Yitsḥak Morganstern

Born in Kotsk (today in Poland), Yitsḥak Zelig Morganstern (Morgenshtern) was educated in the bet midrash of his great-grandfather, Menachem Mendel, the first Kotsker rebbe. Morganstern became the Rabbi of Sokołów in 1900, a post he held until his death. Speaking in the name of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, he threw himself into public affairs and became a leading figure in the politicization of Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe. Active in early efforts by Orthodox leaders in the Russian Empire to organize an antimodern politics, he played a prominent role in the Agudas Yisroel/Agudat Israel movement in Poland, serving on its leading council. He was a staunch opponent of modern political and cultural movements, as in the source here, where he sharply rejects any socialist idea of economic redistribution as something akin to the mythical “[torture-]bed of Sodom” or procrustean bed. More openly than many Orthodox leaders, however, his writings in the 1920s and 1930s acknowledged the many forces and difficult conditions that were pushing Orthodox people toward modern ideas generally and toward Zionism and the prospect of a better life in Palestine particularly; his writings on those matters mix understanding, excoriation, and some openness to creative solutions, for instance in his support for properly Orthodox literary journals where Orthodox Jews drawn to modern literary creativity could publish in an ideologically safe and kosher environment.