Trump meets Hasidic leaders at the White House
UA.NEWS 04 September 2026 03:32
US President Donald Trump on Thursday received Hasidic rebbes and ultra-Orthodox leaders at the White House ahead of Rosh Hashanah. The meeting in the Oval Office was described as the first of its kind in more than 50 years, The Jerusalem Post reports.
Meeting participants
According to the publication’s preliminary information, those invited included leaders of the Satmar, Skver, Bobov and Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasties, as well as Rabbi Malkiel Kotler, head of the Beth Medrash Govoha yeshiva in Lakewood, New Jersey. Also named were both Satmar rebbes — Rabbis Aaron Teitelbaum and Zalman Leib Teitelbaum — the Skverer Rebbe, the Bobover Rebbe and the Vizhnitzer Rebbe of Monsey.
According to Belaaz, White House liaison to the Jewish community Martin Marx personally called the invitees and spent several months organizing the meeting. The outlet also reported that each rebbe was to speak separately with Trump for about two minutes, after which a joint roundtable could take place.
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Military conscription issue
The Jerusalem Post notes that likely topics of discussion included issues important to the ultra-Orthodox community, in particular the conscription of Haredim into the Israel Defense Forces. A source for the newspaper had previously claimed that participants in the gathering sought to influence Trump and Israeli officials, seeking support for exempting yeshiva students from military service.
According to this source, the Grand Rebbe of Satmar, Aaron Teitelbaum, also hoped to persuade Trump to link US support for Israel to exempting yeshiva students from conscription. During a speech at a Satmar yeshiva in Kiryas Joel, he said that he initially wanted to decline the invitation but decided to appeal to the president because of the situation of tens of thousands of Jews in Israel who, he said, are affected by the conscription of yeshiva students.
The invitation of Satmar leaders drew criticism from some Trump supporters who back Israel because of the Satmar movement’s anti-Zionist views. The outlet describes both Satmar rebbes, the Skverer Rebbe and Rabbi Kotler as anti-Zionists, while characterizing the Vizhnitzer Rebbe as non-Zionist and the Bobover Rebbe as non-Zionist without a hostile attitude.
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