Saturday, May 17, 2008
Neturei Karta, a Zionism-denouncing, Palestinian-embracing subculture within ultra-Orthodox Judaism, is suddenly sharing the spotlight in the antiwar movement.
Mar 13, 2003 | On Saturday, when thousands of antiwar activists converge on the White House, there will be a small, silent group of Hassidic rabbis in black hats and curling sidelocks among them. Because it's the Jewish Sabbath, a day when Orthodox Jews abstain from all work, the rabbis can't take to the podium. If they could, though, their message would mirror that of ANSWER, the zealously anti-Zionist group that called the march. Israel, the rabbis believe, is the source of all the world's suffering, as well as the catalyst for a war driving the world toward catastrophe. America, says Rabbi Chaim Sofer, has been "hijacked by Zionists. This whole war is to secure the assets of the Israeli occupation. We, as Jews, have an obligation to tell the truth about this war."
Sofer and the other rabbis are part of Neturei Karta, a strongly anti-Israel subculture within ultra-Orthodox Judaism. They're bound by a conviction, once shared by most Orthodox Jews, that Zionism is an affront to God and that peace won't prevail until the state of Israel is dismantled. The group, which claims thousands of members worldwide, was founded in Jerusalem around 1940 by rabbis opposed to attempts to create a Jewish state. There are branches of Neturei Karta in Israel, Europe and New York, where members make appearances from time to time to burn Israeli flags on Israeli Independence Day, which Neturei Karta's spiritual leader, the late Grand Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, called "the terrible Day of Blasphemy."
A thin, sharp-featured man with a black beard, flashing dark eyes and a Yiddish accent, Sofer lives with his wife and eight children in Monsey, an ultra-Orthodox enclave in upstate New York. Private buses regularly make the hour-long trip between the town and the Hassidic section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Sheets run down the buses' center aisles, separating the bearded, black-clad men from the women, most of whom, in the ultra-Orthodox manner, keep their hair covered with wigs.
Except for the profusion of synagogues and all the signs in Hebrew, Monsey looks like an average East Coast suburb. Sofer keeps an office in a boardinghouse on Saddle River Road, a few yards from the ramshackle white home of Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss. Rabbi Hilel Deutsch, a 50-year-old who was born in Jerusalem and who emigrated to New York because he was unwilling to live under Zionists, is almost constantly by Sofer's side, and various other rabbis and rabbinical students drift in and out. While most of Monsey's rabbis shut out the secular world, Sofer is constantly online, printing out articles from publications like Alexander Cockburn's far-left, aggressively pro-Palestinian publication, Counterpunch, and newspapers from as far away as Pakistan. "We need to communicate globally," he says. "We can't sit in our basements anymore."
Neturei Karta garnered some publicity in 1999, when the group held a conciliatory meeting with the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan. Yet coming from a community that holds its insularity sacred, the rabbis, some of whom speak only Yiddish, have consistently felt frustrated by their inability to get their message out. Now, as the bloody tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, and the impending war with Iraq, galvanize a global protest movement, Neturei Karta has suddenly found people willing to give them a platform and an audience.
Last April, Neturei Karta shocked many in the Jewish community by marching at the head of ANSWER's pro-Palestinian march on Washington. They had a table at ANSWER's antiwar rally on Jan. 18, the seven or eight men in long black coats forming a somber contrast to the carnival atmosphere that prevailed throughout the protest. On Feb.15, a day of global antiwar demonstrations, they marched in New York. Last week, a delegation from Neturei Karta went on a speaking tour of Europe, addressing the Institute of Islamic Studies in London, as well as crowds at Birmingham and Warwick universities.
This participation in the antiwar movement is something new for Neturei Karta. Until recently, the group has limited its protests to issues directly involving Israel and the Palestinians, with whom the rabbis express unreserved sympathy. When it comes to other domestic issues, the rabbis have generally felt bound to silence by a religious mandate that Jews in exile be loyal to their host countries.
Weiss, a 46-year-old Neturei Karta activist, offers a Jewish legend to explain the group's stance: "In the Book of the Prophets, the king threw the Jews into a fire. God created a miracle and they were not burnt. Their hands were tied, and the rope was burnt, but they were not burnt. They didn't leave the fire, though, until the king gave them permission to leave. They could have just walked out, but they didn't. Why? They still gave respect to the king." Thus even when demonstrating with the Palestinians, the rabbis have been careful to distance themselves from anti-Bush rhetoric. Weiss has avoided antiwar demonstrations because he fears even the appearance of disloyalty.
But like many on the left, some of the rabbis of Neturei Karta have grown convinced that the impending war is all about Israel, and that belief has led to them to act. Sofer translates for Deutsch, a kindly, gray-haired man who speaks only Yiddish. "Our part in demonstrating was out of loyalty to our country," Deutsch says. "It's like when a son sees his father doing something ridiculous that will hurt his future -- he's obligated to come and speak and scream."
Get Salon in your mailbox!