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Location: The cemetery.
Netivot, a city adjacent to Sderot, is known as the city of the Babot because of the tzaddikim buried there – first and foremost among them is the Baba Sali, Rabbi Yisrael Abuhazeira, ztz"l.
Not many people know it, but there is also a grave in Sderot of a tzaddik which has become the focus of pilgrimages. This is the grave of Baba Yago, Rabbi Yaakov Shitrit, ztz"l, whose bones were brought from Morocco to Sderot. An elegant Moroccan-style structure was built in the cemetery over his grave.
The Baba Yago was born in the city, Zarigat-Tefilalat in Morocco in 1892. He studied at the Abir Yaakov Yeshiva with the Baba Sali, and his brother, the Baba Khaki, Rabbi Yitzhak Abuhazeira, ztz"l, who became the Chief Rabbi of Ramla. The Baba was renowned in North Africa and admired as a shochet and mohel. He was considered exceptionally knowledgeable in the Talmud, in the sacred Zohar, in rabbinic rulings and in the law of the Kabbalah, as told by his students. He later became the Chief Rabbi of the city Resh in Morocco.
At the end of the 1950s, a large aliya to Israel began, but the tzaddik could not leave Morocco because of his state of health. In 1957, he died of a broken heart according to members of his family.
In 1962, his family made aliyah and placed their stakes in Sderot. In 1998, the King of Morocco allowed for the Baba's bones to be taken from Casablanca and moved to Israel. In the beginning, few were the people who visited his grave in Sderot, primarily people who knew him and wanted to ask for his blessing. As the years passed, his son decided to build a big burial building.
Every year, a big hilula is held with hundreds of participants at the cemetery. The date of death for Rabbi Yaakov on the Hebrew calendar is 26 Tishrei, which made it difficult to conduct the hilula because it is the day before the end of the Tishrei holidays. Therefore, it was moved to a week later, on the Hebrew date, 3 Heshvan. In recent years, the hilula has been held in the month of Iyar on the date that his bones were buried in Sderot.
Several years ago, the Sderot Municipality decided that the name of the street leading to the cemetery and to the new neighborhoods in the north of the city should be Baba Yago, for him and in his memory.
How to get there: On Waze, look for Hamaapilim St., Sderot Cemetery. At the cemetery, look for the one-storey, stone building with the marble dome.