More than 800,000 people filled the streets of Jerusalem Monday for the funeral of Shas spiritual leader and former chief Sephardi rabbi of Israel Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Yosef died Monday at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem of complications from multiple organ failure. His health declined steadily following a mild stroke in January. He was hospitalized just over two weeks ago with a host of medical problems, including kidney and heart failure and sepsis. He was 93 years old. Mourners crowded roofs, balconies, sidewalks and streets in Jerusalem for a final parting from Yosef. The Sephardi community -- including the ultra-Orthodox, religious, traditional and secular, as well as many from the national religious movement -- took part in a funeral of unprecedented magnitude in Jerusalem, or Israel. Even before Yosef's body was taken to the Sanhedria cemetery, hundreds of thousands of people arrived in Jerusalem, causing huge traffic jams inside the city and around its entrances. Jerusalem District police put into action the operational plan prepared when Yosef's health was reported to be deteriorating, and hundreds of policemen arrived from all over the country to reinforce security at the event. Jerusalem District Police Commander Maj. Gen. Yossi Pariente said that it was the biggest funeral the Jerusalem District police had ever dealt with. The police received 17,000 calls regarding traffic issues as compared with 5,000 on a regular day. The funeral procession left from Yeshivat Porat Yosef, where Yosef studied from the age of 12 and where he began writing his religious books. It was repeatedly delayed due to concern for the crowd's safety. Even so, more than 300 people required medical treatment for fainting, dehydration and other injuries. Fifteen people were evacuated to hospitals for treatment. At the yeshiva, Yosef's sons gave eulogies. "My father, my father, chariot of Israel and its knights," said his youngest son, Rabbi David Yosef, "today's sky is not the sky of yesterday, today's world is not yesterday's world." Rabbi Moshe Yosef, with whom Yosef lived, said, "When a stranger dies, one can give a sermon, but when a father dies, one can cry, one can scream. All I ask from you is forgiveness. Perhaps I did not know how to appreciate [you] enough." "The crown has been removed, the crown has fallen, father to us all," cried Rabbi Avraham Yosef, "father, how many torches you left behind. You showed us the path of the patriarch Abraham, to open the tent to the four winds of the earth, to exonerate the masses, to reach the nation with tales. There is no one like him in our generation and no one to take his place." Shas head Aryeh Deri, who Yosef redesignated as leader of the movement, delivered a moving speech: "Our rabbi, our rabbi, why have you left us? Forty years ago, we stood on these stairs at Yeshivat Porat Yosef, you and I, and I saw you felt the pain of Sephardi Jewry and the dismal situation facing the boys in Sephardi yeshivas. Then, there were only a few hundred boys in Sephardi yeshivas in all of Israel, and you understood their sorrow. A man of action and vision, I saw in your holy eyes the vision of a true revolution, of the establishment of the Sephardi world of Torah, its upright establishment. And now, our rabbi, look how many hundreds of thousands are here to lead you on your final path. You have orphaned us. We are left now without a father and without a leader." The decision of who, if anyone, will succeed Yosef as spiritual leader of Shas, will be made by a committee, Deri said. "We will continue to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of continuing the large enterprises you have begun in the biblical education system and the construction of Judaism for hundreds of thousands of Jews. We know what you have always told us, to stay undivided and united. To continue to unite around the Council of Torah Sages, around the sages of Israel, to continue everything you started, and to do more and more to spread the word of the Torah and to help the poor. Thanks only to you, and only with your power." Yosef was buried beside his late wife Margalit, who died in 1994.
The rabbi was renowned in the Jewish world as one of its foremost Talmudic scholars and halachic authorities, as well as a prominent political figure.
"There is no one like him in our generation and no one to take his place"
