Torah
March 14, 2008
Torat Kohanim
Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner
Special to the Jewish Times
This week we turn to day-lit evenings and to Vayikra, Leviticus, and the third book of the Bible. Known by the sages as Torat Kohanim, The Manual of the Priesthood, the book is largely that: instructions for the investment of the priests and the sacred service.
Long after the Temple no longer stands it might be of limited interest, but for the central charge that we are, all of us, to be a “Kingdom of Priests, a Holy People.” That charge runs through our nation’s consciousness and custom in all sorts of symbolic, subterranean ways. It defines us as Jews to a significant measure. That root holy, kadosh in Hebrew, forms the heart of the terms kaddish and kedushah and Kiddush on Shabbat. Not only holy, but dedicated, we are described as am kadosh l’Adonai, a people dedicated to God. We have tried valiantly to be that.
Now, if there is one thing you know about the requirements of priests, it’s that they are enjoined to avoid cemeteries/dead bodies. While the rest of us don’t have this requirement, it is a Jewish demand that when people die they be buried immediately. That is stated in the Bible about the least honorable among us; a hanged criminal must not be left hanging, but buried immediately (Deut. 21:23).
About this verse, Rashi explains, “This debases God. For man is made in the image of God ... Imagine that there were two twin brothers who looked exactly alike. One became a prince, but the other fell into thievery and was hanged. Everyone who saw the hanged criminal would think, ‘The Prince has been hanged.’” Jewish law has struggled over the years as to whether this law applies only to Jewish corpses, because elsewhere the source of the law of burial is the description of Miriam’s burial, but this reasoning makes it clear that our commitment goes back to the first verses of Genesis and the origins of humankind. As the Talmud notes, “We bury Gentile dead and Jewish dead equally” (Gittin 61a). And to support this demand of immediate burial the law prohibits deriving any benefit from a corpse.
Along comes the exhibition currently running at the Maryland Science Center, Body Worlds 2, described as “the original exhibition of real human bodies.” The founder of the exhibit, Dr. Gunther von Hagens, has created an ingenious method of embalming that preserves the musculature and the venous structure in a pliable form which allows him to display flayed cadavers such that you can see their every contortion. Ingenious. Interesting. And unholy.
No observant Jew could mount such an exhibit and none should attend, for our attendance declares the intention to benefit from these cadavers, which we are bidden not to do. It is, simply put, our part of Torat Kohanim, part of our purchase on holiness.
But Rabbi, I am immediately asked, what about the use of cadavers in medical schools? Two arguments rest behind the permission to use cadavers in medical school. First: Medical education is necessary to save lives. Second: The donors have agreed to such use, which will be modest, honorable, short-term and end in burial. While Dr. von Hagens does insist every cadaver used in his displays was freely donated (his primary plant is in China, where the assertion of free donation is in some doubt), the distance between this exhibition and any life-saving result is great, and the cadaver use is neither modest nor short term.
This is a spectacle. Its educational purposes could be fulfilled through detailed models.
We like our taboos (or should –– I urge that we do). Why? Because we are am kadosh l’Adonai. We are dedicated to God, and thus do we show it. It is our valor and our pride. It is “proof of our wisdom and discernment” (Deut. 4:6).