Chabad Rabbi Banned from Hebrew-Language Academy
Walking up to the guard booth at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Ulpan Etzion, a venerable Hebrew-teaching facility, Rabbi David Sterne informed the guard that he had been invited by a group of students to deliver a Torah lesson – only to be told that orders from above prohibited him from setting foot there.
A Chabad rabbi living in the Old City, who has been teaching religious classes at the Jewish Agency-run Hebrew language academy for new immigrants since 2009, Sterne has been frozen out by the facility’s management.
Smiling ruefully and stating that he had expected just such a response, the rabbi called one of his students at the ulpan, instructing him to round up the other members of the Torah class and meet him outside. A half hour later a small group of immigrants from Argentina, Ukraine and the US was sitting around a table in his apartment in the Jewish quarter listening to a lesson on the weekly Torah portion.
Asking for an explanation in a recent letter to Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky, Sterne said that in 2009 he was given a warm reception by the ulpan’s management, which convened an assembly to introduce him to newly minted Israelis. However, problems started early on, Sterne said, noting that “found it strange that the director tried to tell me what to teach in the lesson I gave.”
annoymous
This is very unfortunate even taking a very private approach to the Rebbes teaching. I was once told aroung gimel Tamus right after the histalkus you can only talk and teach about Rebbes that have been buried for over 200 hundred years. This is very big slap in the face. This was taking a approach beshmi or lo beshmi approach.
Who on earth told you that????
So the entire frum world study of the Chofetz Chayim and other contemporaries are in violation of what you were taught by the unnamed one who “once told” you this? By that standard, even “talking and teaching” about the Vilna Gaon would have been forbidden until 1997!
What you were “once told” sounds like a KGB directive at its most lenient!