Praying for miracles

Members of an Orthodox synagogue are among the missing

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Numerous members of an Orthodox synagogue are among those missing after the collapse of a seaside condominium tower in Surfside, Florida.

The town is home to a large Jewish community, where the families often crowd the sidewalks before sunset as they walk to services for the Sabbath.

Rabbi Sholom D. Lipskar, the founder of the Shul of Bal Harbour, said that his community is praying for miracles as rescue teams Friday continued to search for survivors among the rubble of the 12-story Champlain Towers South.

“It definitely needs miracles … because the circumstances are very, very grim,” said Lipskar, who is a Chabad-lubavitch emissary to the area.

Lipskar could not say exactly how many members of his congregation were missing. But he said that many members of Surfside’s Jewish community were unaccounted for.

“It’s a very large group of people, unfortunately,” he said. “From the synagogue, everybody knows somebody.”

The Shul is about 1 mile north of the building that collapsed early Thursday, killing at least four people. Officials said Friday that 159 people are still unaccounted for.

Lipskar said the Jewish Sabbath would provide his congregation with a “moment of respite” to take a “deep breath” and gather strength as bodies begin to be recovered and identified.

“This is going to be a very tough week,” he said. “They just started to pull out bodies. Unfortunately, the first bodies that they took out, they were unable to identify.”

According to Jewish custom, true virtue, or “Chesed Shel Emes,” means the entire body and all its parts, including limbs, blood and tissue, must be collected for burial.

Bodies are also not allowed to be left overnight or exposed in the open because the body is considered to be made in “the image of God, so if you disrespect the body, in a way you’re showing disrespect to God,” said David Rose, international director of Zaka, an Israeli-based rescue and recovery organization.

His volunteer organization specializes in this painstaking work of collecting the entire body, a seemingly impossible task in disasters with mass casualties.