Running for cover while burying the dead

On Sunday, Rabbi Nissim Malka prepared for a funeral in his town, Kiryat Shmona. Rabbi Malka is the director of the Hevra Kadisha burial society in the town, and he and fellow Hevra Kadisha employee Mahlouf Ohana, had scheduled the funeral for 11:00 A.M.

"They called me from the Home Front Command and said there were warnings [about rocket attacks], and they asked me to postpone the funeral to 7:00 P.M.," Malka recounts.

But just before the newly-scheduled time, Malka got another call from the Home Front commander in the town. According to Malka, the officer said he had a bad feeling and asked for the funeral to be postponed to 7:30 P.M.

It turned out that the officer's gut feeling was correct. While Malka and Ohana were busy preparing the body for burial, Katyusha rockets fell in the area. "We ran for cover and hid there," Malka says.

Lying behind a protective wall, Malka then got a call from the bereaved family that wanted to know if the funeral would be taking place. The burial ceremony was finally held at 8:30 P.M.

"We did it very quickly," Malka says. "There was no funeral procession and no eulogies were delivered. The body of the dead was transferred straight from the car to the hole."

The funeral was for Eliyahu Moyal, a long-time resident of the northern town - "a respectable man who has many friends and acquaintances in the town," Malka notes.

According to the rabbi, "In normal times, there would have been a dignified funeral procession and some 300 people would have come to pay their last respects. We could hardly make up a minyan. The only people who showed up were the deceased's daughter and her husband, a few neighbors and the two of us, Hevra Kadisha employees."

Malka and Mahlouf have already buried 10 residents of the town since the fighting in the North started. They say that they are not posting death notices in the town so as not to cause people to congregate in the streets; details regarding the times of the funerals are relayed by family members over the telephone.

Malka also says that he tells the few people who do turn up to the funerals not to stand too close together, "so that if rockets do fall, God forbid, not everyone will be harmed."

Memorials for the dead are also hastily conducted. "We do the bare minimum so as not to endanger the people," Malka explains, adding that not for a moment has he considered conducting burials at a temporary cemetery somewhere safer than Kiryat Shmona.

"This is only possible on the battlefield, and this is certainly not the situation here," he says.

Fear for the safety of the mourners is real - some 100 graves in the Kiryat Shmona cemetery have been destroyed by rockets. "Look at the destruction," Malka says to Ohana. "These people suffered from the Katyushas during their lifetimes, and now [they are suffering from them] in their deaths."

Ohana is the only one of the seven Hevra Kadisha workers in Kiryat Shmona to remain in the town to help Malka. "My family is pressing me to leave," he says, "but I have work that has to be done. It is not easy; I also have one son in Gaza and another in Lebanon. My head is constantly filled with thoughts."