Mourners stream into Bnei Brak for Edelstein funeral: ‘We feel absolutely orphaned’

Tens of thousands of Haredi Jews from across the country are passing through Savidor train station in Tel Aviv en route to Bnei Brak for the funeral of Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, a prominent spiritual leader and the head of a major movement of Ashkenazi Haredi Jews.

The body of Edelstein, who died earlier today at age 100, is being prepared to be brought for burial in a procession from the Ponevezh Yeshivah, which he headed since 2000. The procession, which hundreds of thousands have come to Bnei Brak to attend, is scheduled to end at a local cemetery.

Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, head of the Ponevez Yeshiva, at his home in Bnei Brak, December 19, 2017. (Aharon Krohn/Flash90)

“We feel absolutely orphaned by the passing of this sage, which is also in a sense the passing of a great generation, for he was the last of them,” says one of the mourners who came to the funeral, Itzaleh Katzburg, who used to be a student of Edelstein at the Ponevezh Yeshivah before Edelstein became the Litvak stream’s leader.