Ultra-Orthodox Jewish mourners attend the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in Jerusalem yesterday.
AFP/Jerusalem
More than 700,000 people took to the streets of Jerusalem last night to mourn influential Sephardic Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, making it the biggest funeral in Israel’s history, police said.
“We estimate there are more (than) 700,000 people taking part in the largest of funerals ever in Israel,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld wrote on his official Twitter account, referring to Yosef’s funeral.
Yosef, 93, who wielded enormous influence among Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry but courted controversy with his outspoken views, had been in and out of hospital for months and undergone heart surgery.
“We’ve lost a father,” Eliel Hawzi, a 26-year-old mourner in the middle of his military service, said. “Rabbi Yosef is irreplaceable for the Jewish people.”
The rabbi’s death came two weeks after he had heart surgery at Jerusalem’s Hadassa hospital, where he eventually passed away.
News of his deteriorating health prompted President Shimon Peres to cut short a working meeting with his Czech counterpart Milos Zeman and rush to the rabbi’s bedside, his office said.
Peres later delivered a eulogy for Yosef, whom he described as “my teacher, my rabbi, my friend”.
Yosef, a former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel whose son took over the same role in June, had frequently played the role of kingmaker in the country’s fickle coalition politics.
He was spiritual leader also of ultra-Orthodox party Shas, which was a member of most ruling coalitions before going into opposition after January elections.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed deep sorrow over Yosef’s death, saying the Jewish people had lost “one of the wisest men of this generation”.
Shas leader Arye Deri openly sobbed as he expressed his grief in radio interviews. “We are all alone,” he said, referring to the rabbi as “our father”.
Yosef founded Shas in 1984 on the platform of a return to religion and as a counter to an establishment dominated by Ashkenazi Jews of European ancestry.