Some 300,000 Orthodox Jews came out on Monday to mourn Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, one of the world’s leading authorities on Jewish law.
Auerbach, who for nearly half a century headed the Kol Torah Yeshiva in the Bayit Vegan section of Jerusalem, died at 84 of pneumonia in Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital late Sunday night.
The funeral procession made its way from Auerbach’s home in the Shaare Chesed neighborhood to the Har Hamenuchot cemetery, causing traffic jams throughout the capital.
Auerbach was born in Jerusalem 1911 to a prestigious family. His father headed a yeshiva.
Auerbach never stepped foot outside Israel. He was a prodigy who studied at Yeshivat Etz Chaim under the tutelage of Rabbi Usser Zalman Meltzer.
While in his 20s, Auerbach authored a book on the halachic ramifications of electricity, which was well-received by leading experts on Jewish law.
Auerbach soon became a renowned arbiter of Jewish law. His opinions on issues including divorce, the Jewish definition of brain death and shmittah (the seventh year, in which the land of Israel is supposed to lie fallow) were regarded as authoritative by Jews around the world.
He was described by Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudath Israel of America and former student, as “insightful, incisive and a very caring person.”
At his funeral, one of his sons described him as a man who possessed the rare ability “to walk the fine line between truth and peace,” a man able to cleave to the truth “while able to live i harmony with Jews of all walks of life.”
Auerbach once helped design an electric wheelchair that circumvented the technical prohibitions against using electricity on Shabbat in order to permit a disabled person to have some measure of mobility on the day of rest.
He refrained from political affiliations, making a sole exception after the last Israeli elections, when he called on fervently Orthodox parties not to join the government coalition being formed with the left-wing Meretz bloc.
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.
