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SALES MGR. 851.7200 CLASSIFIED GET RESULTS! Call The Jewish News 354-5959 hen the Zionist movement was founded by Theodor Herzl in the 1890s, most of organized Jewry opposed it. Reform Jews feared that Zionism's insistence that Jews should live in Palestine would call into question Jewish loyalties to their native lands. Most Jews on the left saw Zionism as a parochial, chauvinistic move- ment. Orthodox leaders, by and large, rejected Zionism as a secular movement, and argued that God, in His own good time, would restore the Jews to Israel; any action to hasten such a restoration defied God's will. After the Nazi rise to power, however, almost all commit- ted Jews became Zionists; the price of not having a Jewish homeland was just too great. Nonetheless, one group of religious Jews, who styled themselves "The Guardians of the City of Jerusalem — Neturei Karta, in the Aramaic words of the Talmud — con- tinued to oppose Zionism. The Neturei Karta regarded Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership as heretics, the moral equivalents of the ancient idolators condemned by the Torah. In the years before Israeli statehood was declared, they repeatedly af- firmed their preference for be- ing ruled by either the British or the Arabs; what mattered most to them was that they not be ruled by Jews less religious than they. Today, the Neturei Karta — who consist of several hun- dred families — are largely concentrated in the Jerusa- lem neighborhood of Mea Shearim. This section of the city is generally remembered by tourists for its prominent signs ordering women to at- tire themselves in modest clothing. One routinely sees missives posted on Mea Shearim's walls denouncing the government, equating Zionism with Nazism, and condemning local residents by name for various "sins," such as installing televisions in their homes. The Neturei Karta regard themselves as the only Jews who have not been corrupted by Zionism. They reserve great scorn for the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party, which sits in the Israeli Knesset and solicits government funding for its schools. The Neturei Karta, on the other hand, do not accept any money from the Israeli government, and do not vote in Israeli elec- tions. Representatives of the movement have met with Yassir Arafat, head of the PLO, and have publicly ex- pressed their preference for Israel being turned into a Palestinian state. Until his death in the mid- 1970s, the movement regard- ed Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the rebbe of the Satmar Chasidim in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as its spiritual leader. The Rebbe's views were in line with the Neturei Karta's. For example, in discussing Is- rael's extraordinary victory in the Six-Day War, Rabbi Teit- This tiny group is as unrepresentative of Jewish views as snake-handling sects are of Christianity. elbaum acknowledged that miracles had taken place, but, in his opinion, they were per- formed by Satan, not God. For many years, the head of the Neturei Karta in Jerusa- lem was a man named Am- ram Blau; in the last years of his life, he found himself ostracized by many of his former followers when he married a French convert to Judaism. Anti-Zionists often point to the Neturei Karta as proof that one can oppose Israel's right to exist without being anti-Semitic. However, point- ing to the Neturei Karta to prove anything about Jewish life is pointless. This tiny group is as unrep- resentative of Jewish views as the snake-handling sects of West Virginia — which pass around poisonous snakes dur- ing church services — are of Christianity. Nor indeed do the Neturei Karta accept the anti-Zionist contention that the Jews are only a religion, and not a people. Further- more, they do believe in the right of the Jews to the land of Israel and trust that some- day God will send the Messiah — dressed no doubt in the distinctive garb of the Neturei Karta — to restore all the Jews there. From the book Jewish Literacy by Joseph Telushkin. Copyright © 1991 by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.