Tens of thousands of Jerusalemites and out-of-town rabbis and yeshiva students attended the funeral yesterday of Rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky, dean of Israel’s rabbis and widely considered the foremost Talmud scholar of the age. He died Saturday night at 91. He was buried at the Har Hamenuhot Cemetery near Jerusalem. The first recipient of the Israel Prize for rabbinic literature, Abramsky came to Israel in 1950 after serving for two decades as the head of the London beit din.
Obeying a request he made in his will two of his students followed his bier, which was carried on foot from his home to the cemetery, carrying all 24 volumes of his magnum opus, the “Hazon Yehezkel,” a Talmudic commentary considered one of the finest in this century. Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his predecessor Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim, were among the mourners. Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren was abroad. Yeshiva heads from Jerusalem and Bnei Brak delivered eulogies.
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