They have become a familiar image beaming from TV screens into our living rooms and kitchens: a bus or café is blown up somewhere in Jerusalem, Haifa, or most recently at Mike’s Place, a seaside café in Tel Aviv. People are burnt, others bleeding from wounds created by screws and bolts packed into the explosive, bleeding from stumps that were intact limbs seconds earlier. Police, paramedics, and military are on the scene, rescuing those who can still be saved, restoring order in the midst of chaos. A fourth group of men is there as well. They wear fluorescent yellow-green vests, black kippot (skullcap), tzitzit (four cornered garment) and payes (side curls); they carry spatulas and plastic bags and scrape up bits of flesh and blood from the scene. The men from ZAKA meticulously locate every lost limb and digit, scrape up every bit of flesh, and sponge up blood from the pavement. Why would anyone volunteer for such macabre duties?[...]