Dr. Jacob Israël de Haan was an unusual man, who followed his faith and did not fear extreme changes or confrontations with powerful forces. He was born in the Netherlands to a religious Jewish family, abandoned religion for Marxism, completed a doctorate in law, married, lived as a gay man, published explicit and openly homoerotic poetry and prose and practiced its realization (as a homosexualist , as it was called in the Hebrew Yishuv in the early 20th century), returned to religion, became a member of the Zionist movement, immigrated to Israel and became enamored of the anti-Zionist Edah HaChareidis, which opposed the establishment of a Jewish state, becoming one of its most prominent spokesmen.
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