If your name is Cohen, Kohn, Cohn, or Kahn (or if you know someone with these names or similar variations), this parashah is for you. Your direct ancestors, Kohanim, the descendants of Moshe’s brother Aharon, were once the unrivaled religious leaders of the Jewish people. We best remember Kohanim as Temple officiants: it was the role of Kohanim to offer the offerings, animal or grain. Kohanim also declared people and animals impure or pure and they pronounced upon the Jewish people a special berachah (blessing). In return, Kohanim once enjoyed special privileges such as food reserved for them alone. The marital and burial laws found in this week’s parashah safeguarded their station. And Kohanim were our teachers.

Many centuries ago, Kohanim were supplanted and their place in Jewish leadership diminished. The destruction of the Beit ha-Mikdash eliminated their central role and the special foods given to them. Rabbis emerged as the religious teachers of the Jewish people and through their learning declared what was permitted or forbidden. In traditional circles, what remains for Kohanim is receiving the first aliyah to the Torah and pronouncing the kohanic berachah. But the practice which many Kohanim still observe with special reverence and pride is maintaining their distance from corpses and cemeteries. The law is found in this week’s parashah, Parashat Emor.

God said to Moshe: “Say to the Kohanim, the sons of Aharon, and say to them: ‘To a [dead] body, he may not become impure among his people, except to a close relative …'” (Leviticus 21:1ff) The law is fairly clear, but the exception to the law reveals that contact with the dead was not inherently prohibited, after all, contact with a dead body and for the sake of the immediate relatives is explicitly permitted. So why does the Torah go out of its way to prohibit Kohanim from such contact for non-relatives?

Baruch Levine (JPS Commentary) offers this understanding: “In effect, this law eliminated a funerary role for the priesthood … Worship of the dead was a widespread phenomenon in the ancient Near East, as it was elsewhere; and priests, as officiants in religious cults, usually had a prominent funerary role – as was not the case in the monotheistic religion of ancient Israel.”

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In other words, while many religions did, and still do, make death central to their religious belief and direct its clergy accordingly, the Jewish tradition, following the lead of the Torah, does not. A too intimate connection between religious leadership and death distorts the higher aims of Torah.

Death, of course, can motivate people to appreciate life. And we, too, preserve a number of religious teachings which make this point. But human beings are susceptible to defining religious leadership by death. Indeed, there are many individuals whose prime contact with rabbis is when death occurs. Many unaffiliated Jews, year after year, contribute nothing to supporting the living Jewish community, the synagogue and its ideals; yet when death occurs, they scramble to find a rabbi. Even a good number of affiliated Jews primarily connect with the rabbi and synagogue for funerals, and for Yizkor and Yahrzeit, to say kaddish.

The disassociation of death and clergy in ancient Israel must have given Kohanim a fuller role as promoters of a living Jewish life – worship of God, sanctity of life, teaching of ritual and ethical practices, and an emphasis on life itself in this world, along with a view ahead to life after life. So too in our day, a de-emphasis on the nexus between rabbis and death, and a refreshening of our relationship with rabbis as teachers of Torah, will enrich our personal lives , the life of our families, and the Jewish people.

When Kohanim stand outside the cemetery, they preserve their special historical-religious heritage, publicly model faith, and remind us that our ideals, embodied in religious leadership, place life even higher than death. As we read in Devarim 30:19 “u-vacharta ba-chayim” – “choose life so that you and your descendants may live.

D’var Torah

Rabbi Seth D Gordon serves Traditional Congregation and is a member of the St. Louis Rabbinical Association.