דער רבי און דער שטן סאטמאר SATMAR YIDDISH POLEMIC

Description

דער רבי און דער שטן
LANGAUGE: YIDDISH
VG CONDITION, SOFTCOVER
דער רבי און דער שטן, וועגן די סאטמארער נטורי קרתא און מדינת ישראל. חיים ליבערמאן. ניו יארק, [תשי"ט] - 1958.
פולמוס על דרכם של אנשי סטמר ונטורי קרתא. יידיש.
Attack on Satmar for inserting an Anti-Zionist ad in the New York Times by Chaim Lieberman (Herman; 1890–1963), Yiddish essayist and literary critic. Born in Kolki (Volhynia) he emigrated to the U.S. in 1905. His first articles, on education, appeared in the New York Yiddish daily Tageblatt. On the eve of World War I, he helped to found the Farband's Yiddish secular schools and the Jewish Teachers' Seminary affiliated with the Farband. He taught Yiddish and Yiddish literature and espoused Labor Zionism. Lieberman's critical articles on Jewish and non-Jewish writers, combining vast knowledge and enthusiastic, positive appraisals, were collected in three volumes (1923, 1924, 1930). In the 1930s Lieberman underwent a spiritual crisis, became extremely pious, and joined the religious Zionists. His former fervent championship of writers he liked gave way to sharp and cutting polemics against writers he disliked. He began with attacks on Jewish pro-communists, proceeded to assail Chaim Zhitlowsky and S. Niger, and reached a climax of vituperation in his articles and books against Sholem Asch's christological novels, which were translated into English as The Christianity of Sholem Asch (1953). There followed attacks upon Satmar Hasidim because of their anti-Israel approach, Der Rebe un der Sotn ("Rabbi and Satan," 1959); against the American Council of Judaism, published in English as Strangers to Glory (1955); and, finally, ten articles against Ben Hecht, published in English translation in book form (The Man and his "Perfidy," 1964).
Neturei Karta (Ha-Edah ha-Haredit), group of ultrareligious extremists, mainly in Jerusalem, who regard the establishment of a secular Jewish state in Erez Israel as a sin and a denial of G-d, and therefore do not recognize the State of Israel. Their name, which is Aramaic for “guardians of the City,” derives from a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud (Hag. 76:3) stating that religious scholars are the guardians and defenders of the city. Neturei Karta broke away from Agudat Israel in 1935, when the latter attempted to restrain extremist demands for an independent ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem community completely separate from the rest of the Zionist community. The group first adopted the name Hevrat ha-Hayyim, after R. Joseph Hayyim Sonnenfeld. It aimed at creating “a circle free from the influence of the contemporary spirit and its fallacious opinions,” and a condition of membership was “the education of sons and daughters in the traditional Jewish manner, without any change (girls’ schools which teach Hebrew do not provide education in the traditional Jewish manner).” The last phrase alluded to Agudat Israel's Bet Ya’akov girls’ schools, where the language of instruction is Hebrew.