Senior rabbi: ‘A state that recruits Torah students has no right to exist’

A senior Haredi rabbi rejected conscription orders that the occupation army intended to issue to summon 3,000 Haredim for military service.

Rabbi Dov Landau, leader of Lithuanian Orthodox Jews, declared that a state that recruits religious students does not have the right to exist.

He continued, in statements reported by Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, translated by Arabi 21, that: “The army is in a state of war against us, and they want to take away the rights of Torah students, and this is complete suicide.”

Chief of the Haredim community, Rabbi Ahron Kaufman, called for conveying his position to the Sephardic and Hasidic rabbis so that they could issue a unified position regarding their rejection of military service.

Against the backdrop of discussions about recruiting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the occupation army, one of the most prominent rabbis of the Lithuanian movement who works alongside Landau as head of the Slobodka Yeshiva, Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, recently ordered students to influence the ultra-orthodox youth who do not study in schools of religion against any military conscription commands.

Haredi websites indicated that Hirsch, in addition to a number of religious school heads identified as dropouts of military service, sent letters to all religious schools, warning young people against going to recruitment offices.

Following Landau’s statements, senior leaders of Western Sephardic Jews’ religious schools met and issued a religious decree prohibiting joining the occupation army.

According to their signed document: “Any presence in recruitment offices is prohibited by the Torah.”

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