Dor LeDor Archive (RDI)

• Degel Yerushalaim - Agudat Israel

• Private

Agudat (Union of) Israel is an Ultraorthodox political movement that started in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. During the British mandate it represented the Ultraorthodox, both Hassidic and Perushim in the community’s dealing with the government.

Agudat Israel struggled with the Zionist movement and the idea or establishing a state. Reflections of these dilemmas are mentioned in the attitude to the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and later on when violence erupted in the city in 1921 and 1936-1939.

The archive’s original location in al-Wad St. in the old city was damaged in fire in 1936-7.

The archives of Dor L’dor contain the party’s historical documents, the communication with the Hassidc Diaspora throughout the world, and a complete set of the community newspaper ‘Kol Israel’ from 1911 until 1948.

The material in the archive includes: 2,531 telegrams; 9,474 letters in English, 8,524 letters in German, 907 letters in Yiddish, 88 letters in Arabic, 79 French, 76 Polish, 22 Romanian, 5 Russian, 1 Italian; 33 photos; 596 official protocols of the community and 81 posters.

The current archive has been scanned and keywords are currently added to describe the material. The documents are written in many different European languages including Romanian, Hungarian, Czech, Turkish, Moldavian etc. The original documents are kept if the safe and the copies are used by researchers at the small research centre. There is also correspondence with King Abdallah in Jordan.

Entry prepared on November 2018.

Jerusalem historical libraries and archives revisited, Revised report prepared for Open Jerusalem, October 2014, Merav Mack

Author : Open Jerusalem http://www.openjerusalem.org/