Dozens of high school yeshiva students from Bnei Akiva Or Etzion donated blood today (Thursday) under the direction of Rabbi Chaim Druckman.
Earlier this week, Rabbi Druckman ordered a blood donation despite the change of forms by Magen David Adom.
"It seems delusional to me not to donate blood just because they did not return to the original form."
Dozens of students, accompanied by the director of Bnei Akiva institutions, David Avikzar, donated blood this evening.
The boycott of the high yeshivot and the hesder yeshivot began four months ago, in protest of MDA changing the words "father" and "mother" to "parent 1" and "parent 2" in the blood donation forms. Because they will not agree to donate blood until the forms are changed.
MDA folded at one point, and decided to completely remove the requirement for parents' names, but even this did not run the protesters and they announced, backed by well-known rabbis in religious Zionism, including Rabbi Yaakov Ariel and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, that they would not donate blood until the original forms were returned.
Blood donations from members of the yeshivot, Photo: Spokeswoman for the Bnei Akiva Yeshivot and Ulpanot Center
In the last week, protests against the decision of the meetings have increased.
MDA reported a severe blood shortage, and although they did not explicitly admit that the reason was the boycott, it is possible that the shortage of hundreds of doses of blood donated by yeshiva students was what caused the shortage.
Or Etzion Yeshiva students are not the only ones who wanted to lift the boycott.
In response to the continued protest, the traditional movement announced the mobilization against, and the existence of a number of blood donation events.
"Due to a severe shortage of blood donations from the traditional movement and the Knesset, rabbis are calling on the movement's communities to mobilize and organize blood donation events," the statement said.
Among other things, two blood donation events are expected to take place next week in Jerusalem and Haifa.
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