Drash on Emor 2025

Coming into contact with a corpse: this week’s parsha instructs the Kohanim when they can and cannot be in the presence of a dead body. It’s the reason some Cohens won’t visit a cemetery to this day.

The priests of old were meant to exist in a state of ritual purity. That way, they were always available to perform the holy rites in the Temple. Coming into contact with a corpse rendered them tamei (“ritually impure”) but they were allowed to do so to honour their closest kin: their mother, father, child, brother, or unmarried sister. For all others – even though they can visit the mikveh to restore their ritual purity – they must stay away. (Leviticus 21:1-3)

I am not a priest; I am a rabbi. As a rabbi, I regularly come into contact with the dead. Doing so is holy work.

I remember one man who knew he was going to die. At first, when I visited him in hospice, we’d talk about his wife and daughter, his life’s work, his joys and fears. He’d regale me with stories about birdwatching. We often laughed as we spoke, but over the weeks his booming chortle faded to a chuckle, then a smile. Later, his family and I circled his bed and sang to him as he slept. Hearing is the last sense to leave, experts say. That being true, his soul shed his body hearing his family tell him how much they loved him, how grateful they were to have shared their lives with him. Then they released him to the Cosmos.

I have been honoured to be in the presence of several people in that holy moment of transition. While I can’t claim to know what actually happens (that being one of the Great Mysteries), I do know that somethingleaves the body at the moment of death. Maybe it’s Soul. I call it Life Force – Chiyyut. Even after the person has stopped breathing, the Life Force is still present, for a moment.

Then, palpably, it leaves the body. You can feel it depart.

Then they are gone.

Some translate tamei as “defiled.” Others say “ritually impure” or “desecrated.” Those translations don’t sit right with me with regards to death. That’s because, for me, the experience of being present with someone who is dead is absolutely holy. In their presence, you become keenly aware of the transcendent beauty and power of all human bodies. You realise that the body is only a shell for something far greater. You glimpse the transitory nature of Life. And that someone would share their death with you – would trust you to be present at such a moment of tender transition – well, that is a blessing beyond words.

Not all deaths are peaceful or beautiful, to be sure. Some are sudden, violent, or painful. Even so, when the Life Force leaves, the body grows still. The face, once contorted with pain, softens. The struggle dissolves, at least for the deceased. Calmness descends on them as they find peace, even as they leave behind a torn world – and, often, shattered, confused hearts.

Even so, being present with the body of a deceased person, whether their death was peaceful or violent, has never defiled or desecrated me. Rather, it has inspired, challenged, blessed, and taught me. It connects me with all the people who, over the course of a lifetime, held the hand I am privileged to hold last.

The same is true when performing tohara – the ritual of purification that involves washing the body and preparing it for burial. The work is physical, certainly, but also profoundly spiritual and intimate. Those performing the mitzvah are not defiled. Quite the opposite: they are uplifted through their service.

Perhaps we wash to remove the tumat after we come into contact with the dead because the experience is too powerful, too real, too charged with holiness to carry back to the regular, work-a-day world. Perhaps we wash to discharge some of that holy energy.

Before I officiated at my first funeral, my partner, a Registered Nurse and no stranger to death, reminded me to wash my hands when leaving the cemetery. He didn’t want me bringing tumat into our home. It was a wise instruction: to keep the energy of death at a remove from the energy of life, to the extent possible. And to acknowledge that each is, in its way, holy.