Netanyahu mourns the loss of “a great scholar and leader” ahead of what is expected to be one of Israel’s largest funerals ever.

Israeli spiritual leader Rabbi Gershon Edelstein died 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 are expected to participate.

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.

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