Op-Ed: In Defense Of Rabbi Herbert Goldstein: The Changing View Of Zionism

By: Rabbi Aaron I. Reichel, Esq.

By Rabbi Aaron I. Reichel, Esq.

Almost no rabbi has done more to serve the cause of Zionism than Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein (1890 – 1970). Rabbi Goldstein not only fought for the survival and transplantation of European Jewry by his activism with the Vaad Hatzalah and the Agudath Israel, but also in his vision of the founding a modern State of Israel as an ideal Jewish country built on Jewish laws and customs.

A recent academic paper has, unfortunately, mischaracterized Rabbi Goldstein as displaying animosity toward modern Zionism primarily on the basis of some of his words on two occasions, spoken or written years before the State of Israel was founded in 1948.

It is up to each individual to determine if he was truly a “Zionist” or not.

Allow me to explain.

For a rabbi in the 1920s or even during WWII, it would have been impossible to predict the founding of the State of Israel and its religious and industrial development, religious growth, and flourishing institutions of Torah and secular knowledge. Before Israel became a state, Rabbi Goldstein wrote about the ideal of a Torah-centered society, with the best that the Torah and a modern democracy have to offer. While Rabbi Goldstein was still in his prime in the 1940s, he contributed to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, which defined Zionism as “a modern movement aiming to fulfill the traditional ideal of the return of the Jewish People to Zion.”

Rabbi Goldstein, along with some other American rabbis and Jewish leaders, encouraged people to pray for Israel, to pay for Israel, and even to make aliyah, but relatively few did more than praying, preaching, and sending donations.

Here are some of the things Rabbi Goldstein did:

The bencher distributed at his wedding in 1915 included a pre-1948 version of Hatikvah in the future tense. How many people have the Hatikvah in any form in their wedding benchers even now? How many had it in 1915? How many people even had benchers in 1915—and with a direct reference to the Beit Hamikdash?

Rabbi Goldstein’s signature shul began in 1917, and built itself up to 67 clubs within its first decade. How many shuls anywhere at any time encouraged the traditional ideal of the return of the Jewish people to Israel in clubs with names that included the Herzl Club, the Palestine Travel Club, the Girls of Blue and White, the Star of Zion Club, the Young Lovers of Zion, and the Zionist Advancement Club, otherwise known as the Zionist Advancement League?

Rabbi Goldstein was active in the Mizrachi as well as the Agudah movements during much of his life, with leadership roles in both. Some of his rabbinical students at Yeshiva University, where he headed the Homiletics Department training rabbis for two generations, recalled that he would produce membership cards in each. Although it’s true that he resigned from his prominent place on the Mizrachi Executive in 1926 over some internal dispute, he evidently came back, only to resign again in the 1950s over another internal dispute.

Rabbi Goldstein devoted much of his active life after the country was founded to raising funds for various Israeli entities, in particular helping orphan immigrants with a network of “Homes for Children in Israel.” He visited Israel almost every year in the 1950s (until his stroke) by ocean liner, a trip of multiple weeks each way, with a mashgiach on board. And during Rabbi Goldstein’s time in Israel, he personally distributed much of the funds he had raised for a variety of Israeli entities, and participated in overseeing how the money was spent. He was also friendly with Chief Rabbi Herzog and other religious Zionist leaders.

According to the official biography of the legendary Mike Tress, “Over the years, Rabbi Goldstein headed most of the Agudah’s Youth Council’s projects in Eretz Yisrael, the Keren Hayishuv. The Religious Palestine Fund, and Children’s Homes in Israel” (p. 159).

According to a biography by Dr. Eliot Resnick, Congressman Sol Bloom was the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives during World War II, and Rabbi Goldstein influenced him more than any other rabbi in the crucial 1940s. Congressman Bloom claimed to have influenced more voters at the United Nations to switch their votes in favor of endorsing Israel’s creation than any other human being on the planet.

Working behind the scenes, Rabbi Goldstein displayed true classic Zionist loyally to Hashem, the land of Israel, and the Jewish people, and actively strove to make that happen. 

Rabbi Aaron I. Reichel, Esq. is a grandson and biographer of Rabbi Goldstein: The Maverick Rabbi. Growing up, the writer was a neighbor as well, and in between he wrote a dissertation on the Institutional Synagogue at Yeshiva University. Rabbi Reichel is working on another, even more comprehensive biography of Rabbi Goldstein that is in its final stages.