Lt. Col. (res.) Rabbi Yaakov Roger has been playing an extremely important role over the past two months: as an officer in the Chief Military Rabbinate, and as a world-renowned expert in halachic identification of fallen soldiers, he serves in the Shura camp, to which all the fallen soldiers of the war were brought for identification and preparation for burial.
Rabbi Roger, who routinely serves as the Rabbi of the city of Bat Yam, is the head of a brewing team whose job is to determine the definitive identity of each and every space.
A glimpse of the project documenting the massacre on October 7 // Photo: Ministry of Heritage
"Very good people work around me," emphasizes the rabbi, "and we all deal with the sacred and important issue of reliable and complete identification of fallen soldiers, and bringing them to burial as quickly as possible and with all due respect. That's my main job."
"Endless cruelty"
Rabbi Roger, 79, previously served on the staff of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and also serves as the rabbi of ZAKA. He has already dealt with the Yom Kippur War, and over the years since then he has been involved in determining the deaths of three IDF soldiers abducted at Har Dov by Hezbollah, as well as in the process of identifying the bodies of the three youths abducted in June 2014 in Judea and Samaria and murdered by Hamas.
With the outbreak of the Iron Sword War, Rabbi Roger joined the national effort, devoting all his time, experience and abilities to one of the most difficult and complex goals.
Giving names to the bodies.Shura camp workers, photo: Jonathan Shaul
"I want to say, and with great pain," the rabbi wishes to say at the beginning of our conversation, "that in all my 50 years of activity, I have never seen bodies so severely and cruelly damaged as those I have seen in the past two months. The situation of civilian casualties in this war is horrific and horrific, and shows endless cruelty."
Along with this activity, Rabbi Roger is a Dayan in a beit din established by the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rishon LeZion Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, whose goal is to determine the death of abducted civilians.
"Identification of someone who died in war or otherwise is critical, it changes the personal status of the family," he explains. "According to halacha, a woman whose husband is kidnapped is an agona, and if the court decides death, she becomes a widow."
The casualties of the massacre in the week following the attack,
Science in the Service of Halakha
"It is forbidden to mistake the identification of a body," emphasizes Rabbi Roger, "and to the best of my knowledge, since the establishment of the State of Israel no mistake has been made in identifying a body. The means of scientific identification have greatly improved, and today there is rare cooperation between halakha and science.
"The more science advances and makes means available to halacha, the easier it is in theory to identify a body. In the Yom Kippur War, there was no identification of DNA, for example, which exists today and makes it easier to identify halachically."
Yachal volunteers, together with IDF forces, are turning every stone in their efforts to locate missing persons near the Gaza Strip, Photo: IDF Spokesperson
What are the main differences between that war and the current one, in terms of identifying casualties?
"The large number of civilians murdered in an iron sword war is beyond imagination. That's hundreds of spaces. No one thought that such a scenario would materialize.
"It's something that never happened before, and made the job harder. There was not enough manpower, but people worked around the clock, and the civilian bodies worked flawlessly in evacuating and burying hundreds of civilians.
"The means of identification today are much more sophisticated than those we had in the Yom Kippur War. Science has advanced and is helping in theory. It is important to us that the audience trust us, and know that we are making all possible efforts to reach a reliable and complete identification, without doubts."
Bodies at the Shura camp in Ramle, photo: Yehonatan Shaul
"Messenger of the people of Israel"
One of the most sensitive issues since the surprise attack on 7 October is determining the death of hostages. "I also have a role in a committee headed by the chief military rabbi, which tries to determine, based on data we receive, whether there are casualties among the abductees," says Rabbi Roger.
"The bodies of some of the abductees were identified using classified information, which cannot be elaborated," he said. If it is concluded that the abductee is not alive, a delegation of the Chief Military Rabbinate sets out to tell the family. Anyone who deals with this issue feels that he is an emissary of the public, an emissary of the people of Israel. This is what gives us the strength to do this hard work, which only we are capable of.
"When I deal with one space or another, I feel like there's a family in the background looking at me, at what I'm doing. The sense of mission and faith helps overcome the mental burden. We are ready for any task that will be assigned to us. The people of Israel live and will exist forever."
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