Thousands of Hasidim arrived at the Brooklyn home of the Satmar grand rabbi, Rabbi Yekusiel Leib Teitelbaum, on Jan. 31 before he departed for his second visit as grand rabbi to Israel. Officially, the visit was to celebrate the bris (Jewish male circumcision ceremony) of his grandson, the son of his son who serves as a rabbi in Israel. But from the balcony of his home, the grand rabbi presented his followers with several other goals for his trip. He defined the visit as an effort “whose essence is to help the Torah institutions in the Holy Land that do not receive funding from the Zionist state.” One of the synagogue managers who officiated at the event added, “Our rabbi is going to strengthen the God-fearing institutions and people in Israel, who have not knelt to Baal and have not prostrated to the golden calf of Zionism. There’s a reason they hate us [in Israel] and don’t want the rabbi to come.”
And indeed, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, when the grand rabbi and his entourage landed at the airport in Israel, they were detained for an hour and a half at customs. In the eyes of his followers, this was intentional harassment, stemming from the grand rabbi’s declaration that he will contribute funds for activities to prevent the conscription of ultra-Orthodox in the Israel Defense Forces, and his announcement that he will focus his war on the “hunters” (as he defines them) who work from within the ultra-Orthodox community to enlist ultra-Orthodox youth in the army.
Yitzchak Weiss, the spokesman of the Satmar Hasidic sect in Israel, argued in a conversation with Al-Monitor that “the Hasidic leader himself was not detained, but this was intentional harassment of his entourage because of our plan to distribute millions of dollars to institutions that do not take money from the state.”
The ceremony at the heart of the visit took place Feb. 2 at an elegant Jerusalem banquet hall, and was called Shekel Hatahor (Pure Shekel). Shekel Hatahor was founded at the start of 2013 on the occasion of Teitelbaum’s first visit to Israel as grand rabbi, with the goal of providing financial support for institutions that don’t seek funding from the state. The sect’s funds are distributed to these institutions four times a year.
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