The rabbis wanted Rivlin to pressure the US to free Rabbi Mordechai Yitzchok Samet, who is serving a 27-year federal prison sentence for various financial frauds, including soliciting money for a fake lottery, submitting false death claims to insurance companies, and passing counterfeit checks.
Above: Israeli President Reuven "Ruby" Rivlin
Haredi Rabbis Ask Israel’s President To Use His Influence To Try To Free Haredi Rabbi Imprisoned In The US For Fraud
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Israel’s president, Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin, met with a large delegation of hasidic rebbes and non-hasidic haredi yeshiva deans at his official residence yesterday, the Times of Israel reported.
The rabbis wanted Rivlin to pressure the US to free Rabbi Mordechai Yitzchok Samet, who is serving a 27-year federal prison sentence for various financial frauds, including soliciting money for a fake lottery, submitting false death claims to insurance companies, and passing counterfeit checks.
Samet began serving his prison sentence in 2003 at the Otisville Correctional Facility in Otisville, NY, the same facility Agriprocessors VP Rabbi Sholom Rubashkin and many other haredi criminals are now incarcerated in.
Yitzchak Ravitz, the acting mayor of the haredi West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit and the husband of Rivlin’s haredi bureau chief Rivka Ravitz, told the haredi news website Kikar HaShabbat the meeting was held at the request of the rabbis. Topics included the current needs of the haredi community and ways Rivlin might be able help Samet be freed.
But Ravitz said Rivlin does not have the ability to help Samet.
Even so, he reportedly said the meeting between Rivlin and the rabbis was “one of historic proportions,” in part because so many top haredi rabbis attended – including at least two who are known as anti-Zionists who reject the State of Israel in its entirety, the Rachmastrivka Rebbe and Rabbi Ben-Zion Gutfarb of Jerusalem’s Masmidim Yeshiva.