The IDF's Rabbis Go to War - WSJ

Rabbi Bentzi Mann’s reserve duties in the Israel Defense Forces used to consist of making kitchens kosher one or two days a year. Since Oct. 7, he’s been working around the clock to identify and prepare victims for burial. The other uniformed clergy entrusted with this task hardly leave this base in central Israel.

The state is only now coming close to identifying those slain, given that so many were burned or mutilated beyond recognition. Nearly all that work has taken place at Shura, central command for the IDF’s in-house rabbinate, where clergy train to minister to the military. The rabbis are well-versed in all matters of Jewish law, or halacha, that concern war. Many have undergone officer training, and some have served in elite combat units.

Nevertheless, some who were mobilized in October confess they were unprepared for the enormity of the task. Jewish law dictates that God created humans in his image from the dust of the earth. The dead must therefore be interred and returned to their Maker with the utmost dignity and respect to reflect the godliness in them.

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Ordinarily, Jewish bodies are washed to sanctify them before they are wrapped inside a shroud. That process, called tahara, seeks to restore the dead to the purity of their birth. Yet when Jews perish because they are Jews—or because they’re seen as representatives of the Jewish people—their deaths have sanctified them. Under Jewish law, their bodies aren’t washed and are buried in their blood-soaked garments along with any blood they have spilled. Even wipes used to clean blood from objects like phones or yarmulkes must accompany the body to the grave, according to Rabbi Mann. The blood is meant to remind heaven how Jews are sometimes treated on earth. Civilians killed by antisemites are subject to the same rules, which is why the base has handled nearly all 1,200 fatalities from Hamas’s initial strike and those who have died since.

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Among their other duties, Shura’s rabbis manage a hotline to answer halachic questions that arise during the war. Many units, secular and religious, have been clamoring for Torahs to boost morale. The base has a warehouse-like room that would do Costco proud, stacked floor-to-ceiling with scrolls it can lend once they are checked for defects. The unit has refurbished and dispatched at least 40 since the war began.

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Ms. Cowan is a reporter and editor, formerly with the New York Times, living in Connecticut.