Though the practice doubtlessly assumes more urgency in present-day Phoenix, vacationing during the summer for a change of scenery and pace from our year-round routines is not a new trend.
Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik attends an event in Jerusalem on August 10, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
JTA Three times on Sunday, January 31, Orthodox men carried the body of a beloved Torah scholar wrapped in a black and white prayer shawl through the streets of Jerusalem to a freshly dug grave.
First there was Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik, the 99-year-old heir to a vaunted tradition of Talmud study. A few hours later it was Rabbi Yitzchok Sheiner, the 98-year-old leader of a prominent yeshiva. And in the evening they took Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, a psychiatrist and scion of multiple Hasidic dynasties, to his final resting place near Beit Shemesh.
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Channel 12, “There would certainly have been bloodshed” had police intervened.
Critics of the government said the crowds were evidence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not have control of the country’s outbreak. Netanyahu has closed the airport and distributed vaccines at a world-record pace but has not aggressively stepped in in the haredi sector.
In one representative example, Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai tweeted a photo of the crowds with the opposition party slogan, “Only Likud can,” emblasoned over it. “Bibi’s closure, as you can see, is a complete failure. It needs to be stopped and re-planned,” he wrote.
Thousands fill Jerusalem streets for funerals of major haredi Orthodox rabbis January 31, 2021 4:46 pm Thousands attended the funeral of Rabbi Dovid Soloveitchik, scion of a major rabbinic dynasty, in Jerusalem Sunday morning. (Screenshot from Twitter)
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(JTA) Thousands of people gathered in Jerusalem Sunday morning to mourn Rabbi Dovid Soloveitchik, the scion of a major rabbinic dynasty.
In the afternoon, a funeral procession for another leading rabbi, Yitzhok Scheiner, again drew thousands of mourners.
The mass funerals come amid simmering tensions over the haredi sector’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Soloveitchik, the leader of the Brisk yeshiva, who was 99 and Scheiner, the head of the Kamenitz yeshiva, who was 98, died of COVID-19.