While the official Israel Police figure for the number of people taking part in the levaya of Maran HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef ZT”L was 850,000, Channel 2 evening news reported on Tuesday night 4 Cheshvan 5774 that the official number is far from accurate, at least according to “two senior police commanders and other experts in the know.” The report does not name any of the individuals who insist the number released by Israel Police is “ridiculous and far from reality”.
The reasoning behind the theory is based on their reporting there are 600,000 men, women and children in the capital, of which most did not attend. They estimate 200,000-250,000 Jerusalemites attended.
They further posit that due to the time limitations and road conditions, a maximum of 200,000 people could have made their way to the capital in time. Hence there was a maximum of 400,000-450,000 people in attendance and not 800,000 to a million as reports indicate.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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15 Responses
IT DONT MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE SHOWED UP IN JERUSALEM TO PAY RESPECT,ALL THAT MATTERS IS HOW MANY IN HEAVEN SAID WELCOME!!!!CAN YOU TELL WHAT NUMBER IS THAT?
Who cares what the number is. 400,000 is also a lot.
I would expect a yeshiva man to question the source of these numbers. People who are not experts in crowds can be way off and others can manipulate the numbers to suit their goals like impressing the seculars on the large turn out
so tell us, YWN, where is the source of the numbers and not just collect meaningless numbers from newspapers…
Your headline makes this sound like it is a secular vs. religious argument. It seems to be a quite simple equation. It is probably impossible to have had 1 million people in attendance.
Keep in mind that Shas received 330,359 votes and Yahadus Hatorah 195,577, so even if every Shas and Gimmel voter showed up – which they didn’t (half are women) the total would “only” be 525,936. Remove the women from the vote tally and you have no more than 300,000, add in some Bayit Hayehudi and Likud voters and a best case scenario looks no better than 400,000.
When Rabin died the media claimed at first that 1 million were in attendance. It was only later, when someone bothered to punch the numbers that it was shown that it was impossible to have so many people enter the city in such a short amount of time.
400,000 is a huge number and is a tremendous outpouring of kovod hames in its own right. There is no need to exaggerate.
According to their theory there were no more than 1,000 people attending Rabin’s funeral.
If not for photos they would deny there even was a huge funeral for Rabbi Ovadia Yosef zt”l. We know the secular’s attitude of lo-lefargen towards charedim, like Iran who deny the Holocaust, so who cares what they say?
lemai nafke mine please
Which secular personality even had 200,000 people? or for that matter 100,000? or 50,000? or even 10,000?
Rabin as was reported then had 4-5,000 but according to this new finding didn’t have more than 1,000 people.
Israelis police are not suspected to exaggerate figures about funerals of charedi personalities, but secular media are suspected to distort facts. Nothing will help them, the truth prevails. Didan natzach.
shtuyot. Do they know how many non-Jerusalemites work and study in Yerushalaim daily, and had no issue getting to the levaya?
Crazy. Obviously none of them were standing on rooftop looking down where it was clearly visible more than 400 000 (at least double)
#4
Those under the age of 18 are non voters and there were at least hundreds of thousands of that age group. Plus a large majority of attendees were non SHAS or UTJ votes, Chacham Yosef was a ‘Father” to Am Yisroel. Thousands from Yehuda and Shomron (perhaps Bayit Yehudi voters) and thousands from Maalei Adumim (perhaps Likud & Lieberman voters)were in attendance.
The Media is controlled by 2% of the secular elites who hate Religion, Eretz Yisroel Hashelaima, right wing ideology and are non-educated for Ahavas Yisroel…so why would you expect differently?
Secular Israeli society is dying out and the Zionist leadership is deathly afraid of being outnumbered by frum Jews and Arabs. It is their modus operandi for everything they do. Bear this in mind every time you hear them talk and act.
Once the FPTB started trumpeting the big numbers in a flexing of the demographic heft, the secular are of course going to dismiss it as it as a defense. They are truly worried about the direction of the shifting populations. IMHO, they need not worry, as there has yet to arise a hareidi politician or party with gravitas, the skill and the will to address and carry the broader needs of the whole state.
The 850,00 estimate was by a police spokesman; It was not the official police figure. Though, of course, there is no nafka minah as regards to the Chacham’s kavod, the inaccuracy reflects poor editing of TYN.
It is apparent that those of you that doubt the figures were not there (and probably don’t even live in Israel). The police (who had to deal with the issue and therefore needed to keep real figures to keep the situation under control) estimated anywhere between 850,000 to 1 million. They didn’t bus in dozen of buses full of police officers from out of town for not! Anyone there saw the enormity of this laviya. Most needed to walk a mile or two from outside Jerusalem just to get there. It was almost impossible to get inside Jerusalem by car. Cars were lined up for miles on all the roads leading to Jerusalem.
…and where are the secular papers receiving their info from? Non-quoted sources! So who do you want to believe?
rediculous we lost a godol who cares what the seculareists say and do we charedim care if it was 500,000 or 900,000? we car ethat we are losing our Gedolom rapidly, and we are remaining behind floundering in this world.
we should be aable to report as soon as possible how many came out to greet Moshiach, nothing else matters.