Yehoshua, 9 years old. Elazar, 13 years old. Moshe, 14 … The giant stampede that killed 45 people on an Orthodox Jewish pilgrimage to northern Israel shattered the dreams of sixteen children and adolescents.
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Two days after the stampede on Mount Meron, the Israeli press published on Sunday, in black ink, the portraits of the victims, all male, with faces mostly framed in curls or wearing a black hat.
Rectangular-rimmed glasses, the face of a cherub similar to that of his brother Moshe, Yehoshua Angelred is, at only nine years old, the youngest victim of the tragedy.
The two brothers died crushed when, according to witnesses, a mass of people tried to leave the pilgrimage early Friday, on the occasion of the Jewish holiday of Lag Baomer, but densified in a narrow metal corridor.
Among the 16 deceased children or adolescents is 13-year-old Elazar Yitzchak Koltai, known as “Azi”, whose funeral took place on Saturday in the ultra-Orthodox school in Jerusalem that he attended.
According to the mother of a boy in her class, Azi’s classmates came early in the morning to see the body of the boy who was lying in the hall, wrapped in a tallit, a prayer shawl.
“There was a lot of crying”
“It was really very sad (…) There was a lot of crying,” said this mother asking for anonymity to AFP. Azi was a “really lovely and happy” boy who “loved to learn Torah,” the holy book of Judaism, she added.
The crush took place as tens of thousands of people gathered for the pilgrimage to Mount Meron, around the alleged tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochaï, a 2nd century Talmudist of the Christian era who is credited with writing the Zohar, central work of Jewish mysticism.
Before the tragedy, a dense crowd danced and sang for this festival which celebrates the end of a devastating epidemic among the students of a former Talmudic school.
Men and women were separated, many children were also present and candles and fires had been lit, according to footage filmed by AFP.
According to Rabbi Tuvia Rosen, attendance at this pilgrimage named “Hilula” in Hebrew (praise, in French) has increased dramatically in recent years, as the population of religious and Orthodox Jews has grown through a high birth rate in these communities, leading to an increase in the participation of young people in the event.
Avigdor Hayut, 36, from the town of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, was taking part in the “Hilula” for the first time with his 10-year-old son and his 13-year-old eldest, Yedidya, who was did not come back alive.
On Saturday, shortly before leaving the hospital where he was hospitalized to attend Yedidya’s funeral, this father told Israeli television that he lost sight of his eldest son near the exit of the Mount Meron site.
“I found myself on the ground with my youngest son and people were falling on us from all sides and crushing us,” said the man who had his ribs and ankle broken.
“My young son shouted + Daddy I’m dying +, but was rescued by a ‘miracle’, he said. But “Yedidya, much to my sadness, did not survive. He was a saint! And if he had asked me to say one thing, it would have been this: we all have something in common, we are Jews ”.