On the evening of Oct. 7, more than 800,000 people accompanied Rabbi Ovadia Yosef on his final journey. Jerusalem took on the somber hue of black, the color of the suits worn by the ultra-Orthodox Jewish masses who inundated the city and cut it off from the outside world.

A little more than 6 million Jews (out of 8 million residents) live in Israel today. This means that more than a tenth of them were in Jerusalem for the funeral procession. If one translates this into American dimensions, the number is equivalent to 40 million human beings. The television stations broadcast live footage around the clock, from the time of the rabbi’s passing in the afternoon until after midnight, the hour when his body reached its final resting place.

The distance of the funeral procession — from the Porat Yosef Yeshiva, where the rabbi studied in his youth, to the cemetery — was less than 2 kilometers [1.2 miles], but required more than four difficult hours to travel. Hordes of people thronged the vehicle transporting the body and then afterwards crowded the litter bearing the remains, trying to touch the revered personage one last time. People crowded onto rooftops, on car hoods, on cranes and on treetops to catch a glimpse of the man they viewed as their biological, spiritual and physical father for the last time. It was the largest event in modern Israel. The question is, does it symbolize a change in the face of modern Israel or its denotation.

The spectacle reminded me of the funeral of King Hassan II in Morocco in 1999. Millions of Moroccans, simple folk as well as the rich, crowded the length of the funeral procession in Rabat, the capital. At a certain point, people burst through the police barricades and flooded the city in deep, authentic grief accompanied by howling cries, tears and other heart-breaking expressions of sorrow.