The passage in question concerns details of which burials of family members a kohen (priest) may attend in spite of the overarching prohibition against his becoming ritually impure. Initially, it would seem, the Torah viewed the wife’s burial as being the primary responsibility of her father and family in which she was raised. As social realities and values changed, the sages via the Sanhedrin were pressed to apply Torah law to the new circumstances (see R’ Amnon Bazaq Nitzchuni Banai, Hebrew, for more details).
The verses read:
“Let none [of you] defile himself for a dead person among his people except for “she’ero” who is close to him: his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, his brother…[But] a husband shall not defile himself [for a wife] among his people, “lehechalo.”
In his commentary to this passage, Ibn Ezra notes that the basic meaning of the word she’ero is an umbrella term which covers all close relatives for whom a kohen may become involved in their burial, even though he will become impure by doing so. Meanwhile, the final clause appears explicitly to exclude a wife from this list of close relatives.
However, continues Ibn Ezra, the sages have transmitted to us that a kohen must bury his wife despite the fact that he will contract ritual impurity by doing so. In order to do this, he continues, they reread she’ero to mean “wife” [i.e. his specific close relative] – who is now included in the list of exceptional relatives whom a kohen is obliged to bury. Most significantly, in the final clause, the sages “annulled the original meaning” of the verse in order to interpret it to be teaching that the only sort of wife for whose burial a kohen should not make himself ritually impure is one whom he was forbidden to marry in the first place.
Ibn Ezra indicates that this technique of altering the meaning of a verse, which he understands to have been the case with she’ero, is one that the sages employed on numerous occasions – further potential examples of this phenomena are analysed elsewhere in Talmud Reclaimed.
Rambam by contrast, while accepting the ability of the sages to amend Torah law, does not seem to embrace the suggestion that they could so radically alter the meaning of a verse. Rather, writing in Hilchot Avel (2:7, see Radvaz) he appears to follow the Talmud’s explanation that the sages (via the Sanhedrin) legally categorised a wife as a form of met mitzvah – abandoned corpse – that even a kohen would be permitted to bury. The husband as the sole inheritor was then required to take responsibility for burying her. Rather than changing the meaning of the verse, Rambam preferred to stretch the limits of existing legal exceptions to work around the Torah’s initial position which prohibited the kohen from burying his wife.
Whether this shift involved the Sanhedrin assigning a new meaning to the verse as Ibn Ezra argues, or significantly extending the scope of met mitzva as Rambam rules, do we have a way of knowing when this change might have taken place?
Unfortunately we have received few if any of the court records from early generations of the Sanhedrin. However a verse from Yechezkel, read in yesterday’s Haftarah seems to provide some insight here.
Reviewing a number of the priestly laws, Yechezkel paraphrases our parsha’s verse stating:
“To no human corpse shall they come to defile themselves, except to father and to mother and to son and to daughter, to brother and to a sister who has had no husband, shall they defile themselves.” (44:25)
No mention at all is made of a husband’s obligation – or even permission – to bury his wife. This implies that the change would have taken place during the Second Mikdash period.
More about Talmud Reclaimed: An ancient text in the modern era can be found at www.TalmudReclaimed.com.
First posted on Facebook 19 May 2024.
