Sephardi Posek: Yeshiva Students Are Being Humiliated and Hunted

Rabbi Binyamin Chuta, a prominent Sephardi halachic authority, issued a sharp public protest over the treatment of yeshiva students amid the draft crisis, warning that bnei Torah now feel humiliated, threatened and afraid even to seek medical care.

Speaking at a “Kavod HaTorah” gathering for Sephardi kollel avreichim in Beitar Illit, Rabbi Chuta described the current situation as “unprecedented and shocking.”

“We have reached an unprecedented and shocking situation,” he said. “Yeshiva students feel humiliated and persecuted. It has reached the point where God-fearing boys who need medical treatment are afraid to go to hospitals, lest they be arrested there and led away in handcuffs like the lowest criminals.”

Rabbi Chuta said the atmosphere around Torah learners has become one of contempt, fear and degradation, at a time when municipal leaders in Beitar Illit chose to honor nearly a thousand Torah scholars gathered in one place.

He compared the sacrifice of full-time Torah learners to that of elite IDF undercover units, but said the difference is that while the soldiers’ sacrifice is hidden and unrecognized, bnei Torah are not merely ignored, they are actively shamed.

“In the IDF there is an elite unit called the mista’arvim,” he said. “They sacrifice body and soul, day and night, 24/7, endanger their lives, and no one knows about them. But bnei Torah are not only not praised, they are despised. That means we are in a sacrifice greater than the mista’arvim.”

He described the life of an avreich as one of quiet, daily self-denial: fathers of large families, wives carrying the burden at home, families weighing every purchase, limiting material comfort and sending children to Talmudei Torah to preserve the spiritual future of the Jewish people.

“Instead of honoring them, all day long they are slandered and condemned,” he said.

At one point, Rabbi Chuta referred to the many yeshiva students and avreichim who are considered draft offenders under current enforcement policy, saying that if police came to the gathering, they would need buses to take everyone away to prison. The crowd responded by breaking into the song “Utzu Etzah Vetufar.”

Rabbi Chuta stressed that the gathering took place in the middle of the zman, while kollelim were deep in regular learning. He said the avreichim did not come to “break out” or escape responsibility, but to breathe, gather strength and see the strength of the Torah world around them.

He called bnei Torah the ones who save the nation spiritually, and said the wider Israeli public is suffering a deep crisis in education, trust and values, while the Torah world continues to grow stronger.

According to Rabbi Chuta, the hostility toward Torah learners comes from jealousy of a life built on spiritual purpose and satisfaction with little.

“People see the happiest person,” he said, referring to the avreichim filling buses to attend the gathering. “Where else in the country do you see people our age filling buses like this? Because there is satisfaction with little here. There is something different here. Only spirituality interests us.”

He said the current pressure and contempt only purify the Torah being learned.

“With all the pursuit, with all the hatred, avreichim sit and toil,” he said. “You walk into Beitar Illit at nine in the morning, the batei midrash are full. Avreichim are sitting and learning, and every avreich here has a pile of reasons not to come learn.”

Rabbi Chuta said that if the Jewish people truly understood who the avreichim were and what each one sacrifices, they would treat them like royalty.

Instead, he said, the disrespect is part of the period before redemption, citing the teaching that in the footsteps of Mashiach, those who fear sin will be despised.

He ended by thanking the organizers and city leaders for giving the avreichim a public evening of honor and encouragement.

“Our children should see, our wives should see, that there is appreciation,” he said. “True, outside they despise us, but among ourselves there is appreciation.”