to study in the famous Slobodka Yeshiva of Lithuania, which had recently relocated in Hebron, Palestine. He witnessed the pogrom of…