Orthodox Movements and the Struggle for Immigration Certificates in the 1930s

This paper will investigate the repercussions of Jewish immigration to Palestine for the development of Orthodox politics in the Second Polish Republic. It will ask questions about the trans-national aspects of the political struggles about immigration certificates and their influence on the two major Orthodox movements of the era, the religious Zionist Mizrahi and the non-Zionist Agudat Yisrael. In the face of increasingly dire social and political conditions at home, the 1930s witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of East and Central European Jews seeking to emigrate to the Jewish settlements in Palestine. Legal immigration, which was strictly regulated by the British, required applicants to procure certificates, most of which were primarily organized and distributed through Jewish political movements. As the value of these certificates grew, numerous groups competed for shares of the documents, whose allocation bought them local influence and clout. Among the factions vying for certificates were the Mizrahi and Agudat Yisrael. Although they were sharply divided in their general stance toward the Zionist project, both Orthodox movements recognized the significance of the certificates as political tools and battled one another for access to the documents, which they distributed to their extant constituencies as well as to those they sought to draw into their ranks. Rather than ideological quibbles about Jewish statehood then, these were struggles for leadership and authority within Orthodox communities that shaped and influenced not only the two movements but eventually those communities themselves.