Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah

The council connects the authority of leading Torah scholars with the organization and political activity of Agudath Israel, an umbrella movement encompassing different Orthodox communities.[2] Its members have included Hasidic leaders, heads of yeshivas, respected poskim, or halakhic decisors, and Talmud scholars, brought together to provide formal rabbinic leadership and emphasize common ground among Orthodox groups.[5] In the movement’s institutional conception, Torah sages are the ultimate authority on both religious and political matters, although not all prominent sages have participated in the council.[6]

The name does not designate a single undifferentiated contemporary institution: Agudath Israel and Degel HaTorah in Israel have retained their own rabbinic advisory councils, and an American council operates in connection with Agudath Israel of America.[3] These organizational distinctions matter because decisions by one council concern its own affiliated representatives and cannot automatically be treated as decisions of all the bodies bearing the name.[3] Within the wider religious landscape, the Ashkenazic Moetzes is also distinct from the Sephardic Moetzet Hakhmei HaTorah, composed of leading Sephardic halakhic authorities.[1]

The institution’s work extends beyond ritual observance: its documented responsibilities include political supervision and educational initiatives.[2][7] This breadth reflects Daas Torah, also rendered Daas Toyre or Da’at Torah, the belief that exceptional Torah learning equips sages to determine the proper course on social and political questions as well as strictly religious ones.[3][4]

The first Council of Torah Sages was nominated at Agudath Israel’s founding conference in Kattowitz, also rendered Katowice, in May 1912, as a rabbinical body charged with reviewing and supervising major decisions.[3] Agudath Israel emerged as a worldwide Orthodox organization during a period of international mobilization in response to Zionism, religious reform, and the secular Haskalah.[6] Its stated purpose was “to solve in the spirit of Torah and the Commandments the various every day issues that will rise in the life of the people of Israel.”[6]

The movement’s formation also followed a dispute over religious education within the Zionist movement: a motion sponsored by Mizrahi to fund religious schools was defeated at the Tenth World Zionist Congress, after which several Mizrahi members left the party and the Zionist organization and helped form Agudath Israel.[8] The new movement united constituencies with different regional and religious backgrounds, including Lithuanian yeshiva communities, Polish ultra-Orthodoxy, and Hungarian-Romanian Hasidic courts.[2] Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff’s account in Ḥakirah also emphasizes German neo-Orthodoxy and Hungarian Orthodoxy among the communities brought together at the founding conference, and presents the movement as a response to assimilationist and Reform influences.[4]

The council was intended to give this diverse movement a shared rabbinic leadership rather than leave its major decisions solely to organizers and political professionals.[5] Its envisaged composition combined different forms of religious standing: leadership of Hasidic communities, direction of yeshivas, authority in halakhic decision-making, and distinction in Talmudic scholarship.[5] The resulting institution expressed the principle that the movement’s political and organizational activity should remain subordinate to Torah authority.[6]

Ḥayim Ozer Grodzenski, one of Agudas Yisroel’s founders, was elected president of the council in 1923.[9] Although many regarded him as an embodiment of Daas Toyre, he understood rabbinic authority on public questions as resting on “common sense and experience” as well as mastery of halakhic sources.[9] His approach to Zionism combined opposition to the movement with practical engagement: he supported Orthodox pioneers who immigrated to Palestine, maintained good relations with Rabbi Avraham Yitsḥak Kook, and favored an unrealized union between Agudas Yisroel and Mizrahi.[9] This pragmatism differed from the more hard-line position of his brother-in-law, Rabbi Elḥanan Bunim Wasserman.[9]

Attitudes toward Zionism and activity in the Land of Israel remained important differences within a movement encompassing Hasidim and Lithuanian mitnagdim, traditionalist and more modernist groups, and moderate and more uncompromising elements.[6] Immanuel Jakobovits, writing in Tradition, recounts that the Moetzes declared at the Third Knessia Gedola in 1937 that a Jewish state not based on Torah law would deny Jewish peoplehood and threaten the people’s existence.[10] His account says that the assembly rejected the Peel Commission partition proposal after three days of debate, citing both the proposed boundaries of the Holy Land and concern about a secular Jewish state.[10]

After the Holocaust, Israel and the United States became the principal centers of Agudath Israel activity.[11] A Central World Council meeting in 1947 established centers in Jerusalem, New York, and London, and Israeli representatives predominated in the movement’s central institutions by the Great Assembly of 1964.[11] This geographical reorientation provided the setting for the subsequent development of councils in Israel and America.[3][11]

Rabbi Meir Karelitz helped establish the Moetzet Gedolei Hatorah in the Land of Israel, alongside the independent education stream and the local Vaad Yeshivot.[12] He had immigrated with his family shortly before World War II and became active in leading the Haredi public.[12] His institutional work linked rabbinic leadership with the development of educational and yeshiva organizations serving the community.[12]

Agudath Israel’s relationship with Jewish statehood changed over time: before Israel’s establishment it opposed creating a political Jewish state, while after 1948 it represented ultra-Orthodox interests in the Knesset.[8] The movement also gradually moved toward cooperation with the Zionist movement and the Yishuv, ultimately supporting the establishment of the State of Israel.[6] These developments occurred within an organization whose constituent communities continued to differ over religious and political priorities.[6]

Rabbi Elazar Menachem Shach headed Agudath Israel’s Council of Torah Sages for years before separating from the party in 1988 and founding the Lithuanian party Degel HaTorah.[13] Agudath Israel and Degel HaTorah subsequently formed the United Torah Judaism electoral list in 1992, but maintained separate spiritual leaderships and separate councils.[14] A 2008 account reported that the two councils rarely conferred, despite the parties’ joint electoral framework.[14] Agudath Israel’s council became identified with the Hasidic faction, while Degel HaTorah’s council served the Lithuanian faction.[15]

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky was involved in establishing Degel HaTorah and exercised considerable influence in the Moetzes, alongside his role as a Torah teacher and adviser to people seeking guidance and blessings.[16] After Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman died in 2017, Rabbi Gershon Edelstein became joint spiritual leader of Degel HaTorah with Kanievsky; following Kanievsky’s death in 2022, Edelstein became the sole leader and remained head of the council until his own death.[17] These leadership accounts concern the Lithuanian setting rather than the separate Hasidic council of Agudath Israel.[14][17]

In the United States, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein served as leader of the Moetzes, the supreme rabbinic authority of the Agudath Israel umbrella organization.[18] Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe, later headed the American council and served as president of Agudath Israel of America from 1998.[19] Shlomo Zuckier’s 2020 essay in Mosaic describes a period of leadership change: Perlow died of COVID-19 in April, several members were added in September, and Rabbi Dovid Feinstein, an elder statesman of the council, died later that year.[20]

The council was formally the supreme body of Agudath Israel, intended to ensure that the organization undertook no activity without the consent of representatives of halakhic authority.[3][11] Its decisions were accepted in a manner comparable to legal verdicts, and the details of its consultations were kept secret.[11] This structure gave rabbinic leaders supervisory authority over the movement’s professional political leadership rather than assigning the council a merely ceremonial role.[2]

In 1964, the council consisted of 15 rabbis, all halakhic authorities selected for their preeminence in Talmudic learning.[11] The number of members was not predetermined, and there were no defined appointment criteria.[11] That dated description should be distinguished from the membership of later councils and from the separate institutional settings in which the name came to be used.[3][11]

Formal supremacy did not require constant plenary meetings: the council historically met infrequently as a body, while continuing rabbinic supervision often operated through informal consultations with key rabbis.[3] The Israeli and American councils became more regularized in later decades, although disagreements among members sometimes prevented the Israeli council from convening.[3] The distinction between collective sessions and continuing personal consultation is therefore part of the institution’s documented practice.[3]

Rabbinic supervision existed alongside other governing organs of Agudath Israel.[3] The Great Assembly was the movement’s supreme deliberative body, a central council of 100 elected delegates met annually between assemblies, and a smaller executive committee handled day-to-day administration.[3] The Council of Torah Sages supplied religious oversight within this broader organizational structure rather than replacing every deliberative or managerial institution.[3]

The underlying doctrine of Daas Torah extended the sages’ guidance beyond questions of ritual and religious law into the organization’s social and political decisions.[21] Rakeffet-Rothkoff describes this model as expecting lay leaders to implement policies established by the sages, citing an Agudath Israel of America formulation that called them “living, breathing embodiments of the Torah attitude toward every question.”[4] In this understanding, Torah scholarship was not restricted to a specialized legal jurisdiction but informed the direction of communal affairs.[21]

Distinctive requirements for political representatives are documented in the Degel HaTorah setting.[15] In 2002, its council instructed elected representatives to follow its directions, appear before it regularly, and report on their work at least every two months.[15] They were also told not to express significant public or media opinions without its approval, illustrating how the principle of rabbinic supervision could be translated into specific reporting and communication obligations.[15]

The Independent Education System, established in 1953, originated as an initiative of Agudat Yisrael’s Council of Torah Sages in Israel and was incorporated into the State Education Law of that year.[7] It institutionalized curricula taught before Israel’s founding, including the non-Zionist Haredi curriculum associated with Agudat Yisrael and Poalei Agudat Yisrael.[7] The initiative placed the council’s communal authority within the practical organization of schooling, not only the supervision of parliamentary activity.[7]

Karelitz’s contribution connected the council’s establishment with the creation of the independent education stream and the local Vaad Yeshivot.[12] These parallel institutional efforts accompanied his wider leadership of the Haredi public in the Land of Israel after his immigration shortly before World War II.[12] The movement’s organizational reach also encompassed the different Eastern European constituencies whose representatives entered the Knesset through Agudath Israel to the extent that those constituencies chose to participate.[2]

Agudath Israel thus developed a comprehensive communal subpolity in which religious leadership and professional politics occupied different levels of authority.[2] The council was designed to retain the upper hand, while professional politicians held subordinate positions.[2] Educational organization and political representation were both situated within this framework of Torah-guided communal life.[2][7]

In 2015, Agudath Israel’s council approved Yaakov Litzman’s appointment as health minister.[22] Ynet described the decision as a historic shift after decades in which Ashkenazi Haredi leaders had generally opposed serving as ministers in a secular Israeli government; the report contrasted it with the earlier public condemnation and boycott of Benjamin Mintz, an Agudath Israel-affiliated politician who had served as minister of postal services.[22] Three rebbes did not attend the meeting that considered Litzman’s appointment.[22]

Litzman resigned as health minister in 2017 after the rabbi leading the Gur Hasidic group, a member of the Moetzes, ruled that he could not remain a minister while railway work was being conducted on the Sabbath.[23] The episode involved the influence of an individual council member’s ruling on a political representative’s government role, rather than a reported formal vote of the entire council.[23] It therefore illustrates a different channel of rabbinic influence from a collective council directive.[23]

Earlier, during the dispute over the Golan Annexation Law, the council instructed Agudath Israel’s Knesset delegates to abstain despite their coalition commitments, as recounted by Jakobovits.[10] His account says Rabbi Shach defended the decision by invoking the commandment not to provoke other nations, while the position attracted bitter criticism, particularly from Lubavitch.[10]

Candidate selection also remained under council authority.[24] In 2018, Agudath Israel told the High Court of Justice that it would remove an explicit party rule barring women from running for office on its platform.[24] The party simultaneously said the alteration would be symbolic because candidate decisions remained with the Council of Torah Sages and candidates had to undertake to follow its decisions.[24] Its statement maintained that removing the wording would not produce an actual change in acceptance to the party.[24]

At the beginning of 1948, Agudat Israel and Poalei Agudat Israel called on Haredi and religious youth to enlist in the newly forming IDF, excepting women and yeshiva students.[12] This position arose during preparations for statehood and the early fighting of the War of Independence.[12] The treatment of yeshiva students was already the subject of detailed correspondence among religious leaders.[12]

In a letter dated January 1, 1948, Rabbi Meir Karelitz informed Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria of a temporary arrangement with Zionist national institutions concerning yeshiva students’ military service.[12] Students on lists approved by three yeshiva leaders were to be exempt from full or partial drafts, while yeshivas were required to provide capable students with self-defense training in accordance with military instructions.[12] The arrangement applied temporarily to Hebrew year 5708, with renewed discussion planned at the beginning of 5709.[12]

Neria’s draft response, preserved on the back of Karelitz’s letter, accepted exemption from a full draft but argued for students’ inclusion in partial service.[12] He considered partial service valuable for internal spiritual reasons and “for the sake of raising the honor of Torah and sanctifying the name of Heaven in public.”[12] The surviving archive does not establish whether their correspondence continued.[12]

Military-service legislation later became a recurring subject of collective council decisions.[25][26] In June 2018, Agudath Israel’s council directed its Knesset members to leave the coalition if the original version of Avigdor Lieberman’s conscription bill passed unchanged.[25] The proposal included recruitment targets and possible financial sanctions affecting yeshiva budgets, while the council did not publicly specify the changes it sought.[25] Its membership at that time consisted chiefly of Hasidic community leaders together with other senior rabbis.[25]

Later in 2018, the council adopted a different position on the proposed legislation: Agudath Israel lawmakers would vote against it but would not resign from the government if it passed.[26] This stance differed from that of Degel HaTorah and Shas, which tended to accept the bill’s then-current outline.[26] In May 2019, reporting described a compromise under which enlistment targets would be established by government decision rather than written into legislation; the Gur Rebbe was absent from the council gathering associated with the proposal.[27]

In June 2025, the council met in Ora, near Jerusalem, after an interval of three years and instructed Agudath Israel lawmakers to advance legislation dissolving the Knesset and leave the coalition.[28] The decision arose amid the dispute over legislation governing yeshiva students’ military service, and the council unanimously declared that it would not remain part of a government supporting what it called persecution of the Torah world.[29] The directive concerned the three Hasidic United Torah Judaism Knesset members and Agudath Israel chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf.[29] Two prominent rebbes did not attend, and differences among Haredi leaders persisted despite the directive’s binding standing within the community.[28]

The council institutionalizes the principle that the leadership of Torah scholars should guide an Orthodox movement’s public affairs as well as its religious life.[6] In Agudath Israel’s organizational model, political representatives act within a structure that gives superior authority to rabbinic leadership.[2] Its importance therefore lies both in the religious standing of its members and in its capacity to direct the conduct of affiliated organizations and elected officials.[2][15]

The institution also belongs to a plural Jewish religious landscape rather than encompassing all Jewish religious authority.[30] The Ashkenazic council exists alongside separate Sephardic leadership and other Orthodox and non-Orthodox institutions.[1][30] Shas, which broke away from Agudath Israel, established its own Moetzet Hakhmei HaTorah.[31] Daniel J. Elazar’s 1985 account identifies that council with Shas, founded in 1984, and the leadership of former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.[32]

Within Ashkenazic Haredi politics, the continued existence of separate Agudath Israel and Degel HaTorah councils after their electoral union demonstrates that parliamentary cooperation did not erase distinct rabbinic affiliations.[3][14] In America, the council’s association with Agudath Israel of America provided another institutional setting for senior rabbinic leadership.[19] Across these settings, the shared name expresses a model of Torah-centered authority while the actual bodies retain their own membership, constituency, and organizational responsibilities.[3][19]

The scope and historical foundations of Daas Torah have generated substantive disagreement.[4] Rakeffet-Rothkoff discusses competing views about whether broad rabbinic authority over public affairs is a modern development or has premodern roots, and criticism that the concept can elevate a partisan Orthodox position into an exclusive claim to authority.[4] He also presents Rabbi Moshe Sherer’s contrasting understanding of the council as guidance supplied by sages possessing profound Jewish learning and experience.[4]

Rakeffet-Rothkoff traces resistance to the council’s structure to its early period, recounting Rabbi Chaim Soloveichik’s refusal to join a binding formal council and his objection to determining policy by majority vote.[4] Soloveichik insisted on his independence as rabbi of Brisk; organizational efforts were subsequently interrupted by World War I in 1914 and renewed in 1919, after his death in 1918.[4]

The aspiration to shared Orthodox leadership also encountered factional divisions.[5] In the Israeli council, Rabbi Shach’s departure and Rabbi Simcha Bunim Alter’s continuing role as a Hasidic representative accompanied a narrowing of the institution’s constituency; after the Lithuanian departure, it no longer functioned as a universal body.[5] These disputes concern the reach and organization of rabbinic authority, alongside the major political disagreements over military service, state policy, and women’s participation described in the council’s public activity.[5][24]