the most selfless of Jewish commandments: to keep watch over the dead, who must not be left alone from the moment of passing until burial. Normally, this Orthodox ritual, known as sitting shmira, lasts for only 24 hours and is performed by one Jew, customarily a man, for another Jew. But these are not normal times. Thus the round-the-clock vigil outside the morgue on First Avenue and 30th Street is already in its eighth week. The three sealed trucks may or may not contain Jewish bodies. And the shomer, or watcher, is just as often a young woman as an old man.
"The shomrim were present '24-7,'" Ribowsky noted, and “they never missed. They came. They read Psalms. They didn’t kibitz around. They didn’t watch TV. They did what they were supposed to do and they did it day in and day out.”
The most dedicated of the 9-11 shomrim were students at Yeshiva University's Stern College for Women.
In the darkest hours of the night, Judith Kaplan, dressed in her Sabbath finery, sat in a tent outside the New York City Medical Examiner's office, singing the haunting repertoire from the Book of Psalms. . . [She] is one of nine students who have volunteered for this solemn task on weekends, working in shifts from Friday afternoons until nightfall on Saturdays, the holiest part of the week. The rest of the time, the task is performed by scores of volunteers from an Orthodox synagogue, Ohab Zedek, on West 95th Street. Devout Jews cannot ride on the Sabbath, putting the subway or taxis off-limits for the long trek from Ohab Zedek to the morgue. So the Stern students, whose dormitories are within blocks of the morgue, have filled the breach. . .
[They] have won blessings from Christian chaplains at the site, and their dedication has moved police officers and medical examiners to tears. . . . Each volunteer said she had begun with fears about sitting within sight of the trucks full of remains. Instead, they said, they have found peace and a kind of joy. . . . "Time completely stops," she said. "Now I understand what it is to pray with your heart."
The story of the Stern College shomrim even travelled across the Atlantic:
"My favourite is Psalm 130. Right before I walk out, I always say it. The core of it is a line about how we're longing for the dawn, the day in which we don't have to deal with trauma anymore. These people who were murdered missed this opportunity, it was ripped from them, and that makes me want to strive harder for it myself. Sitting in that tent praying, I'm conscious of the fact that countless numbers of souls are just there. I'm praying for them, and even though its supposed to be a selfless act as the dead can't pay you back, their souls are sitting there saying, 'Thank you'."
Read these stories if you need a good cry.
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