Thank you very much.
To get a sense of the cost of shutting down the Dan region:

The cost of Rabbi Kanievsky’s funeral to the economy: about 1.5 billion shekels
While hundreds of thousands accompany the rabbi on his final journey and the Dan region is effectively closed, at Coface Bdi they estimate that the economy is paying a heavy price due to the shutdown of schools and the road closures. Many businesses are standing empty after workers didn’t come to work.

https://www.mako.co.il/finances-news/israel/Article-9a8fb7ac917af71026.htm?sCh=3d385dd2dd5d4110&pId=563116731
(Even if it’s “only” a billion or half a billion, that’s an enormous loss.)

At least we didn’t lose even a single workday from the funeral participants. That’s something too.

To Yuzhik and the rest of the secular people on the site,

These calculations are hugely inflated. A lot of them are based on the fact that trade didn’t take place, not on a stoppage of production. So what? What people didn’t buy yesterday they’ll buy today. By the same logic you could calculate the cost to the economy of shutting things down on Sabbaths and holidays. It’s a bluff. And in production matters too, quality outweighs quantity. The people who work the hardest and the longest hours earn the least, among other things because they produce the least (I heard that in Greece they work more hours than in Germany). With a little thought you can produce far more than with mechanical manual labor done without thought. Working with your head is worth several times more than working only with your hands. In short, a little spirituality is worth more, materially, than a lot of materiality—wearing, mechanical physical labor. There are plenty of stories about people who worked on the Sabbath and earned more from it than before, despite losing the income they would have made on the Sabbath itself.

So the Holy One, blessed be He, will repay the economy by sending productive ideas to the right people, and from the investment of the billions we’ll get back many times over.

I don’t understand the claim. At least ten percent of the country wanted this; that’s certainly more than for closing cities for a marathon or a gay pride parade.

First, they don’t close cities for marathons and parades on workdays. Second, Haredi society already lives off the hands of another society, so any added burden is irritating; and indeed, the Haredim deserve less in every possible respect. Glad to help.

There is no such thing as “another society.”

This whole story of Haredi society versus the rest of Israeli society is over. There are several tribes. Nothing connects the secular Ashkenazi left-wing public (which is a tribe unto itself and now also a minority within the Jewish people) with the traditional Mizrahi public, for example, or with the religious/Haredi-national public. They’re already closer to the Haredim than to the left-wing Ashkenazim. I now understand the Haredim. Today the State of Israel is no longer the state of the Jews, and therefore whatever can be taken should be taken from this collection of traitorous socialist fools. Otherwise it will go to the Arab enemies.

Anyone who works in this country today and pays taxes to a government that funds its enemies is a complete fool. And fit to be plowed with like an ox and a donkey.

With God’s help, 19 Adar II 5782

It may be that the blocking of the entire Dan region could have been avoided if they had prevented arrival at the funeral by private cars, and organized public transportation from all over the country, as is done, mutatis mutandis, for mass demonstrations in Rabin Square. After all, events with hundreds of thousands of participants are held without blocking the entire Dan region.

Holding the event in the evening also reduces the need for a shutdown, and also increases the number of participants by enabling working people to attend. That is how it was at the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef of blessed memory, which began at six in the evening. However, in the present case, since they had already delayed the burial until the third day, it was hard to push it off another day.

There is also room to say that giants on the scale of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky of blessed memory should be brought up to Jerusalem, to Har HaMenuchot or the Mount of Olives, so that even a huge funeral would not lead to shutting down an entire city. The problem, though, is that Torah giants do not plan to become famous; throughout their lives they live with extraordinary modesty and do not expect a mass funeral. Still, perhaps love of Zion could be a consideration in choosing to be buried there. That too was not possible in this case, because Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky wanted to be buried next to his father, the saintly gaon the Steipler, next to his uncle the Chazon Ish, and next to his righteous wife.

To our regret, we can reassure the residents of the Dan region that people of such spiritual stature as Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky are few, and bless them that God should help them and not interrupt their work until the coming of the righteous redeemer 🙂

What was difficult for me was something else: in the Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 361, where the obligation to suspend Torah study for someone who read, learned, and taught is explained, it says that “schoolchildren are never interrupted at all,” and the Vilna Gaon in his commentary wrote that the source is the statement that “we do not interrupt the learning of schoolchildren even for the building of the Temple.”

But I found in a lecture on the “Olamot” website, on the topic “Attending a Funeral,” section 6: “The Shulchan Arukh rules: ‘Schoolchildren are not interrupted at all’ [for attending a funeral]. And the halakhic authorities wrote that in practice the custom has been to permit participation in the funeral of great Torah sages or supporters of Torah, because ‘its suspension is its fulfillment.’”

They cited there Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (Salmat Chaim, sec. 127) and Gesher HaChaim and Chazon Ovadia, who wrote this. And so too Rabbi Ratzon Arusi brought this in his responsum, “Is it appropriate to suspend children’s learning in order to participate in the funeral of the leading sage of the generation” (on the “Netzach Israel” website), and he cited Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s responsum in Yabia Omer.

May it be God’s will that we strengthen ourselves in diligent Torah study in the light of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky of blessed memory!

Best regards,
Yaron Fishel Ordner

In my opinion, the general public stayed home out of hysteria that they’d get trapped in traffic jams; in practice it was possible to get anywhere easily via alternate routes.
I got from the Ben-Gurion Airport area to the funeral by private car; I drove 40 minutes at ten in the morning, and parked in Ramat Gan on the Bnei Brak border, just a few minutes’ walk away. I used Waze, which guided me through roads that hadn’t been closed.

I always wanted to grow up and be the next Rabbi Kanievsky.

When I realized my funeral might cost the country 1.5 billion shekels, I understood I’d contribute much more to the public if I kept working at the kiosk.

I wanted to grow up to be “Rabbi Kanievsky” and almost changed my mind,
but in the end I remembered that I’d set up my grandchildren and great-grandchildren with millions,
so I took it back…

A few corrections to the previous comment:

This whole story of Haredi society versus the rest of Israeli society is over. There are several tribes. Nothing connects the secular Ashkenazi left-wing public (which is a tribe unto itself and now also a minority within the Jewish people) with the traditional Mizrahi public, for example, or with the religious hardal public. They’re already closer to the Haredim than to the left-wing Ashkenazim. I now understand the Haredim. Today the State of Israel is no longer the state of the Jews, and therefore whatever can be taken according to law should be taken from this collection of traitorous socialist fools. Otherwise it will go to our Arab enemies. The governmental socialist system needs to be dismantled and a new one established that will be for Jews only.

Anyone who works in this country today and pays taxes to a government that funds its enemies is a complete fool. And fit to be plowed with like an ox and a donkey. It’s also not worth enlisting in the army. It only gives power to senior military figures for whom the good of the Jewish people is not what stands before their eyes, but their personal benefit. The State of Israel—the collection of officials (the progressives) sitting in all its institutions—thinks that the Jewish people exist for its sake and not vice versa. The attitude toward the state should be purely businesslike. Let the leftists draft their Arab brothers. We need to establish our own militias to protect Jews.

With God’s help, 21 Adar II 5782

It may be that there was room for a more modest funeral to take place immediately on Saturday night with the participation of the city’s residents, while holding a large assembly on the night the seven-day mourning period ended, to which people would come in the evening hours from all over the country—an assembly that could take place in a spacious place with easier access (for example, Ramat Gan Stadium). In that way, both the value of avoiding delay in burial and the value of preventing unnecessary friction and preserving “the ways of peace” would be fulfilled in an enhanced manner. After all, there are Jews who were not privileged to be educated toward the values of “the honor of the Torah.”

Best regards,
Yifa"or