About 100,000 hasidim (ultra-Orthodox followers) congregated on the night of April 2 near the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva (rabbinical college) in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak. They assembled there to attend the funeral of Rabbi Shmuel Halevi Wosner — one of the most influential Jewish legal authorities of his generation among various streams in the ultra-Orthodox sector, who died at the age of 102.

At the moment the stretcher carrying the body of the rabbi was brought out of the yeshiva, a multitude of people started to surge toward it in a big crowd that accompanied the stretcher as it exited the yeshiva. As a result, one of the hasidim was trampled to death; another yeshiva student, who was only 18, was also trampled and died of the injuries a few days later. Two other youngsters were badly hurt, and in all about a hundred attendees required medical attention. Police are investigating whether oversights in organization of the funeral caused the terrible tragedy.

Although it seems that the gathering of tens of thousands of people in narrow streets like those of ultra-Orthodox Bnei Brak is a sure recipe for disaster, the massive funerals of leading rabbis in the ultra-Orthodox sector are a common sight. So, for example, about a quarter of a million people attended the funeral of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, a leader of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community, in July 2012, and hundreds of thousands attended the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a recipient of the Israel Prize in Torah Literature and the spiritual leader of the Sephardic Shas Party, in October 2013. While there is disagreement among various groups on the exact number of attendees, the estimate is that their number was between a quarter million and 750,000.

“Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s funeral was also a protest, a demonstration of strength,” says the ultra-Orthodox journalist Kobi Arieli, of Israeli Army Radio; Arieli means that the rabbi also raised the spirits of the faithful among Mizrahi Jews (of Middle Eastern origin), many of whom feel disadvantaged compared to Israelis of European descent, and that he led an ultra-Orthodox party with significant political power, perhaps even greater than the number of Knesset seats it holds.