I personally don't believe death has a purpose, how can it? To purposly do something it has to have a mind of its own. Death is just a natural reaction to the body's incapabilities. We are not super human, only human, obviously. As a human our body can only function with working organs.

I also think we need to do more than just map/count things. In the brief it talks about analysing movements, actions, rituals and habits. The aim is to design an appropriate intervention that responds to an issue.

To analyse movements we could look at:
transport - no bikes-many buses and cars-tube station near by-commute to London
music - traditional or modern? Are there bands? Is music a big part of the community?
shops - proximity, range/what customers do they cater for?
religion - majority Jewish-future plans for these Jewish families?

To analyse actions we could look at:
body language - compare to other areas of London/observe reactions to siuations
havent really got much for this section...

To analyse rituals we NEED to:
observe the community within the synagogue, go in and look around, ask questions
observe rush hour within the community-commuting town
count the direction of community flow-directions of travel

To analyse habits we could look at: (similar to rituals so combined)
family habits - bar mitzva/celebration/cakes(seem quite imortant)/meal times(food)

Any way just a few ideas on observations that stay quite close to the brief, so that we start on something fairly related and can expand from these ideas perhaps?