After massacre, painstaking and painful care for the dead

PITTSBURGH (AP) — As the first funerals for the victims of the Pittsburgh massacre began, two rabbis and five other volunteers approached the sawhorses cordoning off the Tree of Life synagogue, and an FBI agent led them into the crime scene. Inside the desecrated temple, the men donned white forensic coveralls, face masks and gloves, and set to work.

Judaism asks the living to take special care of the dead, and this group had a last, sacred duty to fulfill: gather up every drop of blood and other bodily traces of the 11 people killed in the deadliest attack against Jews in U.S. history.

"The J...