Some 40,000 mourners attended the funeral here Wednesday of Rabbi Yitzhak Yaacov Weiss, doyen of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community.
Weiss, who died early Wednesday at the age of 88, presided over the Beth Din (religious court) of the ultra-Orthodox Eda Haredit.
Streets were closed to traffic as large crowds gathered in Mea Shearim as soon as word of his death reached the neighborhood.
Born in Galicia, Poland, Weiss headed several yeshivot in that country before moving to Hungary, where he served as rabbi in the town of Grossvardin.
Weiss immigrated to Israel 19 years ago from Manchester, England, where he had served as the city’s rabbi.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
