Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef's funeral (with link to webcast)
Rav Yosef is being buried in a small cemetery in Jerusalem's Sanhedria section, rather in the much larger Har HaMenuchot. Because I know the area well, I was able to take my 9 and 11-year olds, get parking less than a five minute walk away, and then climb the stairs of a building for a bird's eye view into the cemetery (where we actually saw the van with the body - no coffins here - drive in). Once they got around to the grave and the kids could no longer see, they agreed to go home. Total time: An hour and a half. And we got to stay home and hear the eulogies on the radio rather than missing them in all the pushing and shoving.
Here's a great perspective on Rav Yosef's life that an old friend posted on Facebook:
All of us with even the slightest sense of Jewishness should feel pained by the loss of the incomparable Torah scholar, leader and Rabbinical figure Rabbi Ovadia Yosef zt"l today. His favorable and intense impact on literally hundreds of issues of Jewish life in every aspect of the spectrum of life is possibly beyond compare. With a photographic memory, his knowledge was truly encyclopedic. His warm, intense personal concern for each person that came to him for council, bracha, or p'sak (halachic decision) was legendary.... All this pales in contrast to his keen political insight in guiding Shas as a political/religious movement that has for more than 2 generations formed an admirable coalition of so many different Sfardi groups.... May his memory not only be a blessing, but may it also instill within all our hearts the same selfless spirit of forging unity despite the present generation's special "yetzer hara" of divisiveness.Indeed.
UPDATE 11:18 PM
Just saw an interesting tweet in Hebrew from an Israel Radio correspondent. The number of people who turned out tonight is the equivalent of 22,000,000 people turning out for a funeral in the US.
UPDATE 11:31 PM
It's no longer a webcast but there are many highlight videos at that link.
Labels: Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:59 PM
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