Today I attended the levaya of Rav Auerbach zt'l. It was an extraordinary experience. I saw people crying, men, women. I saw torn shirts and jackets from kriah. I saw a sea of people. It was at least 150,000. For some reason Yeshiva World News is reporting 10s of thousands. This is false. The Israeli government and the newspapers tend to underreport attendance at levayas so as to undercut the importance of Torah. Israel is so political and people hide the truth all the time. They don't deal in facts. They deal in points of view. Facts are secondary. I hope that YWN is not underreporting because the Rosh Yeshiva was anti-Zionist. Someone told me the military radio reported 100,000.
I attended a college that had a football stadium with 100,000 people and I saw what 100,000 people look like on the street and in a stadium many times. This was way more. It was a sea of black hats that extended as far up the road and down the road as I could see.
We stood there for two hours listening to hespidim as the crowd grew and grew. And then we walked the 6 or so kilometers to Har HaMenuchos. This throng of people moving through Jerusalem out to the highway and up to the cemetery. There was such awe of Torah and tzidkus in the air. And not a policeman in sight. With yirei shemayim it's not necessary. They policed themselves.
Really incredible. Such a loss for the nation, for the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment