Senior figures in the chareidi political leadership visited yeshiva bochurim being held in a military detention facility on Sunday, decrying what they described as the imprisonment of lomdei Torah whose sole offense was their desire to continue learning.

Yitzhak Goldknopf, chairman of Agudas Yisrael, and Knesset member Meir Porush traveled to a military prison where young chareidi men are being held after refusing to comply with IDF enlistment orders. During the visit, both men spoke emotionally with detainees and criticized the current enforcement policy.

“Our hearts are broken to see a 19-year-old boy, who completed Shas twice and has spent his entire life immersed in Torah, languishing in prison simply because he wished to continue learning in the yeshiva,” Goldknopf said. “It is extremely difficult to accept such a reality, especially under a right-wing government.”

He added that “every ben Torah must be allowed to continue his learning without interruption.”

In a separate statement, Porush said he had met “several young men who are being detained for the ‘crime’ of studying Torah,” calling the situation “heart-rending.” He noted that alongside visiting the prisoners, he has raised the issue in his work on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset. “I shared with them what is taking place,” Porush said. “We daven that Hakadosh Baruch Hu will help us and save us from this tzarah.”

The visit comes amid a growing confrontation between chareidi representatives and the defense establishment over the enforcement of draft orders against yeshivaleit. Chareidi lawmakers have made repeated visits in recent months to bochurim incarcerated for refusing induction into the IDF, framing the detentions as an assault on limud torah.

The effectiveness of the policy has been disputed. Testifying before the Knesset State Control Committee in mid-September, the head of the IDF’s Personnel Directorate reportedly played down the impact of enforcement measures on enlistment rates.

However, a different picture was presented last week by Lt. Col. Avigdor Dickstein, who heads the chareidi division within the Personnel Directorate. Speaking to Kan, Dickstein said that the mass issuance of draft notices to chareidim, followed by enforcement steps including imprisonment, has been “unequivocally effective” in increasing enlistment numbers.

Chareidi leaders strongly rejected the claim, insisting that those behind bars are not criminals or draft evaders but talmidei chachamim devoted to Torah study.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)