When Roza Yerushalmi succumbed to cancer Feb. 17 at 75, her husband worried that not enough people would come to her funeral to make a quorum for the mourner’s prayers.
Alex Yerushalmi voiced his concerns to Shorashim Shel Netina (Roots of Giving), an Israeli nonprofit serving Holocaust survivors, which had sent volunteers to visit him over the last year and a half.
It took one Facebook post just 30 minutes before the funeral to make sure his wife had a respectable burial.
Some 200 people congregated at the Mazkeret Batya cemetery near Rehovot to bid farewell to a woman they had never met, and enable her husband of nearly 50 years to say Kaddish.
But the kindness didn’t end there: The social-media post went viral, and Israelis who couldn’t make the funeral were not about to let Alex sit shiva alone.
“People came from Haifa and from the South,” Segev Afriat, the volunteer who posted on the Shorashim Shel Netina Facebook page, told Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “The answer to this call didn’t surprise me. When you tell the public that a Holocaust survivor will be sitting shiva pretty much by himself, the public won’t be apathetic. What has surprised me is the number of people.”
Hundreds of people came to pay their respects, bringing with them warm food, drinks and snacks.
“I’ve lived in Mazkeret Batya for 40 years, and my home has never been this full,” Yerushalmi told Yediot Aharonot. “It’s very good that there are so many people because it helps me feel not so alone. Everyone wants to help. I’ve never met so many good souls.” — israel21c