In a tent beside the city morgue where human remains are delivered from the World Trade Center disaster site, a soft voice sings prayers to comfort the dead.
At every hour of the day and night, the Book of Psalms is read.
Normally, the Orthodox Jewish ritual known as shmira lasts for 24 hours and is performed by one Jew, usually a man. But the scope of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is far from normal.
In what Jewish scholars say is the longest known shmira the ancient ritual is entering its ninth week with no sign of ending anytime soon. And as the prayers continue week after week, the shomer -- or watcher -- is more often a woman than a man.
A dozen women from Stern College for Women, part of Yeshiva University, have volunteered for the sad task, singing psalms during the hard-to-fill shifts from Friday afternoon to nightfall Saturday. Devout Jews cannot ride in cars, taxis or subways on the Sabbath, so the young women whose dormitories are only blocks from the morgue keep the shmira going.
"Singing psalms is the best feeling on the planet. I sing out loud -- I can't help it," said Judith Kaplan, 20, a soprano who prays from midnight to 5am on Saturdays.
Jessica Russak, 20, began recruiting classmates when a friend told her that the synagogue whose members have been taking turns sitting shmira was having trouble finding people close enough to the morgue to come on the Sabbath.
She was told by Yeshiva President Norman Lamm that under the dire circumstances, the normal gender rules that allow women to sit shmira only for other women, could be waived.
"It's perfectly permissible and highly commendable for them to do it," Lamm said. "This is the highest form of love because there's no possibility of reciprocity."
Initially, Russak said, state troopers were unsure why young women in their Sabbath best were showing up at strange hours on Friday and Saturday with prayer books in hand.
But soon the women earned a place for themselves amid the tired officers standing guard, and the Red Cross chaplains with whom they share the yellow and white tent. A Buddhist also was among the clerics in the tent, but he left after 49 days, when that religion says the souls of the dead depart from earth, Russak said.
One shomer said an officer had requested that she sing a favorite psalm. Another told of a Red Cross chaplain who, inspired by the psalms, took a copy of the New Testament off the shelf and began reading alongside the shomer.
Armin Osgood, a member of the burial society at Ohab Zedek synagogue who has helped organize volunteers, said the shomers are comforted by the practice.
``I have people who are so spiritually moved by the experience that ask to do it again and again,'' he said, adding that hundreds have volunteered.
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