Rabbi Landau in Chicago: “Yeshiva Students Are Being Persecuted”

The leader of the Lithuanian Haredi community said in a speech before Haredi communities in Chicago that “many avrechim are struggling to pay for their children’s education, there is no bread for the young.” Rabbi Dov Landau, the leader of the Lithuanian public, delivered the keynote address at a fundraising event for the “World Torah Fund” in Chicago, during which he described the situation of Torah learners in Israel as a “distress” requiring international mobilization. Rabbi Landau claimed that “yeshiva students and kollel students are being persecuted by the authorities and the courts in the country for no fault of their own,” and described a reality in which thousands of Torah learners “cannot live as ordinary people are supposed to live” amid the threat of arrests and ongoing economic restrictions. לדבריו, many avrechim are now struggling to pay for their children’s education and also “have no bread for the young.” The rabbi stressed the importance of the “World Torah Fund” as a central line of defense: “If it had not been established by the donors here in the United States, Heaven forbid many yeshivas and kollels would have been at risk of closing.” He called for broad donations and argued that support for Torah learners “brings blessing” to the donors themselves.