Our J.D.B. News Letter

(By our Warsaw Correspondent)

The World Executive of the Agudath Israel Organization has been holding its Conference action Poland’s ancient capital, Cracow, it is not difficult to understand why the Agudah called the members of its Executive, the majority of whom live in Germany, to a Polish town in order to hold their Conference. Officially, it is stated that the members of the Executive took part in the celebration of laying the foundation stone of a building for an Orthodox Teachers’ Seminary in Cracow. Unofficially, however, there was another reason.

Poland is very shortly to be plunged into a general election. The days or the weeks of the present Sejm are numbered. It’s term expires in November and it may end even sooner. It depends on the Government. And since we are to have a general election, every party is mobilizing its forces. The Agudah, which claims to have the support of the greatest part of Polish Jewry, intends to put up a big fight at the forthcoming elections, and the Polish Agudah leaders found it expedient therefore to consult their colleagues of the World Executive on the tactics to adopt in the Polish Parliamentary elections. Cracow as the meeting place was certainly a happy choice. The Agudah leaders would not have felt so much at home in modern its Warsaw, in commercial Lemberg, or in rationalist Vilna as in Cracow, the city of churches and of synagogues, whose Jews go about with earlocks, and Hassidic hats; Cracow, the historic town of dead men and living stones.

The agenda dealt with a large number of questions, but most of the time was devoted to discussing the forthcoming elections. Deputy Kirschbraun, the leader of the Agudah fraction in the Polish Parliament, submitted a long report on the position, detailing the possible election combinations into which the Agudah might enter. There were three alternatives, a bloc with the other Jewish parties, a bloc with the other minorities in Poland, or a bloc with one of the Polish Parties.

Deputy Kirschbraun went at length into each of these alternatives. He pointed out that a bloc with the other Jewish parties would place them in a difficult position, because the non-Agudists are combating the Agudist ideals. Deputy Kirschbraun was also sceptical regarding a bloc with the other minorities. He took the view that the national minorities, the Ukrainians, White Russians and Germans in Poland are undergoing a process of disruption from within and that soon there will be no one left with whom to enter into a bloc. Furthermore, he pointed out that there are differences of principle dividing the Jewish and other minorities, as for instance on the subject of the inviolability of Poland’s territory. Deputy Kirschbraun urged that they should put forward an independent Agudah list which should fight all the other Jewish parties. Since no party, however, is strong enough to go to the polls independently, he suggested a bloc with a Polish party. He made a sensational revelation–that prominent Polish politicians have proposed to him and to the other Agudist deputies that they should enter into a bloc with it and put forward a joint list on which the Jewish candidates would be exclusively members of the Orthodox Party.

This announcement caused a sensation at the Conference and gave rise to vigorous discussion. Deputy Kirschbraun did not at the public session disclose the details of the discussion with this Polish party, but from what he said it is certain that the negotiations have advanced beyond the theoretical stage and Deputy Kirshbraun appears to have come to the Conference with a ready-formulated, concrete plan of co-operation with this Polish party. He gave the details to a private meeting of the Executive. No public statement has yet been made as to the identity of the Polish party in question, but it is an open secret that it is the Conservative Party which is now in process of formation with the active assistance of the Vice-Premier. Professor Bartel, and the Government of Marshal Pilsudski.

Deputy Kirschbraun did not say what would be the price of the bloc with this Polish party. It seems, however, that the Agudah will be required, if it joins the bloc, to oppose all the Jewish national parties and to declare Polish Jewry solely a religious community without any national aspirations. The Agudists are promised as compensation that the assimilationists will cast their votes for the Agudist candidates.

It would be premature to say now which of the three alternatives the Agudah in Poland will select. The Agudist politicians may have to reckon with the views of Orthodox Jewry on the matter, and in what used to be Russian Poland they will find this opinion definitely hostile to any idea of combination with a Polish party.

At the very moment when the Agudah Conference was in session in Cracow discussing various proposals on how to direct the Agudist vote at the election, a serious cleavage occurred in the ranks of the Agudah itself, coming upon the Agudist leaders without any warning. In the town of Grudeck in Eastern Galicia, there was a secret meeting of Rabbis headed by the Belzer Rabbi, and, behind closed doors, it was decided to form a new Union of Rabbis which would not admit to membership any Rabbis who are Zionists, Mizrachists, or even Agudists, nor any Rabbis who possess a secular education. It is the wish of the powers that be in Warsaw–so says a secret circular sent out by the conveners of the Conference–that the extreme Orthodox Jews in the country should organize themselves in order to prevent the intended democratization of the Jewish communities in Eastern Galicia. The Union will set itself the task of delivering Orthodox Jewry from the influence of the Agudath Israel.

The meeting appears to have been rather of a preliminary character, and it will be followed after the High Festivals by a second and larger conference of Rabbis. It is understood that these Rabbis of the extreme Right to whom even the Agudah is not kosher enough, have the support of the Lemberg assimilationists who stand in close relationship with the Belzer Rabbi.

This new Orthodox organization regards itself as a close ally of the powers that be in Warsaw, and it is quite possible that the same Polish party which is said to have been in negotiation with the Agudath Israel is responsible for the formation of this new Belzer Orthodox-Assimilationist Party, whose primary task will be to fight its nearest rival, the Agudah.

The Belzer revolution against the Agudah may indeed have its origin in the rivalry between the two great Hassidic courts of Belz and Ger. As long as the influenc of the Gerer Rabbi spread only among the Hassidim of former Russian Poland, the Belzer Rabbi whose adherents are mostly found in Galicia did not fear it. But as soon as the Agudah, the political expression of the Gerer Rabbi, began to spread its influence in Galicia, the Belzer Rabbi found it necessary to create a political organization of his own.

So it seems that the Agudah will have to choose whether it should go together with the Jewish secular organizations, taking an independent stand only in purely religious questions, in which case it will easily be able to overcome the danger which threatens it from the Right, or whether it should deliver itself up to non-Jewish politicians at a price beyond the reach of the rival party of Belz.

For the present, the Agudah in Poland is standing at the parting of the ways.