Reuven Lediansky, who is running for mayor of the city while waging war on any sign of religiosity in the city, published a post last week slamming a Chabad chassid for having a tefillin stand near a school.
Yeshiva World News
Reuven Lediansky, who is running for mayor of the city while waging war on Chareidim and Datiim, published a post last week slamming a Chabad chassid and dubbing him a missionary for opening a tefillin stand.
Lediansky is at the forefront of fighting against everything or anyone related to religion in the city of Tel Aviv, including a Yom Ha’atzmaut tefillah due to the use of mechitzos [despite allowing an Islamic prayer event with mechitzos] and the promised use of a building for Yeshivas Ma’ale Eliyahu.
This is not Lediansky’s first beef with Chabad. He previously opened a hotline to report on any “religionization” after complaining that Chabad’s public display of Yiddishkeit causes many to think that “Judaism = Chabad.”
Lediansky, who served as deputy mayor of Tel Aviv until he was fired from his position by Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai earlier this month, reposted a video of a mother verbally attacking the Chabadnik and telling him to “get out of here.” He wrote: “Huldai is abandoning our children to Chabad missionaries!! It will end with me!! Our children are out of bounds for the missionaries! A Chabad agent showed up at the entrance to the Boy Scouts group in Ramat Aviv with the goal of putting tefillin on minors. Kol HaKavod to the mother lioness who stood up to him!”
Attorney Amir Shmeterling Halevi sent a letter to Lediansky on behalf of the Chabadnik demanding that he remove the post and threatening him with a libel lawsuit. Halevi wrote, among other things: “We were deeply shocked by the case in which a public representative allowed himself to attack a citizen without any restraint and publicly shame him while exploiting his power on the social network in a bullying manner and while calling and presenting him as a missionary and a member of a Messianic sect.
“Using these expressions has one purpose – to hurt and insult, and we will not agree to that. In the State of Israel, placing tefillin on Jews over the age of 13, without coercion, is not a criminal offense and certainly not defined as ‘missionary.’”
Lediansky not only didn’t remove the post but added two more posts since then with escalated rhetoric, calling Chabad chassidim “messianic and missionary agents.”
Speaking as if he was talking about a terrorist mingling among children, he wrote: “Threats of a lawsuit will not move me‼️ I will continue to protect our children from messianic and missionary elements! I received a warning letter prior to a lawsuit to the court from the lawyer of the same Chabad agent who was standing near the gate of the Ramat Aviv Scout tribe‼️ Neither Chabad nor the Messianic bodies will control the public space. The fact that they got used to it because Huldai abandoned the streets of the city – this is about to end! I will not allow appeals to our children, there will be no separate events between men and women with mechitzot on the streets of the city, there will be no religionization in Tel Aviv-Yafo and certainly not religious coercion‼️”
“I will fight against all the extremists and messianics who want to damage the image of our city! Only under my leadership will Tel Aviv continue to be secular and liberal,” he wrote.
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