Hundreds of thousands of people from the charedi community gathered in Jerusalem late Sunday afternoon in one of the largest demonstrations in Israel’s history, to protest against a reform of the conscription law that would draft ultra-Orthodox men into the army or compulsory national service.

The huge crowd of people congregated from under the Bridge of Strings at the city entrance, stretching past the Jerusalem International Convention Center and down Shazar Avenue, branching off along large sections of Jaffa Road, Yirmiyahu Street, Sarei Yisrael Avenue, and other major thoroughfares.

                                                                  from the Jerusalem Post, March 2, 2014

Wherever I see him, either davening at the Gra shul in Shaarei Chesed or walking home, he has a smile permanently affixed to his face. He is of medium height and slightly hunched over, with a tripod walking cane for support, and I had never even bothered to learn his name until someone pointed out to me that Mordechai Ansbacher, 86 years old, was one of the key witnesses in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. A search on the internet shows a handsome, dynamic looking man with a black kippa taking the stand at that famous trial, which kept thousands of people in Israel glued to their radios for weeks. He survived the Theresienstadt ghetto, the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps, and the War of Independence, where he fought to protect Jerusalem within three years of being liberated from the camps. He was also one of the founders of Yad Vashem and the author of 100 articles on Jewish art and Ashkenazic Jewry in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Quite a resume for such an unassuming man.