Opposition Argued From Scripture

Religious anti-Zionism names Jewish theological objections to the Zionist movement, distinct from secular or political objections in that they are argued from religious sources rather than from nationalism, assimilation or other non-religious grounds. The most systematically developed religious anti-Zionist position rests on a talmudic passage, in tractate Ketubot, traditionally read as three oaths God imposed on the Jewish people and the nations of the world, including an oath against the Jewish people ascending as a wall, read by proponents of this position as a prohibition on organized, mass return to the Land of Israel before the Messiah, and an oath against rebelling against the nations.

Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the leader of Satmar Hasidism, developed this reading most fully in his 1961 work Vayoel Moshe, arguing that Zionism violated the oaths and that a Jewish state established through human political and military effort, before the messianic redemption, was itself a religious transgression rather than a legitimate expression of Jewish national life. Satmar and allied Hasidic communities have maintained this position as an active and organized theological stance rather than a merely historical one.