The study of Orthodoxy in modern times is a growing field of scholarly interest. From Open and Modern Orthodoxy in the United States and Israel, to different types of haredi Judaism, whether the focus is history, sociology, or religious thought, Orthodoxy provides a rich trove of material for analysis. Motti Inbari is no stranger to this subject, as his two previous books deal with religious Zionism, in particular radical messianic Zionism in its various permutations.
His new book, which will interest all students of modern Jewish religious history, deals with extremist, anti-Zionist Orthodoxy. His focus is on Neture Karta and Rabbi Amram Blau, Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapira of Munkacs, and Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar, all central to the anti-Zionist wing of ultra-Orthodoxy. Unlike Blau, whose significance is only to be found in the public sphere, both Shapira and Teitelbaum were also theologians and halakhists whose works have not yet received their due. Particularly significant is the chapter on Shapira, who has received little scholarly attention. Shapira's literary output was immense, and Inbari's focus is on one aspect: messianic activism. One fascinating point in Shapira's messianism was his fixation on the Sephardic scholar R. Solomon Eliezer Alfandari. The two corresponded, and in 1930, Shapira actually journeyed to the Land of Israel in order to meet Alfandari and persuade him to accept the messianic crown. Inbari's analysis of this episode is insightful, as is his wider discussion of Shapira's focus on what he believed to be the imminent messianic era.
When it comes to Teitelbaum, Inbari has his own angle, including a provocative theory that during the Holocaust and several years afterwards, Teitelbaum came very close to the thinking of Agudas Yisroel, even to the extent of de facto acceptance of the Zionist movement. It remains to be seen if other scholars will agree that there is sufficient evidence to support this new interpretation; however, Inbari is incorrect in taking Teitelbaum's rhetoric literally. When Teitlebaum refers to the Zionists as descendants of the ‘ erev rav, he does not mean it in a halakhic sense, only in a rhetorical, polemical sense. Yet Inbari takes this literally and then claims that Teitelbaum is inconsistent, since how can there be a common fate binding the Zionists to the religious, meaning that the former suffer for the sins of the latter, if the Zionists are not even Jewish? There is no doubt that in this case Teitelbaum's rhetoric is not to be taken literally, and this was understood by all of his Hasidim.
The two chapters on Blau, which provide a very good treatment of his life and activities, reveal a good deal of hitherto unknown information. Normally scholars would not be able access the private archive, including personal correspondence, of figures like Blau. Yet a fascinating turn of events brought Blau's papers to Boston University, and they give us an inside view of Blau's life. This includes the great controversy over his marriage to a woman who had converted to Judaism and whom many in Blau's community did not view as appropriate for a man in his position. While he has often been viewed as a simple rabble-rouser, Blau indeed also showed great courage in marrying the woman of his choice, knowing the consequences it would bring.
The second chapter on Blau deals with his modesty campaigns, and as this focuses on women it relates to “Women's Equality,” which appears in the title of the book. Contrary to what the reader might expect from seeing these words in the title, the place of women is not a focus of the book. Yet Inbari does deal with the phenomenon of the “Taliban women,” those haredi women who dress completely covered when they leave their homes. He remarks that while “it would seem that the only way these women were able to protest against their social oppression and seize control of their own fate was by adopting the rules of the game in their community and inventing their own strictures. … The ostensible message of sexual oppression conveyed by the women's ‘Taliban-style’ dress was actually transformed into a tool for empowerment and autonomy” (235). As Inbari further notes, it is possible that the motivation behind the harsh response of the Edah Haredit leadership to this new phenomenon was precisely to clamp down on women making their own decisions in a religious matter.
Inbari maintains that anti-Zionism was not the driving force among the extremists his book covers. Rather, it was antimodernism, with anti-Zionism only one component. He also argues that Jacob Israël de Haan and R. Joseph Ḥayim Sonnenfeld should be seen as communal isolationists rather than anti-Zionists, as they did not “negate Zionism's right to establish an independent entity” (29). This argument, it appears to me, is based on a mistaken understanding that when, for example, de Haan claimed that he did not oppose the Zionist idea or the Balfour Declaration, he had the same understanding of these matters as the Zionists. De Haan and Sonnenfeld believed in settlement in the Land of Israel and perhaps even in a Jewish state, but they absolutely opposed the attempt by the Zionists to establish a state as they knew that it would be not be based on religious principles. Additionally, there are several factual errors and imprecisions, such as placing Sonnenfeld at the 1922 San Remo Conference, referring to the Sanzer Rebbe as Halberstadt instead of Halberstam, not referring to Satmar leader Rabbi Yekutiel Yehudah Teitelbaum as Zalman Leib, the name by which is he universally known, and claiming “there were no Jews in Hungary” by July 1944 (143). There are also a number of translation errors that mar the fluidity of the prose or read awkwardly, and one egregious mistranslation, where in quoting from a contemporary description of the famous meeting of Shapira and Alfandari, we read that the two of them “made love.” The proper translation is that they “expressed their great love for each other” (106).
