ZAKA visits Vancouver

DEENA LEVENSTEIN

Everyone has their limits of how much blood and gore they can tolerate but a few thousand Israeli ZAKA volunteers push beyond theirs on a regular basis in order to perform chesed shel emet, the truest act of kindness. According to Jewish law, ensuring a proper burial for someone is considered the ultimate kind act since the person can never repay you.

ZAKA, which stands for zihui korbanot ason (disaster victim identification), began in 1989 when a few volunteers went to the site of the terrorist attack on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus line 405. "It's not the kind of organization that you sit and think: 'I'm going to start an organization that deals with bereavement and sorrow,'" said Yehuda Meshi Zahav, one of the founders and the current chairman of ZAKA.

Now, 20 years later, ZAKA is a United Nations-recognized international volunteer humanitarian organization serving in Israel and all over the world. In Israel, they deal with approximately 35 unnatural deaths a week, mainly from car accidents, terrorist attacks, murders and suicides. When there is a natural disaster or a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, ZAKA volunteers are usually the first to go from Israel since their arrival is not dependent on diplomatic decisions.

Zahav, Mati Goldstein, chief officer of the international rescue unit, and two other visitors, Araleh Tzur, the chief officer of ZAKA and Dov Maisel, the chief of operations of the international rescue unit, were in Vancouver briefly March 15 and 16. They were here for initial meetings with community leaders as the ZAKA team works to create awareness of options available to Jewish communities worldwide.

ZAKA goes everywhere. Zahav was part of the delegation to Asia after the tsunami in 2004. He explained that its mission following the deadly tsunami was to find the remains of seven Israelis and 23 Jews from other countries. The group found all of them and helped other nations with body identification as well. Zahav said that finding the Jewish bodies among the more than 200,000 people who died was like finding a needle in a haystack.

Today, ZAKA also does first aid, search and rescue, preventative education and pro-Israel hasbara (education).

Many precautions, from group therapy and immediate on-site therapy to excursions, are taken to ensure the emotional health of the volunteers. Zahav noted that the volunteers who have faith in a higher being have an easier time psychologically because they believe in the greater purpose of their work.

Even so, Zahav said, "My big fear, the one that doesn't let me sleep at night, is that a volunteer might get hurt in a way that is irreversible, even though it's been 20 years."

The seventh of the month of Adar, which is Moses' yahrtzeit, is a fast day for all ZAKA volunteers. "If chas veshalom [G-d forbid] we didn't act respectfully or we didn't give proper treatment, we fast and then we do an annual convention for all the volunteers," Zahav explained.

Zahav and Goldstein spoke of the days spent in Mumbai, India, following the terrorist attack in November 2008. The delegation was initially locked up in a police station and told to remove anything "Jewish." They were allowed in the Chabad building for the first time on Friday night and walked around in the dark checking if anyone was alive. They then prepared the bodies and fought very hard for the right to keep them in ZAKA bags so they wouldn't be autopsied and cremated.

The six ZAKA volunteers were given a few hours to clean the five-story Chabad house. Since it was not enough time, local Jews volunteered to help. By the end, "the volunteers were in a terrible state," said Zahav. He took them into the Chabad House, with a few of the local Jews. "We sat in a half circle on the floor, we opened the aron kodesh [the holy ark] and we started to sing," said Zahav. "It was on the level of the N'eilah prayer [the closing prayer] on Yom Kippur."

Following the Mumbai terrorist attack, ZAKA decided to create units in communities internationally, in part to give local people easier and quicker access to a site and give communities the ability to fend for themselves.

ZAKA is offering a five-course program, where participants are taught security precautions, first aid and the preparation of bodies for burial. Units are already being formed in England, South Africa, France, Germany and Washington, D.C.

Zahav said that they don't expect units to form in every city but they wanted Jews to know that "ZAKA is an international organization and we're nearby," he said.

Deena Levenstein is a freelance writer from Toronto, Jerusalem and now Vancouver. See her blog at blogmidrash.wordpress.com.

^TOP