Using as his pretext the British government’s closure of a noncompliant illegal haredi school in London, Talmud Torah Tashbar, Rabbi Eli Riss, the chief rabbi of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Russia – better known to many Jews as "Birobidzhan” – which is located due north of North Korea, issued a public statement Tuesday calling on Diaspora haredim to leave their home countries and move to his community.
Attention Haredim! Don’t Like Following Education Law In Britain Or The US? You’re Invited To Immigrate To The Jewish Autonomous Oblast Of Russia
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Give us your perpetually irritated, vastly undereducated, self-made poor.
Using as his pretext the British government’s closure of a noncompliant illegal haredi school in London, Talmud Torah Tashbar, Rabbi Eli Riss, the chief rabbi of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Russia – better known to many Jews as "Birobidzhan” – which is located due north of North Korea, issued a public statement Tuesday calling on Diaspora Jews, especially Yiddish-speaking haredim, to leave their home countries and move to his community where they can find refuge from the pesky demands of other governments which actually require schools to teach math, science and the language of the country.
“It’s shocking, that in this day and age, that a Jewish school is being ordered to shut down because of it’s firm commitment to offer instruction in a religious framework. Here in Birobidzhan, as with the rest of the former Soviet territories, Jewish schools were also [in the past] forced to close by government directive and we’ve seen how religious observance and the Yiddish language has suffered as consequence,” Riss said, according a report in Yeshiva World.
Riss was referring to Talmud Torah Tashbar, which was closed by the British government for being illegal and for failing to teach students any secular subjects, even English.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently issued a similar invitation for Jewish immigration to all of Russia, which he billed as a haven from anti-Semitism in Western Europe, when he spoke recently to the European Jewish Congress.