He had no more than a few hundred followers and no cavernous synagogue or prestigious yeshiva as his base.

Yet Rabbi Yisroel Avrohom Portugal, the grand rabbi of the tiny Skulen Hasidic sect, a slender man with a broad, snowy beard and long white sidelocks, was revered throughout the growing ultra-Orthodox world.

On April 2, tens of thousands of black-hatted and black-garbed Hasidic men from every major sect crammed the thoroughfares of Borough Park, Brooklyn, for his funeral.

The jostling columns stretched for blocks along 14th Avenue and spilled into the radiating side streets. Mourners stood riveted to the eulogies piped through loudspeakers. They then thronged the black-draped coffin, hoping to help support it, as it seemed to float atop the crowd on its way to a hearse.