Three kollel families living in Rome on kiruv shlichus have asked rosh yeshiva HaRav Dov Landau shlita whether they are required to fly back to Israel to vote in the upcoming elections, and his answer, delivered in a handwritten letter, has set in motion a complex two-day travel plan that will see husbands and wives voting on separate flights.
"B'ezras Hashem, I'm flying out Monday and coming back Tuesday morning," one of the avreichim told Kikar Shabbat. "All the men leave Monday and return Tuesday morning, and then b'ezras Hashem, the women leave Tuesday, put the children in school, do tefillah and first shiur with them, and fly straight to the airport to catch the flight. They land in Israel in the afternoon, vote, and take a plane back to Rome."
"That's it, sechar pe'iyos, what zechuyos, ashreichem Yisrael, baruch Hashem," he said.
The families, who run a kollel and kiruv school in the Italian capital under the auspices of a project established in the time of Maran Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman zt"l, wrote to Rav Landau describing the difficulty involved in returning to Israel to vote.
"The wife teaches in a kiruv school and the husbands learn in a kiruv kollel in the community," the letter stated. "The question is whether they need to return to Israel to vote in the elections, and if so, whether both husband and wife need to return."
