| Description |
1 online resource (369 p.) |
| Contents |
Cover -- The Cult of Dismembered Limbs -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- ZAKA in Brief -- Subject Matter -- Readership -- The Structure of the Book -- Strategy and Research Methods -- Personal Note: Ethics and Aesthetics -- Postscript -- Acknowledgments -- Glossary -- 1. Hell: The Arena of Suicide Terrorism from a Zero Range -- A Still Small Voice -- Spectacle -- Shakshuka -- Procedures of Deathwork -- Moments of Ultra-Religiosity -- The Inner Sanctum -- Blood on Their Hands -- The End and the Beginning -- The Following Night and the Day After -- Ordinary Unnatural Death |
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Decomposition -- 2. Fascination with Unnatural Death: Past and Present -- When It All Began -- Proto-ZAKA -- Harbingers of ZAKA -- Early Haredi Fixation -- Classical Age and Recent Trends: Charisma and Its Routinization -- Varieties of Death in the Shadow of Terrorist Attacks -- Ordinary Week -- Organization -- Unique Species -- Macabre -- The Virtue of True Benevolence -- 3. Culture and Personality of the Specialists in Horrific Death -- Necrophilia? -- PTSD and Gallows Humor -- Fun, Miracles, Sex, and Scandals -- Pious Masculinity -- Violent Group -- Selection and Initiation |
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Collective Profile, Hasidic Hegemony -- Individual Profiles -- 4. Torah Study vs. Deathwork -- Motorcycles -- Explorations in Religious Zeal -- Radical Religion and Psychopathology -- Betwixt and Between -- Haredi Heart Surgeons -- State Religion Priesthood -- Alliance -- Violent Death in Israel -- Prayer for the Safety of the Nation-State -- Second-Class Corpses -- 5. New Torah: Terrorism-Centered Sacred Norms -- What Is to Be Done with a Plastic Bag after Severed Human Organs Have Been Emptied Out of It? -- Tractate Terrorism in the Making |
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The Invention of the Tradition of Violent Death Management -- Two Chapters in the New Halakha: Purity and Goyim -- Sabbath Challah Bread -- The Lord Is Too Great -- Ghosts -- May God Avenge Their Blood -- 6. Strange Pairings: Muslim Human Bombs and Ultra-Orthodox Jews -- Lethal Embrace -- Ideal Targets, Ideal Disguise -- Two Icons of Suicide Terrorism Meet -- Martyrdom: On the Verge of Heresy -- 7. God-Fearing Acrobats -- The Most Pious Will Violate the Sabbath -- Taboo-Ridden Arena -- Disrupting Habitus -- Slippery Slope -- Tightrope Walking -- Deathwork on a Religious Holy Day Is Worth More |
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The Streets of Jerusalem and the Banks of the Ganges -- Bonifying Death -- 8. The Spell of Tearing the Body Apart: The Magic of Piecing the Body Together -- Relics -- Walking Dead -- Everyman: Short-Term Sainthood -- The Momentary Emancipation of the Body -- Rebirth, Torah Scrolls, and the Body of the Nation -- Carnal Jews: Slaughter and Priesthood -- The Bacchae Effect -- Sparagmos -- Counter-mythology -- Two Universal Archetypes -- 9. Pious Counterterrorism -- Blood Touches Blood -- Pigs -- It's All about Classification -- Ultra-Orthodox Border Policing |
| Summary |
This book presents for the first time a comprehensive and nuanced portrayal of ZAKA -- an organization of ultra-orthodox religious Jews who rush to the sites of Palestinian suicide attacks in Israel to care for the mutilated corpses of the victims according to an intricate, symbolically charged, macabre rite. Gideon Aran has spent years embedded with the men of ZAKA, and in this gripping ethnography he takes readers inside the organization and on the ground with these men as they do their gruesome -- but, in their view, holy -- work |
| Notes |
Description based upon print version of record |
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Epilogue: Headhunting, Smiles, and Human Sacrifice |
| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780197689165 |
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0197689167 |
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