Israeli spiritual leader Rabbi Gershon Edelstein died on Tuesday at the age of 100 in the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak.
He was the head of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, where a funeral procession was scheduled to depart in the afternoon. Hundreds of thousands were expected to participate.
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Edelstein became the leader of the Lithuanian stream of Ashkenazi Orthodox Judaism following the passing of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky in Bnei Brak on March 18, 2022. He was also president of the Council of Yeshivas – an organization that supports Lithuanian-style yeshivas in Eastern Europe – and the president of the Council of Torah Elders of the Ashkenazi haredi political party Degel HaTorah.
Degel HaTorah is part of the United Torah Judaism political alliance in the Knesset.
Born in 1923 in the town of Shumyatch near Smolensk in the newly founded Soviet Union, his father and brother immigrated to pre-state Israel in 1934, settling in Ramat HaSharon before moving to Bnei Brak. His mother, a rabbi's daughter, had died of typhus.
During the coronavirus pandemic, he was one of a few haredi leaders to recommend that the community get vaccinated against the virus.
"Rabbi Edelstein was a spiritual leader of enormous stature whose greatness in Torah and reverence influenced our generation and will influence generations to come," President Isaac Herzog said in a statement.
"This is a great loss to the world of yeshivas and the entire nation of Israel," he added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "the Torah world and the entire nation of Israel today lost a great scholar and leader."
Netanyahu continued: "Rabbi Edelstein always remembered his childhood years in Soviet Russia, where he was forced to study Torah in secret. In contrast, here in Israel, he had the privilege of spreading his wings openly in the Lithuanian yeshiva world. He never took this for granted. On the contrary, the responsibility for shaping the spiritual lives of Jews in Israel guided him day and night."
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
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