MK Moshe Aboutbul read in the Knesset plenary this evening (Monday) the moving and painful letter of Rabbi Meir Levy, a father who decided to sit at the gates of the military prison until his son, a yeshiva student who was imprisoned for the crime of studying Torah, is released.
""I want to bring you the letter of a sad father whom I just met at the gates of the Beit Lid military prison in Kfar Yona," said the Shas MK before reading the moving letter. "The father, whose son was imprisoned in the military prison for the crime of studying the Holy Torah, decided to sit at the entrance to the prison until his son was released.
""The father brought his stand there and he sits and studies, and out of the father's pain, he is unable to return home. There, at the prison gates, he sat and wrote an emotional letter to his son.
""I received permission from him to read the letter in the hope that the father's cry will stop the incomprehensible persecution of Torah students in the State of Israel.".
And this is how the father wrote to his son:
""My dear son Joseph,
""I am here. I decided yesterday morning after the hearing you had and the nine-day extension of detention we gave you, that I am coming to face the military court until your release. Crazy, not normal, but I felt that I could not sit idly by. You are in prison because of studying our Torah, because of our lifestyle. I wanted you to know and understand that there is nothing more important for us, your mother and I, than for you to sit and study and grow diligently in the Torah in a way that is down to earth and wise.".
""The army has called itself the 'Israeli melting pot' for years, and has tried and continues to try in every way to blur the differences. They did want us to be 'one people,' but they pushed the Jewish tradition in the ways of the Torah to the back burner, and they continue to fight for everything that is sacred and important to us - the Jewish Torah identity, Torah study, yeshivas, kollelim, our way of life that is far from East to West, in their lost minds, who see every day the moral decline of the Western world that they so want to resemble, which never stops hating Israel. Even when they murder us and try to destroy us, they continue to blame Israel, knowing that they made an enemy of Jacob.".
""I slept in the parking lot in the car, it was not particularly comfortable. I got up early and prayed at the Givat Alonim synagogue, wonderful and special people, and I'm trying to see how to get you and other guys from various yeshivahs who were arrested out of jail as quickly as possible (interestingly, the vast majority are Sephardic guys).
""The legal junta's attempt to create such heavy economic pressure, and a constant threat of thousands being arrested at any given moment, was an attempt to move the Haredi community to a political side, to go with the disintegrating left - without values, principles, and a political horizon.".
""We will not give up our Torah values, including the Land of Israel and the people of Israel. We will not sit with them even if they try a thousand times more to incite us against our representatives, as if they are doing nothing for the Haredi community (they manage to enter the Haredi media through the back door).
""Of course, they are trying to maintain the association and the flag and are not arresting any of their children. They think that by doing so they will agree to join them in the next coalition. They are complete fools. The Lithuanian and Hasidic public will never allow such a thing.".
The dear father concludes his letter and writes to his son with powerful words: "Be strong, study well, and awaken the people around you to faith and Judaism, for there is no nation among us except in its Torah. Father!""
MK Aboutbul added: "Levi family, you are not alone, we are all behind you. Dear father, Rabbi Meir Levy, continue to study there near the prison and express the terrible pain that the father feels whose son was imprisoned for the crime of studying Torah. We will do everything so that all yeshiva students are released from prison and can return to the yeshiva halls, and the initiative of the ousted attorney general to harm yeshiva students will not succeed and will not stand.".
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