Moshe Ber Beck

Biography

Moshe Ber Beck was born in Budapest, Hungary. He lived his early childhood hiding from Nazi persecution until 1945, when Soviet troops took Budapest. In 1948 he migrated to Bnei Brak, Israel, where he began yeshiva studies. In 1959 he married, and at that time joined Neturei Karta, leaving the Vizhnitz movement which he had formerly been part of . In the seventies he left Israel because, he said, of his strong opposition to Zionism, and has since lived in Monsey, New York where he has been working as an anti Israel activist.

Anti-Zionist campaigning

Moshe Ber Beck, together with other Rabbis such as Yisroel Dovid Weiss, is well known as an Haredi (Ultra Orthodox) opposition figure to Zionism. He is currently one of the leaders of Neturei Karta in the U.S. Among other activities, he participated in a visit to Iran in 2006, where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to publicize Haredi opposition to Israel. Beck has denounced what he considers a political use of the Holocaust by what he calls the Zionist establishment. In 2014 he appeared in a lengthy interview on the documentary Judaism in the Era of Zionism, in which he laid out his anti Zionist viewpoint.

Beck's opposition to Zionism is based, he says, upon the works of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, especially Vayoel Moshe, a lengthy work which aims to demonstrate that Jews are commanded by the Torah to remain in exile until redeemed by the messiah, and are therefore prohibited to establish an independent country.