A Thought on Parshas Emor

"...l'nefesh lo yitama..." "...he should not defile himself for a soul..." (21:3) The Torah has a set of rules which govern the ritual and the interpersonal behavior of the kohanim. One of those rules pertains to his maintaining his purity or spiritual cleanliness at all times, whether or not he is involved in doing Temple service. This means that he may not come into contact with the dead. It is noteworthy that this rule about not defiling himself is not worded directly as "la'meis lo yitama" which would translate as "he should not defile himself with a dead body." Our verse, instead, uses the word "nefesh" rather than "meis", which is one of those words which signifies the spirit or soul of a person. By entering a cemetery or touching a corpse, he is hardly making contact with a "soul." Firstly, a soul is intangible. It is "spiritual". Secondly, whatever a soul is - i.e. a Divine spark, the "breath of life from Above", one's consciousness, or one's mind - surely those entities are gone once a person is dead. We speak about "departed souls", or absence of life, and other expressions which denote how a dead body no longer houses a "nefesh." In what way would it even be possible to defile oneself to a soul? What then is the actual meaning of our verse? What is the actual restriction or instruction to the kohen here? The Panae'ach Raza sees in our verse a remez, a subtle hint, to a much deeper principle. He understands our verse as alluding to the enduring existence of the nefesh after death. When a person dies, his or her body has expired. However, there is "hashaar'as ha'nefesh" which means the continuation and remaining-on of the soul following end of life. The deceased person to whom a kohen may not defile himself is indeed called a "mais" or dead body, but calling him that would imply finality, as if life is over. In our belief system, the soul lives on, albeit in another dimension of reality and unfettered by the physical container which we know as the body, which has died and expired. The soul has not died, and lives on. What the Torah teaches us about death is that tumaa pertains to the dead body of those whose souls live on. After death, the "person" loses physical presence and significance and takes on solely the spiritual presence and significance of his or her nefesh. During life, this soul was viewed as almost subordinate to the living body. The body was, from our vantage point, primary. At the stage of existence called death, a conceptual transformation occurs - the Torah wants us to think now of the soul as primary, and the former physical self recedes in significance. After death, the person to whom the kohen may not defile himself is called a nefesh, which is that which lives on. He is not to defile himself to that nefesh's body. Good Shabbos. D Fox