Haredi leader confines students to yeshiva, preventing war-related volunteering and recreation

Dov Lando, a top leader of Ashkenazi Haredi Jews, introduces a weekday curfew at his Bnei Brak yeshiva, preventing students from both volunteering for the war effort and engaging in recreational activities.

The call by Lando, the 93-year-old head of the Slabodka Yeshiva and a candidate to become the leader of the non-Hasidic stream of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, orders students to be in the yeshiva at all times, except Shabbat, when they go home and are forbidden under Orthodox law from performing most types of labor.

“Due to the difficult situation in our land, and the duty incumbent upon yeshiva students to study Torah with reinforced vigor, the students going away on Shabbat to their homes will leave only on Friday and will return on [Saturday evening],” reads a printed notice announcing the new rule at Lando’s yeshiva.

“These times are strictly mandatory,” Lando writes. The letter also says that “this is not the time to be out and about.”