Unscrolled Chukat: Holy Corpses

Somewhere hidden away in a church in Greece is a small box containing a desiccated, severed hand. Withered and blackened by the passage of time, this relic is said to have belonged to Mary Magdalene. In churches and monasteries across Europe, other such bodily fragments can be found. The head of St. John the Baptist is in Rome, along with the finger of St. Thomas. The foreskin and baby teeth of Jesus himself are also said to be rattling around somewhere.

There are also the so-called “bone churches.” At St. Bartholomew’s in Poland, or the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic, thousands of human skeletons have been ghoulishly repurposed to create the walls, the altars, and the chandeliers of the sanctuaries.

In Naples, the funerary catacombs that run underneath the city once doubled as the site of early Christian prayer services. They are now empty. Napoleon, worried about the deleterious effects of miasmas, had the bodies cleared out long ago.

These holy corpses mark a frontier between life and death, between this world and the next. To keep the company of the dead is to linger in that numinous threshold and contemplate its mysteries.

These holy corpses mark a frontier between life and death, between this world and the next.

As for the relics, they are, to borrow a phrase, word made flesh. To read of Mary Magdalene is one thing. To see her hand, the very hand with which she brushed her hair and wiped her tears and clung to Jesus’s robe, is quite another.

The Torah, however, takes a different approach to death.

In Parashat Chukat, we learn of the ritual of the red heifer. Burned entirely, its ashes are saved and used to purify those who have become impure through contact with the dead.

The impurity of the dead is a great preoccupation in the Torah. It can be spread to humans and vessels alike. To cleanse oneself from its desacralizing blight, one must wash, wait seven days, and be ritually purified with the ashes of the red heifer on two separate occasions.

Impurity is not a disease. It will not kill you. It will, however, prevent you from drawing close to God’s sanctuary. Corpses may have been a point of contact with divinity for the early Christians, but for the biblical Hebrews, they were seen as barriers to holiness.

A hint as to why this is so may exist in the setting of this week’s Torah portion. Shortly after the Israelites receive the law of the red heifer, they settle in the wilderness of Kadesh. Kadesh is the name of a place, but it also means “to sanctify” and shares a root with “Kadosh,” holy.

The English word “holy” derives from a Germanic root meaning “whole.” This might be better translated into Hebrew as “shalem,” which means complete, and is connected to “shalom,” peace.

The word “Kadosh,” on the other hand, has nothing to do with wholeness. Rather, it is connected to “apartness.” That which is sanctified is that which is set apart.

Hence the Sabbath is a day set apart from the profane days of the week.

The holy land is a land set apart from the rest of the world.

The people of Israel are a people set apart from the peoples of the world.

And here, in the wilderness of Kadesh, we learn that the life of Torah is a life set apart from death. It is here, in the world of the living, that our sacred vocation can be fulfilled. “What is to be gained from my death, from my descent into the Pit?” asks King David. “Can dust praise You? Can it declare Your faithfulness?” (Psalms 30:10).

And here, in the wilderness of Kadesh, we learn that the life of Torah is a life set apart from death.

When those in our midst die, they exit the sanctified community and cross to the other side. We cannot help but wonder what sacred mysteries they encounter there, but the Torah makes it clear that we are not to follow, nor even to linger at the threshold.

Purified by the ashes of the red heifer, we are commanded to recommit ourselves to life in this physical plane, where we remain embodied and mortal—where there is holy work to be done.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.