As the search for victims continues in Surfside, there’s another painstaking process underway — to make sure the remains of those victims are respected.
The Surfside community is home to a large Jewish population, and leaders want to make it clear they are honoring customs and traditions despite the difficulty of the search and recovery effort.
“The few people that call me up, they said, ‘oh, we hear the right thing is not being done.’ After speaking to me and hearing what we’re doing, they’re like, ‘oh, more than enough is being done,’” Chesed Shel Emes Rabbi Mark Rosenberg said.
He explained some of the measures being taken for all the victims, and he detailed how they’re honoring the Jewish victims.
Florida Task Force 2 working the #SurfsideBuildingCollapse gave us a closer look at the efforts on the ground and the K9’s tasked with locating victims. We will have more at 5 on the efforts being made to honor the victims @BN9 @MyNews13 pic.twitter.com/d2Y0bNDXfU
— Saundra WeathersOnTV (@SaundraONTV) July 9, 2021
“We’re gonna go and say a prayer with the bodies,” he said. “Christian chaplains, Catholic chaplains, Jewish — we don’t know the faith or descent at that moment. So all the prayers are said.”
“So the very basic thing when it comes to these variables are the three basic things. The first thing is bury the body as soon as possible. The second thing is to bury the body in its entirety. And the third thing is to avoid autopsies whenever possible.”
Every custom is meaningful.
“The reason for the first one is because, until the body is put to rest, the soul is in pain,” Rabbi Rosenberg said. “We’re born in one piece, and we’re supposed to move on to the next world the same way.”
His organization’s Hebrew name translates to “kindness and truth.”
Every day, they make sure orthodox Jewish guidelines are followed in death and burial. But this search and recovery effort is a task, even for them.
“What happens if you only find one part? Will you find the rest? Do you bury it? Do you wait? Because remember you gotta bury as quick as possible. So do you bury partial or do you wait for the complete? What happens if you don’t get the complete,” Rabbi Rosenberg said. “The answer is, it’s case by case.”
It’s a daunting and difficult process for everyone involved.
“After the burial process, we have the Shiva. For seven days, we mourn, but that doesn’t start until after the burial,” he said.
For dozens of families in the Surfside Condo collapse, that process has already begun.