An estimated 750,000 Orthodox Jews on Sunday packed Bnei Brak, Israel, for the funeral of influential rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, known to his followers as the “Prince of Torah.”
Authorities had voiced fears of disaster from massive overcrowding as a sea of men and boys filled streets, sidewalks and balconies in the city near Tel Aviv to mourn the Belarusian-born Kanievsky, who died on Friday at the age of 94.
A separate women’s section had been created ahead of the event, which the Magen David Adom rescue agency estimated would be one of the biggest gatherings in “Israel history.”
Photo: Reuters
After Kanievsky was buried at a Bnei Brak cemetery, the rescue agency said that the funeral procession was completed with “no serious incidents.”
Police put the crowd at 750,000, about 8 percent of the Israeli population.
It included Shlomo Lugassi, who said that earlier in the day, he had unsuccessfully tried to push his way through the masses to reach the late rabbi’s apartment.
“I cried when I heard he was dead,” the 41-year-old said ahead of the burial.
Thousands of police and paramilitary officers, as well as volunteers, were deployed to provide security for the funeral held 11 months after a disaster at Mount Meron, an Orthodox pilgrimage site where 45 people died in a stampede.
“The trauma of the Meron disaster is still fresh for all of us,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had warned before his weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday.
He described Kanievsky’s death as “a great loss to the Jewish people.”
Kanievsky was the de facto head of what is commonly called the Lithuanian branch of Orthodox Judaism, and his knowledge of Jewish law was so revered that his rulings were thought to require total compliance within his community.
To some followers, he was known as “our master, the Prince of Torah,” comprising the religion’s laws and traditions.
Benjamin Brown, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University, said that Kanievsky “came to be a figure of authority almost against his own will.”
“He wanted to keep learning and studying Torah [quietly]” but accepted a leadership role to help heal rifts within the Lithuanian Orthodox community, Brown said.
Israel’s Orthodox Jews are split among various factions and groups, but Kanievsky was seen by some as a unifying figure.
Aryeh Deri, a political leader and rabbi from the Sephardic group — which has its roots in southern Europe and North Africa — told Israel’s Channel 11 that Kanievsky transcended “definition.”
Kanievsky, despite his prominence, lived in a modest Bnei Brak apartment, where religious texts lined the walls of a small study.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS