Rabbis gather up traces of Pittsburgh victims for burial

As the first funerals for the victims of thePittsburgh 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 white forensic coveralls, masks and gloves, and set to work.

Judaism asks the living to take special care of the dead, andthis group had a last, sacred duty to fulfil: gather up every dropof blood and other bodily traces of the 11 people killed in what is being called thedeadliest 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 withimplements as ordinary as wipes and paper towels.

Work is done by volunteers

Judaism is specific about death and how it should behandled, whatever the circumstances. When a loved one dies, religious law requires that representatives of the living accompanythe body until burial. In a ritual known as tahara, the remains arecarefully washed and placed in a white shroud. Jewish law mandatesthat the burial take place as soon as possible.

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

Recovering and preparing a body for burial are traditionally doneby the local chapter of the burial society called Chevra Kadisha,led in Pittsburgh by an Orthodox rabbi, Daniel Wasserman. He worksalongside Admon, who, as a member of Israel-based ZakaInternational, spent many years in his home country recoveringbodies at the scenes of accidents and terrorist attacks.

All those volunteering earn their living doing other jobs. Inaddition to Wasserman and Admon, who teaches at a local religiousschool, the group at the Tree of Life included a doctor, a housepainter and a paramedic.

Their work began hours after Saturday's attack. Late that night,the FBI allowed Wasserman and Admon inside the synagogue. The mendrew themselves a mapshowing the precise spot where each of thevictims was killed. Then they spent most of the night accompanyingthe bodies as they were removed to the medical examiner's office.

'I just started crying'

"I'll tell you the truth, Saturday night was very tough. I camehome and I just started crying," said Admon, choking back tears.

"I've been to a lot of scenes, but these are people you knowvery well," he said. "It was very hard to see, like, people comingon a Saturday morning to a peaceful place ... to get a connectionwith God and the same moment they got a connection with God, an evilperson came and in and said, 'Guys, just because you're Jewish, I'mgoing to kill you."'

The task of recovering remains, he said, is best undertaken witha minimum of thinking, and a focus on the work itself.

FBI agentswent to great lengths to accommodate the volunteers, bringingadditional lighting into the room they were working in on Tuesdayand providing safety clothing and other equipment, Admon said.

As the investigation continued all around them, the volunteersfinished removing remains from one room Tuesday but will be goingback as allowed by the FBI.

Most of the funerals will be over before the volunteers cancomplete their work. That means that the remnants recovered from thesynagogue will probably not be placed in the victims' caskets. Theywill instead be buried separately at the cemetery, with markerslisting the names of the dead.

For the volunteers, it provides the satisfaction of performing acrucial task. In the end, Jewish law will be fulfilled. But just asimportant, Admon said, recovering all traces of victims and makingthem whole will "give these people the respect they need, becauseit's the minimum we can do."