YTThe Satmar Rebbe
Author of the era’s most comprehensive halachic case against Zionism, and the guide of this organization’s founding community.
Vayoel Moshe · 1961Not all Jewsare Zionists.
If everything you’ve heard says “Jew” and “Zionist” mean the same thing — start here. Zionism took a religion and remade it as a nationalism. Devout Jewish communities worldwide oppose the Zionist state on the grounds of the Torah itself, and what it does is not done in the name of Judaism.
Recent Statement on the Golders Green Hatzalah ambulance attackHistorical “Truth and Peace” — R’ Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, pre-state JerusalemStatement On the destruction of the Rafie Nia synagogueLive Real-time clarifications — @TorahJewsRecent Statement on the Golders Green Hatzalah ambulance attackHistorical “Truth and Peace” — R’ Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, pre-state JerusalemStatement On the destruction of the Rafie Nia synagogueLive Real-time clarifications — @TorahJews
i. The difference, set plainly
One is a religion. The other is a nationalism.
The world must understand a basic distinction. At Sinai — with no land and no state — a covenant made the Jewish people a people, defined by the Torah and not by territory. Zionism took that and recast it as a nationality, a nation like any other, one that does not speak for the Jewish people. Read the two columns side by side.
Judaism — years since Sinai0
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Zionism — years since 18970
A covenant received in a desert, with no shared land — a people defined by Torah, not territory.Devarim 27:9
Origin
A nineteenth-century political movement that recast a sacred faith as an earthly nationalism.Basel, 1897
Bearers of an eternal tradition — bound across continents and centuries by Torah and halacha.
Form
A nation-state: armies, parliaments, foreign ministries. A flag, a border, a military.
Torah law: peace with our neighbors, and kindness and compassion toward every human being.
Method
Force — military power and nationalist ideology, in conflict with fundamental Torah principles.
A patient awaiting of divine redemption, borne with humility through every exile.
Posture
An impatient forcing of history’s hand — what the Talmud calls rebelling against the nations.
Speaks through its rabbis and its tradition, in a voice three thousand years old.
Voice
Speaks only for itself — a political state and its elected officials. Not for Jews. Not for Judaism.
Zionism took a people of the covenant and made them a nationality. These are not two versions of the same thing — they are different in kind.
ii. When the state acts
When the Zionist state acts — that is not Judaism.
Whatever the Zionist state does — through its parliament, its army, its courts — it acts only for itself. It does not act in the name of the Jewish people, and it does not represent Judaism.
We must have self-sacrifice to let the nations of the world know that these wicked men — the Zionists — are not the representatives of the Jewish people.
Not in our name — not now, not ever.
iii. Rabbinical voices
Wisdom across generations.
YT
CSReb Chaim Brisker
Counted Zionism among the gravest of the movements ever to confront Judaism — because it aims at Judaism’s very center.
Mishkenos Haro’im
RHR’ Samson Raphael Hirsch
Taught that Torah alone — not land, and not politics — is what makes Israel a people.
Horeb
YSR’ Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld
Leader of the old yishuv, whose pre-state pamphlet affirmed that Torah Jewry opposes the subjugation of its neighbors.
Truth and Peace
YZThe Brisker Rav
Held the state’s very foundations to be irreconcilable with loyalty to the Torah.
Collected teachings
AYThe Chazon Ish
The pre-state yishuv’s leading halachic authority, who guided the Torah community’s principled separation from the political movement.
Collected rulings
EWR’ Elchonon Wasserman
Wrote that it is Torah — not nationalism — that constitutes the Jewish people; the nationalist redefinition is a grave error.
Ikvesa D’Meshicha
CEThe Munkacser Rebbe
Pre-war Hungary’s fiercest voice against the nationalist reinterpretation of Judaism, in any form.
Minchas ElazarFrom the founding generation of the opposition to the present day — the full collection runs far deeper.
All quotations→iv. Speaking to the world
In the public record.
Statements, publications, and clarifications — issued when events demand that the distinction be stated again, plainly and on the record.
Jul 01 2026ArticleZionism and the Deliberate Nationalization of Jewish IdentityMayor Mamdani declined to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state,” and was branded antisemitic for it. The deeper issue his critics avoid: Zionism’s attempt to remake a religious people into a single modern nationality — a claim no other faith has ever made.→May 24 2026ArticleThe Israeli Day Parade and the Manufactured Cry of AntisemitismMayor Mamdani’s refusal to attend New York’s Israeli Pride Parade sparked backlash from Zionist activists and Israeli officials, who framed his decision through accusations of antisemitism despite many Jewish New Yorkers not identifying with the parade or its politics.→May 19 2026ArticleZionist Agitation and the Struggle for Peace in New YorkAs New York City continues to grapple with rising tensions surrounding the war in the Middle East, a disturbing trend has emerged in local politics and communal discourse. Long before Mayor Mamdani’s election, and increasingly after his victory, Zionist activists launched what can only be described as an all out political and media war against him. Through constant accusations, exaggerated claims of antisemitism, and relentless public pressure, they have sought to create the impression that the Mayor is indifferent to the safety and wellbeing of New York Jews.→Apr 12 2026HistoricalTruth and Peace, by Rabbi Yosef Chaim SonnenfeldThis historic publication by the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, written before the establishment of Israel, clearly affirms that Jews oppose subjugating Palestinians→Apr 07 2026StatementOfficial Statement on Rafie Nia Synagogue Destruction:We extend our sincere condolences to our brothers in Iran following the destruction of the Rafie Nia Synagogue, a sacred shul that served as a place of prayer, community, and spiritual refuge.→
v. The Torah position
The Three Oaths.
The Talmud (Kesubos 111a) places three oaths upon the world for the exile. What the Torah entrusts to God, Zionism hands to nationalism: redemption from Heaven, remade as an end forced by army, parliament, and flag.
01
Oath the first
Not to ascend as a wall.
Israel shall not return to the Land en masse, by force of arms or organized political conquest. The return is not a project to be engineered.
Talmud · Kesubos 111a02
Oath the second
Not to rebel against the nations.
Exile is a condition to be borne with humility — not the premise of a nationalist uprising against the peoples among whom we live.
Talmud · Kesubos 111a03
Oath the third
Not to force the end.
The redemption belongs to Hashem, in His time. It is not to be hastened by human hand — and not by a parliament, an army, or a flag.
Talmud · Kesubos 111aInvoked across the classical sources, and given its fullest halachic treatment in Vayoel Moshe (1961).
On Vayoel Moshe→✦ Frequently asked
Asked often. Answered plainly.
No. Great numbers of Torah-observant Jews around the world oppose the Zionist state on religious grounds, continuing a rabbinic opposition that began the moment the movement did, in 1897. The claim that the state speaks for all Jews has never been true.
No. We are Torah-observant Jews, and our opposition to Zionism is religious and moral — our rabbis regarded the nationalist redefinition of Judaism as a betrayal of its essence. What endangers Jews is the conflation of every Jew with the actions of a state. Our work exists to break that conflation.
Not at all. Jews have lived in the Land in every generation, in piety and in peace with their neighbors. The Torah’s objection is to sovereignty seized before the redemption — to a state — not to residence in, or love of, the Land itself.
Because the Zionist movement has long presented itself as the voice of all Jews — and the communities who dissent are, by conviction, insular and slow to seek the camera. We exist to put the Torah-held opposition on the public record, clearly and in English.
Torah Jews — also known as Natruna — was founded in 2003 by R’ Moshe Dovid Katz, at the request and with the encouragement of the Satmar community, carrying forward the path of the Satmar Rebbe zt”l. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, based in Brooklyn, NY, and sustained entirely by its readers.
vi. How to help
Help us set the record straight.
We state the truth clearly and on the record: Judaism and Zionism are not the same, and were never the same. Here is how that truth travels.
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Press contactiii.
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