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Marriage certificate of R. Amram Blau dated 15 May, 1918, signed by what appears to be R. Abraham I. Kook and embossed with the seal of the Shomrei ha-Homot. As R. Kook first departed London in 1919 it begs to be resolved how he signed a document in Jerusalem in 1918. R. Kook could not have been out of England at this time because WW1 was still raging with a vengeance. In fact he was living in Harrogate to escape the bombs being dropped on London at that time by German Zeppelins (See Iggerot Ha-Rayah,
Volume 3 - numerous letters giving Harrogate and London as his location). R. Kook left London in August 1919, several months after the end of WW1 (11/11/18), once he had dealt with and concluded all his affairs. The document may have been signed by a proxy or after his return. The signature itself, looks like 'Rab. S Katz' or 'Roth' (Note - If it was R. Kook who had signed it, it would have been 'A J Kook', as this was how his name appeared in the various promotional booklets for 'Degel Yerushalayim' that were translated into English at that time).
R. Blau (1894–1974), was the leader of the ultra-Orthodox sect Neturei Karta, while R. Kook represented all that R. Blau despised. R. Blau was born in Jerusalem into a noted religious family. He was a leading member of the Agudat Israel youth movement in the early 1930s. Blau and some of his colleagues left the movement in 1935 and founded the extreme anti-Zionist Hevrat Hayyim, later to become Neturei Karta. His fierce opposition to Zionism and Agudat Israel, sometimes expressed violently, led on several occasions to his prosecution and imprisonment. His anti-Zionist attitude did not change with the establishment of the State of Israel (1948), which he refused to recognize. In 1965, after the death of his first wife, he married a proselyte, Ruth Ben-David, despite the opposition of the ultra-Orthodox bet din and some of his followers.
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