\”We won\’t be seeing his likes again\” is the kind of elegaic hyperbole one so often hears at funerals and reads in obituaries. Rarely is it a literal truth.

In the case of Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Shach, who died early last Friday and was buried the same day in Bnei Brak — his age estimated at anywhere from 103 to 108 — the statement is indeed fact.