AGUDAT ISRAEL -- world Jewish movement and political party seeking to preserve Orthodoxy by adherence to halakhah as the principle governing Jewish life and society. The ideal on which Jewish life should be modeled, in the view of Agudat Israel, is embodied in the social and religious institutions, the way of life and mores, that obtained in the Diaspora centers in Eastern and Central Europe in the 19th century. Its geographical and linguistic orientation made it automatically a purely Ashkenazi movement. The formation of an organized movement and political party to achieve these aims was itself an innovation. It was deemed necessary to present a viable counterforce to the advances made by assimilation and Reform trends, and by Zionism, the Bund, and autonomism in Jewry. The establishment of a movement was discussed in 1909 by members of the German neo-Orthodox group, but internal dissension in the Orthodox camp delayed it for three years. The final impetus was given when the tenth Zionist Congress decided to include cultural activities in its program, thereby recognizing a secular Jewish culture coexistent with the religious. Some members of the Mizrachi party left the Zionist movement and joined the founders of Agudat Israel in an assembly held in May 1912 at Kattowitz in Upper Silesia.