Hundreds of thousands of people on Sunday attended the funeral of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, the spiritual leader of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, in what was touted as the biggest funeral in Israel’s history.
All streets and shops in the ultra Orthodox city of Bnei Brak were closed on the day of the funeral, and residents were asked to act as they would for the death of a close relative, including tearing clothing and not listening to music, as per Jewish mourning rituals.
Roads and highways in central Israel were also closed for the duration of the funeral.
The number of attendees was estimated to be anywhere from 650,000 to a million.
All pictures courtesy Michelle Long for Breitbart Jerusalem
“He was the father of the Jewish people,” Limor Levy told Breitbart. Levy, who lives in the southern town of Yavne, said she didn’t mind the long journey.
“Even if the funeral had taken place in Eilat, there’s no way I would miss it,” she said, referring to Israel’s southernmost city.
Some 3,000 police officers and thousands of EMTs were deployed to the area.
Kanievsky, who died Friday afternoon at age 94, was part of a rabbinic dynasty and together with his nonagenarian peer, Rabbi Yehoshua Gershom Edelstein, was known as the last great Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox leader.
Their heads buried in Psalm books, women sobbed while children as young as three years old looked forlorn.
Leaders from the ultra-Orthodox world as well as from Israel’s political echelons eulogized Kanievsky.
Some 3,000 police officers and thousands of EMTs were deployed to the area to help manage the crowds.
“He never once missed a meal with my mother,” the late rabbi’s son, Rabbi Shlomo Kanievsky, said. “He would always wait for her to sit before eating. And if he had to wait, he would open a holy book and study.”
“These may seem like superficial things, but these were the things we saw with our own eyes that demonstrate the way my father lived, and the devotion he had to the things that really matter.”
Former prime minister and current opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu was stuck in Kanievsky’s home for over an hour due to the throngs of people outside.
Known as the Minister of Torah, Kanievsky lived in an extremely modest apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb.
Even though police had blocked entry to the cemetery to everyone except for family members and senior leaders, thousands of people managed to break through the barriers.