Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

In attack-conscious Israel, even a crematorium needs protection - Haaretz, February 6, 2008

In terrorism-conscious Israel, security has been beefed up even for the crematorium of a company providing Israelis a choice of burial services, but the potential assailants are apparently Jews.

The firm, called Aley Shalechet (”Autumn Leaves”), was the first company in Israel to offer “alternative burial services,” notably cremation.

In August 2007, a day after the location of the company’s crematorium was revealed in an ultra-Orthodox newspaper, unknown assailants broke into the grounds of the firm on Moshav Hibat Zion and torched its facilities, causing serious damage to the crematorium, and igniting a public debate on burial services outside the Orthodox Jewish norm.

No one has been charged in the relation to the arson, though Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, founder and public face of the ultra-Orthodox ZAKA rescue service an the self-styled operations officer of the Eda Haredit religious organization, was temporarily detained by police after reports surfaced that he was seen at the site the morning of the crime.

The company had kept a low profile until the attack, its offices situated at the end of a hallway in a nondescript mall in central Israel. Since its operations were publicized, however, Aley Shalechet has been the subject of concerted efforts by religious authorities to have its activities banned, saying that it violates Jewish law and desecrates the memory of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, whose bodies were incinerated in Nazi ovens.