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From the Past

Marking the 105th Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration – November 2, 2022

Rabbi Reuven Katz zt”l (1880–1963), one of the great Torah scholars of the first half of the 20th century, served as a community rabbi
on three continents. After years of study in the Chofetz Chayim’s yeshivah in Radin, Slabodka and the kollel of Rabbi Chaim Ozer
Grodzinski, he served for many years as a rabbi in Russia before moving to America in 1929 to become the rabbi of Bayonne, New
Jersey. In 1932, the community of Petach Tikva brought Rabbi Katz to Israel to become its Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, where he played a
central role in building the broader Israeli rabbinate.
In 1936, Rabbi Katz presented the following speech to Great Britain’s Palestine Royal Commission, known as the Peel Commission,
appointed to investigate the causes of unrest in Palestine. It was later published in 1952 in Sha’ar Reuven, a collection of Rabbi Katz’s
essays on contemporary issues.
hrough the long period of come to fruition through my govern- restrictions on the meaning of the Dec-
our exile, the Land of Israel ment.” And so it is written in the Bible: laration and to burden the Declaration
has always remained ours, “Then Hashem your G-d will restore with “commentaries” relating to its
T y virtue of the eternal right your fortunes and take you back in love. fulfillment [and to thereby restrict the
b
of Divine Providence, the command- He will bring you together again from meaning of the Declaration], it is in no
ments and the larger purpose of our all the peoples where Hashem your G-d way possible to blur or minimize its
Torah. But with the Balfour Declaration has scattered you… And Hashem your spirit and essence, which constitutes
granted to us by the British nation, our G-d will bring you to the Land that your the Arm and Hand of Providence and
eternal right to the Land has now been fathers possessed, and you shall possess its revelation.
confirmed by mankind as well. The it” (Devarim 30:3–5). Even if the nation
Declaration revealed the Hand of Prov- of Israel is scattered all over the world, The Declaration serves as a testimony
idence in the destiny of our nation, and its ownership of the Land and its right and seal to the eternality of G-d’s prom-
its ultimate goal: to bring the children to return and take hold of the Land is ise, the original “declaration” made
[of Israel] back to their borders. It serves not altered one iota, just as a man has thousands of years ago, that He would
as the nations’ de facto recognition of the right to return to his home, even return us to this Land. It is the begin-
the de jure recognition of Providence. if he has been absent from it for an ning of the realization of this vision of
extended period of time. hope. And as a result of this clear rec-
Well remembered are the words of King ognition, the British government’s right
George V to Dr. Weizmann: “It is prom- The Balfour Declaration only strength- to deny our right to the Land of Israel,
ised in the Bible that the nation of Israel ens and upholds the foundational right given to us at Mount Sinai, has expired.
will return in the future to the Land of of the people of Israel to the land of its
Israel. I am happy that this lofty act will fathers… And if it is possible to impose

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