thumb|Agudat Yisrael council meeting
Agudat Yisrael (; <small>Ashkenazi Hebrew:</small> ) is a Haredi Jewish political party in Israel. It began as a political party representing Haredi Jews in Poland, originating in the Agudath Israel movement in Upper Silesia. It later became the party of many Haredim in Israel. It was the umbrella party for many, though not all, Haredi Jews in Israel until the 1980s, as it had been during the British Mandate of Palestine.
Since the 1980s it has become a predominantly Hasidic party, though it often combines with the Degel HaTorah non-Hasidic Ashkenazi Haredi party for elections and coalition-forming (although not with the Sephardi and Mizrahi Haredi party Shas). When so combined, they are known together as United Torah Judaism.
History
thumb|Kashrut [[Badatz of Agudat Yisrael]]
When political Zionism began to emerge in the 1890s, and recruit supporters in Europe and America, it was opposed by many Orthodox Jews, who believed the Jewish state would emerge from divine intervention. World Agudath Israel was founded in Kattowitz, German Empire (now Katowice, Poland), in 1912, to provide an umbrella organization for observant Jews who opposed the Zionist movement.
In Palestine, Agudat Yisrael was established as a branch of this movement, to provide opposition to the organised Zionist Jewish community (the "New Yishuv", as opposed to the traditionalist, religious "Old Yishuv"). One of its most authoritative spokesmen against the formation of a Jewish State, the Dutch poet Jacob Israël de Haan, was assassinated by the Haganah in 1924. In 1933, it entered into an agreement with the Jewish Agency in Palestine, according to which Agudat Yisrael would receive 6.5% of the immigration permits. It was led at the time by Rabbi Moshe Blau (brother of the head of Neturei Karta, Rabbi Amram Blau). In the wake of the Holocaust, anti-Zionist rabbis who led Agudat Israel recognised the great utility of a Jewish state, and it became non-Zionist, rather than anti-Zionist. It did not actively participate in the creation of Israel, but it ceased its opposition to it. Over time, the movement realized that its more active participation in politics would come with benefits, and it agreed to become a coalition partner of several Israeli governments. However, its original reservations about a secular government influenced its decision to refuse cabinet positions.