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“And the Lord said to Moses: Speak to the Kohanim, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: Let none [of you] defile himself for a dead person among his people.” (Vayikra 21:1)
“Any animal [whose reproductive organs] were squashed, crushed, pulled out, or severed, you shall not offer up to the Lord, and in your land, you shall not do it [to castrate any livestock or wild animal, even of an unclean species – Rashi]. (Vayikra 22:24)
- Translation (Pinkasei haRei’ah, Vol. 5 pg. 192)
The Kohanim are not merely functionaries in the Temple, but spiritual leaders of the Jewish people, whose influence and spirit models the Torah’s ethical ideals. This is why G-d forbade Kohanim to come into contact with death. This prohibition keeps death away from their consciousness, so that it does not become affected by death and polluted with even the slightest hatred for life. This way, the Kohanim ensure that Torah morality is infused with love of life, which is the purest and most wholesome of man’s natural desires.
Any ethical notion that expresses a hatred or contempt of life is impure and unsustainable. Its only function is as a bitter medicine, which one must take occasionally to prevent a worse sickness from spreading. Other than that, it has no established place in Torah values. The true foundation of Torah morality is love of life.[1]That is because the fullest life is one that is permeated with love for kindness and good, and lived in the light of G-d’s presence.
- Translation (Ein Ayah,Shabbat 67b)
Wicked people inflict tremendous destruction upon the world. On the surface, it seems like their destruction is motivated by a vigorous longing to impose their will, and to satisfy the desires of their tempestuous spirit. The truth is that their devastation comes from a deep-rooted hatred of life. And this hatred is a projection of their own spiritual emptiness. In their hearts, the wicked know that they deserve destruction and not life. And so, looking at existence with the same jaundiced perspective that they view themselves, they conclude that the world also deserves to be destroyed.
For this reason, we find that castration of animals was a prominent practice in the pagan world.[2]
- Translation (Orot ha’kodesh, 2:280)
Death is an illusion, and its impurity derives from its falsehood. What people lament to as “death” – i.e. passing to the Next World – is really an intensification and amplification of life. Only because of a profoundly shallow perspective, in which the inclinations of man’s heart ensnare him, do we conceive of this passage as a sad and dark matter called “death.”
The sanctity of the Kohanim demands that they transcend the illusion of death and proclaim its falsehood. However, in an imperfect world, the Kohanim cannot abide by this higher truth in the face of a formerly healthy and vibrant body that now lays cold and lifeless. To maintain their higher truth and prevent their spiritual consciousness from being deluded, the Kohanim avert their eyes from the slightest encounter with death.
Commentary and Food For Thought
Rav Kook’s explanation for the prohibition of Kohanim becoming טמא למת is very similar to that given by Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, in his Commentary to the Torah (Vayikra 21:1): Antique and modem heathenism like so very much to associate religion and religious matters with death and thoughts of death. For them it is where Man ends that the Kingdom of God begins. For them death and dying are the real manifestations of their godhead, who to them is a god of death and not of life. A god who kills and does not animate, and sends death and its fore-runners, illness and wretchedness, so that men should fear him, realize his power and their impotence. The places which they dedicate to temples are therefore round about graves,[3]the foremost place of their priest is therefore at the dead and dying.[4]There, where the light is fading from the eye, and hearts are broken, is the most fruitful field for their religious sowing.
Not so is the Jewish priest because not so is the Jewish teaching of God, the Jewish religion. The God, Whose Name assigns the Jewish priest to his office is a God of life. His sublimest manifestation is the elevating power of Life, freeing, animating, raising Man to free will and to eternal life, not the crushing power of death. Not how one is to die, but how one is to live, how, living, one has victoriously to conquer death, death in life, thralldom, enslaved by one’s physical urges, moral weakness, how one has to live every second of a morally free, thinking, desiring, working and accomplishing life, and also enjoying all the pleasures of life as a moment of service to God, that is the teaching to which God has dedicated His Sanctuary, and for the service of which He has consecrated the Kohanim to care for the “basis of life and direction thereof.”
When Death summons the people to come to busy themselves in acts of love with the empty body of a נפש which God has called home, the Kohanim have to remain away, and by standing away to keep aloft the Standard of Life next to the corpse, and by the thoughts of what life really is, prevent the thoughts of death overpowering the truths that the real Man himself is morally free and not subject to forces which kill his power over his own moral free will. Only where the duties of life call on the priest personally to fulfil the last possible acts of love to the empty shell of the נפש of his wife, child, parent, brother or sister, or where the forsaken state of a corpse makes him to a father and brother of the forsaken one, there his calling as a priest has to retire behind the calling of family and humanity, and his activity with the dead is not only permitted but is a duty. Otherwise priests have to keep away from dead bodies.
Questions for Reflection and Discussion
- How can we reconcile Rav Kook’s comments in Sources 1 and 2 above with his comments in Source 3? If Torah morality is rooted in love of life, how can he claim that death is an illusion and really shouldn’t sadden us?[5]
- Rav Kook writes that the only place for hatred of life is “as a bitter medicine, which one must take occasionally to prevent a worse sickness from spreading.” What do you think he means? What kind of ‘sickness’ does he have in mind?
- How do you think Rav Kook would account for the suspension of the איסור טומאה for a Kohen when it comes to close relatives? What does Rav Hirsch say?
- Rav Kook writes that love of life is the cornerstone of Torah morality. What in Torah law or hashkafa can you think of that expresses this value?
- How is Rav Kook’s explanation for the prohibition of טומאת מת similar to Rav Hirsch. How is it different?
- What can you do to cultivate a greater appreciation of life?
- Are you convinced by Rav Kook’s analysis of why wickedness people have destructive urges? Why or why not?
[1]Rav Kook notes that even Moshe Rabbeinu, arguably the most elite spiritual personality of the entire Torah, beseeched G-d to extend his life.
[2]As support, Rav Kook brings a statement in the gemara (Shabbat 67b) that smashing eggs against a wall is prohibited as דרכי האמורי, i.e. pagan superstition. It is not clear whether Rav Kook is drawing on other sources that may indicate a connection between paganism and castration.
[3]In Europe, beginning in the Middle Ages, cemeteries were generally constructed around churches.
[4]Rav Hirsch appears to be referring to the Christian practice of a priest administering last rites.
[5]I think it’s a question of what perspective you adopt, and I think that Chazal themselves were sensitive to this question. See the third chapter of Pirkei Avot– “A single moment of repentance and good deeds in this world is greater than all of the World to Come. And a single moment of bliss in the World to Come is greater than all of the present world.”
