Rabbi Yisroel Zev Mintzberg (c. 1948)

Rabbi Yisroel Zev Mintzberg was a prominent rabbi in the Old City during the pre-State years. On May 28, 1948, during the Zionist war of independence, as the battle in and around Jerusalem raged, he and Sephardic Rabbi Ben Zion Chazan boldly went out to the Jordanian army carrying the white flag, as a sign of surrender on behalf of the 1700 religious Jews living in the Old City. The Jordanians allowed them to leave the Old City peacefully. When the Zionists saw this act, which they saw as treachery, they fired at these rabbis with their guns, but missed. Later they considered putting the rabbis on trial, but seeing that such a trial would bring no honor to Zionism, they abandoned the idea.

On November 8, 1921 Rabbi Mintzberg wrote: "Thank G-d we survived the uprising that took place in the Holy City (in April 1920). May Hashem have mercy on us in the future. As we sat in terror, my mind conjured up the statement of Chazal in Kesubos 111a: 'If you keep the oath, good; but if not I will permit your flesh like the gazelles and deer of the field.' And one of the oaths is that we should not push off the end of exile through our sins, or according to another version of the text, that we should not force the end. It seems that this is the cause of all the troubles from which the Jewish people is suffering now. Our blood and our flesh are ownerless. Still, we may take comfort in the hope that the gentile nations' end is near since they have oppressed the Jewish people too much, in violation of their oath."