When a suicide terrorist strikes in Israel, the usual contingent of
first responders that one might see anywhere in the world -- police,
medics, firefighters -- are accompanied by another group, one found
only in Israel. They wear yarmulkes, white coveralls, rubber gloves,
and dayglo yellow vests. These are the men of ZAKA, an Israeli
religious organization dedicated to dealing with the mutilated and
scorched bodies and the severed limbs of the victims of violent death,
mainly those killed by Palestinian terrorism.ZAKA arose, reached its
peak, and gained fame during the two waves of suicide terrorism that
characterized the intensification of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
in the last decade of the 20th century and the first five years of the
twenty-first century. ZAKA has a few hundred all-male activists,
typically volunteers, exclusively Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews. Well
trained and equipped, they are among the first to arrive at the sites
of unnatural death, especially the arenas of mass mortality, where
they perform a scrupulous procedure, laden with symbolism. This
involves collecting the corpses and body parts, sorting them,
identifying them, and reassembling them while diligently preserving
respect for the dead and for body parts, and preparing them for burial
according to the rigid strictures of Jewish law. Gideon Aran has spent
years embedded with the men of ZAKA, and in this gripping ethnography
he takes readers inside the organization and on the ground with these
men as they do their gruesome -- but, in their view, holy -- work.
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Jewish Rites of Death at the Scene of Palestinian Suicide Terrorism
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780197689165
Publisert
2023
Utgiver
Oxford University Press Academic US
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter