Rabbi Shimon Baadani, spiritual leader of the largest ultra-Orthodox party in Israel's government, died Wednesday at the age of 94, his Shass party said.
A compact crowd of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered in the afternoon in Bnei Brak, a suburb of Tel Aviv, for his funeral, noted an AFP journalist.
Death of a founder of the Shass party
The rabbi's followers and Sephardi Shass party leader Arie Dery are 'shocked, distressed and devastated' by his 'whirlwind ascent to heaven,' the party said in a statement using the words of the Bible passage. about the rapture of the prophet Elijah to heaven.
“Darkness has descended on our world,” commented Arié Dery, also Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior.
Rabbi Baadani “had promoted the Torah in Israel and the Diaspora, was a founder of Shass and was wonderfully dedicated to it.
Woe to the ship that has lost its captain”.
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Rabbi Baadani had headed the Council of Torah Elders, the supreme body of Shass, since the death in August of Rabbi Shalom Cohen.
Little known to the general public but influential in Sephardic religious Jewish circles, he lived in the town of Bnei Brak.
Born in 1928 in Mandatory Palestine, he was one of the first rabbis appointed to the Council of Torah Elders when the party was formed in 1984.
The Shass party, which won 11 seats in the November 1 legislative elections, is a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who formed the most right-wing government with other ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties in late December. of Israel's history.
"It is with broken heart that I have learned the bitter news of the passing of Rabbi Shimon Baadani, an immense sage and spiritual leader to a multitude of people," Benjamin Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his office.
In 2014, one of Rabbi Baadani's grandsons was killed in a Palestinian vehicular attack in Jerusalem.
