The Mishnah (Avos 1:11) teaches, "Sages, be careful with your words, lest you be exiled to a place of bad waters, and the students who follow you drink and die, and the name of Heaven be desecrated." Do not say anything that could be misinterpreted, because even if all your students understand you correctly now, you may in the future have bad students who are looking for a way to twist your words so as to support heresy, and later students who hear their misinterpretation of your words will fall into their trap.

The Agudah organization today exploits classical Jewish texts about Jerusalem to support their political agenda. The Agudah urges Jews to call American politicians and pressure them into supporting the State of Israel's most radical elements. In American elections, the Agudah tells Jews to vote for the candidate who will be the strongest supporter of the State of Israel. The Agudah thus sends the candidates and the American public the message that the Jews' highest concern is not America but a foreign country.

How have we reached the absurd situation in which the organization that was originally founded to fight Zionism is now more staunchly Zionist than most of the Zionist State's leaders themselves?

The answer is that when the State of Israel was founded, many rabbis forbade their followers to participate in its political system in any way. The Agudah rabbis, on the other hand, encouraged their followers to participate in order to fight from within, to make sure that Orthodox Jews be allowed the right to continue keeping the laws of the Torah and educating their children in peace. However, these Agudah rabbis did not always clarify their position on the state to their students, and many erroneously or deliberately interpreted their stance as post-facto approval of the state.

Now the old generation of Agudah leaders such as Rabbi Ahron Kotler, Rabbi Reuven Grozovsky, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky has passed on, and a new generation has arisen who truly and earnestly want to follow in their footsteps. But how can they, when so many writers and speakers have obscured and twisted their words? We have thus reached the point where some Agudah activists think it is consistent with their organization's philosophy to act as though American Jews were more loyal to the State of Israel than to America, and to falsely use Biblical statements about Jerusalem to support Zionist militancy.

We plead with the roshei yeshiva and gedolim not to remain silent and allow this great desecration of the name of Hashem to take place! We ask them to devote time to explaining their Torah views and the views of past Torah leaders to their students, in a way that leaves no room for misinterpretation.