JERUSALEM — He wants more kids.
The Brooklyn dad who lost seven children in a weekend house fire asked a Jerusalem rabbi hours after their burial, “Please bless me that I will have more children. This is what I want,” a close friend told The Post on Tuesday.
The prominent local rabbi, Reuven Elbaz, told grieving father Gabriel Sassoon, “I bless you that you should have more children,’’ according to friend Yaakov Weinfeld.
“When the rabbi said that, I saw the relief on [Sassoon’s] face,’’ Weinfeld said.
Sassoon’s wife, Gayle, 45, is clinging to life at Jacobi Medical Center in The Bronx. The couple’s sole surviving child, daughter Tziporah, 15, is recuperating at Staten Island North Hospital.
Neither the wife nor the daughter knows that the other children in the family — four boys and three girls, ages 5 to 16 — died in the early Saturday blaze.
The family recently moved from Jerusalem to Midwood in Brooklyn. They were staying at the home where Gayle Sassoon grew up, which her family still owns.
The fire broke out around 12:30 a.m. Saturday, caused by a hot plate that had been kept on overnight during the Sabbath, authorities have said. There were no smoke alarms on the home’s first and second floors.
Gabriel Sassoon was at a religious retreat when the blaze broke out.
Family friends said he and his wife had marital problems but that he had been living at the home again recently.
He and his wife are very religious, but Gabriel is “eccentric,” a pal said.
“He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. It’s just that compatibility is not just about that. He’s very wrapped up in the world of kabbalah and is into all kinds of health ideas.”
“He’d prepare special drinks for every kid every morning, all the right proteins, that kind of guy,’’ the friend said.
“The marriage was on and off, and it was very hard to keep it going,’’ the friend added.
The friend said it appears that Sassoon is turning to his faith to try to deal with any guilt he may be struggling with over the home’s lack of smoke alarms.
“If he had been as meticulous about smoke alarms as about proteins, it wouldn’t have happened,’’ the friend said. “But sometimes if you move into a house that’s already furnished, you don’t think about it.”
“No one’s going to say that and no one should say that. That would be heartless,’’ the friend said. “But I’m sure that those thoughts cross his mind.”
“He’s human.”
