Rishon Rishon

ZAKA

ZAKA is on a long list of things I consider blogging about from time to time, but haven’t. Joe Katzman at Winds Of Change has blogged about them. I’ll take it as a sign that I should too.

According to Jewish law, all things that have been used for a holy purpose must be treated with respect, and what could have a holier purpose than the human body? In practical terms, this means that people must be buried when they die. Cremation is not allowed, because that is a willful destruction of the body. (Incidentally, preserving or entombing the body is also not allowed, a body must be buried in contact with the earth, so it can decompose naturally.) This injunction applies to body parts as well – they cannot be thrown in the garbage, no matter how small.

ZAKA (זק"א – Zihuy Qorbanot Ason – Identification of Victims of Disaster) is an all-volunteer, non-governmental, non-profit organization that receives no governmental support whatsoever. Its mission is to go to points of disaster (not necessarily as a result of terror) to collect body parts and make sure that they are treated with respect. In post-terror-attack pictures you often see them collecting bits of skin with tweezers from the streets and surrounding buildings.

Shortly after beginning operations, ZAKA discovered that they were often the first to arrive at the scene of a disaster. I don’t want to disparage Magen David Adom (Red Star of David – the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross), they are wonderful people doing an important job, and doing the best they can, but still they are a pseudo-governmental organization, with all the bureaucracy that implies. The ZAKA volunteers, on the other hand, arrive in their own vehicles: the central organization merely locates the closest volunteers to the site of the disaster, and tells them to go.

So ZAKA started giving its volunteers first-aid training, and they have become the shock troops of Israeli first aid.

Joe points to this page, which talks about ZAKA. Among other things it points out that burying the dead is referred to as hesed shel emet – true kindness (literally: kindness of truth). The reason for that: for any other act of kindness one might think that there might be some kind of reward, but the dead cannot repay their debts.

Posted by David Boxenhorn at October 24, 2004 11:55 PM