ABSTRACT
It is fair to say that before 9/11 we lacked an appropriate level of fear of the apocalyptic. Perhaps the issue, touching as it does collective death, only invites extremes. The apocalyptic is not benign. It is seductive, because in many traditions such narratives involve the death of all evil and redemption for the saved. The form of the dying, however, never altered and remained psychologically confusing and painful. A tenet of Judaism is that when someone dies the body must be accompanied from the moment of death to burial. In the event of amputations prior to death, these must be buried in the same plot where the dead will later be interred. Terrorism in Israel has profoundly disrupted the ability to gather the body together, which is why after any attack one sees a volunteer task force, organized by fervently Orthodox Jews, called ZAKA, combing the streets for even the smallest body parts of victims.
