Crowds gathered for the Tuesday evening funeral of haredi publicist Eliyahu Kaufman, who died of coronavirus at the start of the Sukkot (Festival of Tabernacles) holiday.
Kaufman was 63 years old, and is survived by his wife and seven-year-old son. His vaccination status was not published.
In his youth, he was a well-known leftist activist. Later, he became religious and became known as a publicist and journalist for the Yom Hashishi and Hamahaneh Haharedi newspapers. He also became known for his activism for protecting graves.
Kaufman lived in London for a time, and during that period he adopted anti-Zionist opinions and published essays "against the Zionist occupation and in favor of peaceful ways with the nations of the world in general and with the Arab nation in particular."
He was buried in Beit Shemesh.