As the rubble of the World Trade Center is slowly cleared away, new crises are arising for the families of victims of the terrorist attack. While those people lost at Ground Zero are presumed to be dead, there is no conclusive proof, which supports this conjecture. Because of this many rabbis are being inundated with questions regarding the laws of Agunot, Shivah, Kaddish, and Shloshim.

The most serious question rabbis encounter is determining whether or not a woman is an agunah. An agunah literally means - an anchored woman, a woman whose estranged or missing husband either cannot or will not grant her a get, a Jewish writ of divorce. According to halacha, without a get or proof that her husband is dead, she is forbidden to remarry without the consent of a certified bais din, a Jewish court of law. In the event that she does remarry any children from the second marriage will be considered to be mamzerim - bastards - and they will be excommunicated from Jewish society.

Many rabbis have already received queries from women regarding their status as agunoth. Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary Rosh HaYeshiva Rabbi Dr. Moshe Tendler reported that he has already received inquiries from seven wives whose husbands are missing.

Rabbi Tendler believes that the case of the World Trade Center attack most resembles the Talmudic principle of "mayim she'ayn la'hem sof." This category applies to cases where a body is not found and there is no concrete evidence that the person perished. The Talmud presents this as a case of a man falling overboard into shark infested waters and land cannot be seen from where he disappeared. In this case, the man's wife would not be permitted to remarry until his body was located and identified.

Both Rabbi Tendler and RIETS Rosh HaYeshiva Rabbi Herschel Schachter explain that the answer to most of the new agunoth cases lies in a halachic decision issued by the late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein to a wife whose husband entered Auschwitz and was never heard from again. Rabbi Feinstein stated that the conditions of mass murder at Auschwitz made it a different situation from the Talmudic case of an individual lost at sea, and therefore the woman would be allowed to remarry. This famous ruling has been a precedent to free agunoth in times of massive tragedies such as the Holocaust, the sinking of the Titanic, the Dakar submarine incident in Israel, and plane crashes.

"Judaism seeks to avoid rendering women agunoth and therefore many leniencies are accepted by the rabbis," elucidated Rabbi Tendler. For example, while Jewish law normally requires two male witnesses to testify at legal proceedings, rabbis will accept the testimony of one witness who claims that the individual is dead in order to avoid making the woman an agunah.

While Judaism tries to accommodate women as much as possible, there are still certain prerequisites that need to be met in order for a woman to avoid the designation of agunah. The evidence needed must be a "siman muvhak" - a conclusive sign of death.

Rabbi Yona Reiss, director of the Beth Din of America, says that corresponding dental records and fingerprints as well as DNA match results would fall under the category of "siman muvhak" and be considered conclusive confirmations of death, while personal objects such as a ring or wallet are not.

One reason is that there is a strong possibility that a person's habit may have been to take off his ring for reasons of comfort. The same can be said of a wallet. In fact, in one of the agunah cases tried before the Beth Din, this was the case. Other examples of supporting pieces of evidence, which testify to the person being located in the building at the time of the incident, include a phone call or an email that was sent the morning of the September 11th.

Additional halachic problems may arise in the case of a missing individual who may have been walking near the World Trade Center at the time of the attack and whose whereabouts are now unknown. In the absence of a body or conclusive evidence of the person's death, halacha requires a full investigation of the husband's circumstances. This includes inquiries into the state of the couple's marriage.

"I need to know that the person has no other reason to not be heard from other than that he is no longer alive," explained Rav Tendler, "and to assess the even remote existence of a scenario of him arriving late to work, seeing the attacks, and deciding to run off to Mexico."

In addition to rabbis being asked questions regarding agunoth, many have been asked by the families of the victims when to begin observing shivah - a week long period of grieving. Rabbi Schachter asserts that shivah and the laws of mourning should be observed when the chances of finding survivors is no longer realistic, which was approximately 27 hours after the catastrophe.

However, Rabbi Tendler disagrees and says that the question of when to start shivah lies in the hands of New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. "When he stops talking about it being a search and rescue mission it means they're not expecting to find anyone alive," R' Tendler explained, "As long as they're calling it a rescue mission the family still has hope of finding the person and we do not start shivah." Rabbi Tendler bases his opinion on the principle of beginning shivah and mourning when the relatives no longer feel that there is any hope of finding the missing person alive.

In the event that the family of a person missing from the World Trade Center decides to sit shivah and then the body is found thirty days later, halacha mandates that the body be buried and that the family observe a day of mourning. This concept is known as "shmuah rechokah." In other cases, where the fate of the husband is unknown, the family should delay sitting shivah until evidence of the husband's death becomes more conclusive. According to Rabbi Schachter, this is because shivah signifies the beginning of mourning and Jewish law does not want to place a woman in the double standard of declaring her a widow, while still forcing her to remain an agunah.