(Agudat Yisra’el; Aguda[h]; Union of Israel) is a political movement of Orthodox Jewry, founded at a conference in Kattowitz (Upper Silesia; today Katowice, Poland) in May 1912. Subsequently, branches of the movement were established in most countries of Western and Eastern Europe, as well as in the United States and pre-state Israel. It was in interwar Eastern Europe, though, that Agudas Yisroel reached the pinnacle of its political achievement and institutional development. Hasidic rebbes in Poland and yeshiva heads in Lithuania legitimized the movement religiously, and their followers formed the bulk of its constituency.
