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International News
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Written by Samuel Sokol
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:39 |
Israeli President Shimon Peres toured Bnei Brak together with Mayor Rabbi Yaacov Asheron on Wednesday, stopping to speak with yeshiva students and the press at the Ponevezh Yeshiva. The president briefly spoke with a crowd of teenage students in the main study hall of the yeshiva. Afterwards, accompanied by Rabbi Eliezer Kahaneman, dean of the Ponevezh Yeshiva, Peres, a secular Jew, stressed the importance of Torah in the life of the Jewish people. Peres expressed his support for the arrangement in which yeshiva students receive deferments from military service during their studies.
The president also met with Rabbi Aharon Lieb Shteinman, a leader of the Lithuanian stream of chareidi Judaism in Israel and one of the spiritual leaders of the Degel HaTorah Knesset faction. During the president’s meeting with Shteinman, several dozen people demonstrated outside of the rabbi’s house with several protesters throwing rocks. No one was injured.
MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism, a coalition of the Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael parties, joined the meeting between Rabbi Shteinman and President Peres. MK Gafni and Peres discussed the possibility of United Torah Judaism pulling out of the ruling coalition over a dispute regarding a bill proposed by the Yisrael Beiteinu party intended to streamline the process of converting to Judaism. The president urged Rabbi Shteinman to look into the “small print†of Jewish law and to find an acceptable compromise in order to “prevent a rift from forming†in the nation of Israel.
Peres ended his tour with a visit to IROX, a high tech firm employing chareidi women. During the visit, the president called on the secular sector to “adapt its workplaces for chareidi Jews.â€
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