Volunteers fulfill solemn Jewish duty: Removing bodies

PITTSBURGH — As the first funerals for the victims of the Pittsburgh massacre began, two rabbis and five other volunteers approached the sawhorses cordoning off the Tree of Life synagogue, and an FBI agent led them into the crime scene. Inside the desecrated temple, the men donned wh

ite forensic coveralls, face masks and gloves, and set to work.

Judaism asks the living to take special care of the dead, and this group had a last, sacred duty to fulfill: gather up every drop of blood and other bodily traces of the 11 people killed therein the deadliest attack against Jews in U.S. history.

“The Jewish law is that everything that belonged to the body needs to be buried, so we do our best,” one of the group’s leaders, Rabbi Elisar Admon, said Tuesday.

The work is meticulous and mentally taxing, carried out with implements as ordinary as wipes and paper towels.

Judaism is specific about death and how it should be handled. When a loved one dies, religious law requires that representatives of the living accompany the body until burial. In a ritual known as tahara, the remains are carefully washed and placed in a white shroud. Jewish law mandates that the burial take place as soon as possible.

But the scale of the violence wreaked by a gunman Saturday has placed an extraordinary responsibility on those dedicated to this work, all volunteers. The victims included one of their own, Jerry Rabinowitz, a doctor who had worked with the group in the past to prepare bodies for burial.

Their work began hours after Saturday’s attack. Late that night, the FBI allowed Wasserman and Admon inside the synagogue. The men drew themselves a map, showing the precise spot where each of the victims was killed. Then they spent most of the night accompanying the bodies as they were removed to the medical examiner’s office.

As the investigation continued all around them, the volunteers finished removing remains from one room Tuesday but will be going back as allowed by the FBI.

Most of the funerals will be over before the volunteers can complete their work. That means that the remnants recovered from the synagogue will probably not be placed in the victims’ caskets. They will instead be buried separately at the cemetery, with markers listing the names of the dead.