IDF Prevents Rabbi Lau from Visiting Homesh Yeshiva

The IDF refused to allow Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau to visit the yeshiva in Homesh, according to Kan News.

Rabbi Lau was scheduled to give a Torah class to the students there last week, until the military decided not to authorize it.

Meanwhile, students of the yeshiva and rabbis affiliated with it are being allowed to reach the site, after some temporary structures were taken down by court order and the fate of the yeshiva itself remains uncertain.

MK Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionism party, said that “preventing the Chief Rabbi from entering Homesh is just the latest in a series of aggravations and disruptions to the functioning of the yeshiva.”

Smotrich demanded that Defense Minister Benny Gantz “order the commanding officer to enable the Chief Rabbi to reach Homesh immediately, and stop these repeated attempts to restrict the yeshiva’s activities and disturb a Jewish presence that has been continual in Homesh for the past fifteen years.”

Last week, the first letters were inscribed in a sefer Torah dedicated to the memory of Yehuda Dimentman Hy”d, who was shot dead by a terrorist as he left the yeshiva at the end of a day of learning there.

“Yehuda was our precious son,” said his father, Rabbi Motti Dimentman, at the ceremony of starting the sefer Torah. “Just a few moments before he left the yeshiva on that final day, he completed learning a daf Gemara, and he banged on the bimah and announced: Yay! I completed another daf!

“For Yehuda, each daf was a special occasion for rejoicing,” his father continued. “Yehuda is still with us here; the continued existence of the yeshiva is a continuation of Yehuda’s life, as is the writing of this sefer Torah. We are here to strengthen the yeshiva, to encourage you to continue to learn here, and that reinforces our strong sense that Yehuda is still here among us.”