Court: ‘Bodies’ exhibition must close after Succot

Ruling follows appeal filed by ZAKA alleging exhibition hosts bodies of Chinese people without permission, notification of relatives.

By JOHN BACKTANE
Religious Jews observe Bodies exhibit 370 (photo credit: Courtesy ZAKA)
Religious Jews observe Bodies exhibit 370
(photo credit: Courtesy ZAKA)
The High Court of Justice ruled on Sunday that the “Bodies” exhibition in Tel Aviv, displaying real human corpses preserved in a special process, will need to close by October 9, 12 days before its planned date, October 21.
The court allowed operators to keep the exhibition open until the end of Succot, in order to allow advance ticket holders to visit the exhibition.
The Bodies exhibition contains parts of 200 human bodies.
According to an appeal filed by several human rights organizations, including the ZAKA rescue and recovery organization, the bodies in the exhibition are corpses of Chinese people who were not asked for permission to display their bodies when they were alive and their relatives were not notified that the bodies would on public display.
According to the appeal, the exhibition vilified the memory of the dead.
ZAKA welcomed the ruling, but said in a statement that the decision “reminds one of the man who erected a succa without permission, and the court allowed him an eight-day extension before he needed to take it down [according to Jewish custom succot are dismantled after eight days since the holiday is eight days long].”