Background
Moshe Ber Beck was born in Budapest, Hungary.
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. He is currently one of the leaders of Neturei Karta in the United States. Among other activities, he participated in a visit to Iran 2006 where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to publicize Haredi opposition to Israel.
In the seventies he left Israel because, he said, of his strong opposition to Zionism, and has since lived in New York where he has been working as an anti Israel activist. Moshe Ber Beck, together with other Rabbis such as Yisroel Dovid Weiss, is well known as an Haredi (Ultra Orthodox) opposition figure to Zionism. Beck has denounced what he considers a political use of the Holocaust by what he calls the Zionist establishment.
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.
Neturei Karta.