Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men take part in a funeral ceremony in Jerusalem for a victim of the stampede during a religious gathering in northern Israel.GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP
The tragedy on Friday on Mount Meron in northern Israel has been called one of the worst peacetime disasters since the Jewish state was founded in 1948.It impacted scores of young people drawn to what has been described as a spiritual festival for mainly observant Jews. “It was very sad… There was a lot of crying,” she said of the funeral in Jerusalem’s Har Hof neighbourhood, where Azi’s small body was wrapped in a prayer shawl in the school’s lobby.The disaster was set in motion Thursday when tens of thousands of pilgrims thronged the site where the Jewish mystic Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is believed to be buried.
Although the pilgrimage goes back hundreds of years, Rosen said it has grown dramatically as Israel’s population of religious Jews has expanded, leading to rising number of young people attending.