are Rabbis Eliezer Silver and Moshe Feinstein. In recent years, the organization has been under the direction of Rabbi Tzvi Meir Ginsberg. Competing Haredi organizations Almost form the start, the Agudath Harabonim had critics among the Yiddish-speaking rabbis as well. In particular, Rabbi Gavriel Wolf "Velvel" Margolis felt that the Union was too lax in some areas of kashruth, too exclusive, and too interfering in the kashruth work he had been hired to do by his congregation. He founded a competing organization, the Knesseth Harabonim (Assembly of Hebrew Orthodox Rabbis). Evidence of the Knesseth exists starting around 1920, but a Knesseth convention claims that it had existed for some years previously; in any event, it had not been a successful organization prior to 1920. Several public relations wars broke out between Knesseth and Agudath in the 1920s. Many of them were about competing claims of laxity in meat supervision, wine supervision, or legitimacy of import and licensing of sacramental wine during Prohibition. However, not all was war, kashruth, or Prohibition. Both organizations worked on social issues of the day that affected Jews, and on the improvement of rabbinical life for their members. A third, less-active group was the Council of Orthodox Rabbis (Degel Harabanim). It may have merged with Knesseth shortly after its founding. They are known to have shared conventions, especially in opposition to Agudath. The warring seems to have died down in the late 1940s or 1950s; Knesseth and Degel faded away as a separate organization. A later group, also small, is the Iggud Harabanim (Rabbinical Alliance of America), founded in 1942. Only Agudath and Iggud still function today, though neither is very active. Today Controversies The organization has not shied away from controversy in the past. In December 1925, Reform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise delivered a sermon about Jesus the Jew, causing an uproar culminating in an edict of condemnation against him by the Agudath Harabonim. In 1945, at Hotel McAlpin in New York City, the Agudath Harabonim "formally assembled to excommunicate from Judaism what it deemed to be the community's most heretical voice: Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the man who eventually would become the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Kaplan, a critic of both Orthodox and Reform Judaism, believed that Jewish practice should be reconciled with modern thought, a philosophy reflected in his Sabbath Prayer Book." The prayer book was allegedly burned. The group has regularly placed advertisements