Police said Sunday that dozens have been lightly hurt during the funeral of Chaim Kanievsky as the prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi was laid to rest in Bnei Brak in central Israel
Chaim Kanievsky, a leader of a large portion of Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox Jews over the past five years, passed away Friday at age 94. He was one of the few remaining leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel born before the Holocaust. Kanievsky was revered by many in the Jewish religious world.
The Israel Police said at least 350,000 thousand people attendance the funeral procession, with majority arriving on over 1,700 buses.
Aerial footage of the funeral showed enormous throngs of mourners, most dressed in the signature black suits and black hats typical of ultra-Orthodox men, filling Bnei Brak's narrow streets for blocks around the the late rabbi's house.
Emergency services treated at least one police officer and 46 mourners were wounded in the mass crowded event blocking the entire city of Bnei Brak. All were treated on the spot by Magen David Adom teams and none required hospitalization.
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Crowds of Haredi men attend the funeral of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky on Sunday
(Photo: Reuters)
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joined religious leaders, police and local authorities who have called on mourners to avoid overcrowding which may lead to a disaster.
"We must make sure there will be no mass casualties," Bennett said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. "The memory of the Mount Meron disaster is still fresh in our minds and must not be repeated," he said, referring to Israel's biggest civilian disaster when 45 ultra-Orthodox men and boys lost their lives last April during a pilgrimage stampede.
B expressed the hope that the day will end without tragedy.
Amongst the crowd were people who arrived from all over Israel, and from abroad.
Police closed off highways around Bnei Brak to regular traffic hours before the funeral to accommodate fleets of buses ferrying mourners to the city.
A senior police officer said that while some Israeli media predicted that up to one million people would flock to the funeral, police had been deployed in accordance with the force's own estimate that crowds would be about half of that fi.
In Bnei Brak, large numbers of religious men, wearing traditional black hats and suits, stood shoulder-to-shoulder in streets leading to the cemetery, as other residents squeezed onto nearby balconies.
Schools in the region of the funeral have shut down for the day, hospitals are preparing their staff for long shifts.
The IDF also informed some service members not to come to base on Sunday, to avoid augmenting traffic. Public transportation routes have been limited and adjusted, and the general public has been asked to avoid the Tel Aviv Metropolitan area throughout the day.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up about 12% of Israel's population of 9.4 million.
Kanievsky was born in what is now Belarus, made headlines in Israel at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic for defying government authorities and saying that ultra-Orthodox schools must remain open. He later relented, saying preservation of human life outweighed traditional practices.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
First published: 13:10, 03.20.22