The protest at the consulate, a block from the United Nations campus in Manhattan, illustrated the complex relationship between Israel and segments of the large population of very religious Jews in New York and its suburbs.
The two influential, and often rival, grand rebbes of the Satmar community both called on adherents to participate in the demonstration.
The Central Rabbinical Congress of the U.S.A. and Canada, a consortium of Orthodox Jewish groups, said it helped organize the protest.
It comes after Israel’s Supreme Court last year ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the military. There had been a longstanding enlistment exemption — dating to the founding of Israel in 1948.
The ultra-Orthodox worry that mandatory enlistment will impact adherents’ ties to their faith. But many Jewish Israelis have argued that an exemption is unfair. Rifts over the issue have deepened since the start of the war in Gaza.
Rabbi Moishe Indig, a Satmar community leader, said he’s not sure organizers expected so many people to show up but he said he felt urgency building around the issue.
He said he was appreciative of the governments in New York and the U.S. “for giving us the freedom and liberty to be able to live free and have our children go to school and study and learn the Torah.”
1 comment:
The first couple of sentences from this Rabbi (the first one) was completely incorrect and sounded more like a neturei karta character. He said that being in the military is against Torah! Of course not, our history is replete with going to war (mitzvah wars, etc.). Dovid Hamelech, the great warrior king. Hashem calls Himself a Man of War.
No, that's not the way to start a speech by saying words that are not correct
Torah words. I understand the rest of the story about drafting of the chareidim into the watered down Jewish tzava in EY With the rest of his words, he was right because of today's situation in the medina. It is being controlled, r'l, by unJewish type military leaders, gvt. leaders and, the infamous court that have an agenda of secularizing the draftees and, sad to say, using them as canon fodder, c'v.
All this has been exposed and is out there for all to know by now.
P.S. this video re these rabbis are the American chareidim which, I think, are
even more zealous/overboard than those in Israel (more like netura karta).
emess
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