The Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada also known as the Agudath Harabonim ("union of rabbis"), and sometimes as the UOR, was established in 1901 in the United States and is among the oldest organizations of Orthodox rabbis which could be described as having a Haredi worldview. It had been for many years the principal group for such rabbis, though in recent years it has lost much of its former membership and influence.
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It was originally aligned with the Orthodox Union; in later years, the Orthodox Union drifted apart from the Agudas HaRabbanim, and closer to the relatively Modern Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America (RCA).
Among the well-known leaders from the organization's past are Rabbis Eliezer Silver and Moshe Feinstein. In recent years, the organization has been under the direction of Rabbi Hersh M. Ginsberg.
The organization has not shied away from controversy in the past .
In 1945, at Hotel McAlpin in New York City, the Union "formally assembled to excommunicate from Judaism what it deemed to be the community's most heretical voice: Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the man who eventually would become the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Kaplan, a critic of both Orthodox and Reform Judaism, believed that Jewish practice should be reconciled with modern thought, a philosophy reflected in his Sabbath Prayer Book." [1]. The prayer book was allegedly burned.
The group has regularly placed advertisements in Jewish newspapers shortly before the High Holy Days, prohibiting worship at non-Orthodox synagogues.[2] Similarly, the Friday April 4, 1997 edition of The Jewish Press, quoted from "A Historic Declaration", issued by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis on March 31, 1997:
The organization also condemned the National Jewish Outreach Program's (NJOP) Shabbat Across America/Canada (SAA) program because it co-ordinated and helped Reform and Conservative organizations. In an advertisement placed in the Friday March 7, 2003, edition of The Jewish Press it declared:
One of the leading organizers of the above public protests was Rabbi David Hollander, a well-known Orthodox rabbi and writer in New York.
In 2005, French politician Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor, was invited to speak at the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation. Yehuda Levin, on behalf of the Union, wrote to the President of Poland that it was inappropriate for Veil to speak at the event, since by "having brought about the legalization of abortion in France" she was "responsible for an ongoing destruction of human life far exceeding that of the Nazis".[1]
Critics of Agudath Harabonim's efforts claim that the group's leadership does not deserve a media bully pulpit to denounce the practices of other American Jewish movements, because its rabbinical membership represents a statistically small portion of the total number of rabbis ordained by all movements in the United States, and even by the Orthodox movement itself.[4][5]
In addition, they maintain that the group's controversial activities are not vocally supported by the American Orthodox Jewish community as whole, because its centrist and Modern Orthodox rabbinical members generally do not appear with the group during such announcements.[2] In addition, rabbis maintaining membership in both the UOR and Rabbinical Council of America frequently tend to place greater importance in, and watch more carefully, the activities of the RCA, thus making their support of UOR activities marginal at best.
At present, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada does not maintain an official website.