The Sacred Body Returns to Earth

Humans are the only ones who treat their dead with dignity and inter them. All other species leave their cadavers to rot on the ground. Humans place them in the ground.

The first burial is described in this week’s Torah portion, when Abraham buried his wife, Sarah. Abraham approached Efron the Hittite to purchase a burial plot. He opened the negotiation by saying, “I am a foreigner and a resident among you” (Genesis 23:4). That seems paradoxical. If he was a foreigner, he was not a local, and if he was a local, he was not a foreigner.

Rashi explains that he was establishing his bonafides. I am like a foreigner, he said, in that I don’t own a burial plot. Therefore, I seek to buy one from you. However, if you refuse to sell me a plot, I will invoke G-d’s promise to give me the entire land and claim my plot for free.

The Foreign Soul
Rashi explains the plain meaning of the words. The Torah, however, has layers upon layers of meaning, and when you peel them back, you uncover delightful depths. Our sages (Chasam Sofer ad loc.) revealed a profound teaching in Abraham’s words as they peeled back the layers.

“I am a foreigner and a resident,” said Abraham. My soul is a foreigner; it was not born on Earth, and it will not die on Earth. My soul hails from heaven and will return to heaven. My body is a resident of the earthly plane. My body belongs on earth. It was born on earth, belongs on earth, and will die on earth.

No other species has a human soul. They have a spark of life but not a fully developed soul. Only humans have fully developed souls. All other species are defined as residents of Earth. They are bodies, not souls. Therefore, when they die, their story ends. They have no afterlife. Their bodies require no dignity because they have no further value. They own nothing and deserve nothing.

Humans are different. They are not just bodies; they are also souls. They are not just residents of the earth but also foreigners on Earth. Their last day on Earth is not just a day of death; it is also a day of birth. They die from the Earth; they are born to the heavens.

The Day Moses Was Born
Haman threw lots to determine the month in which to annihilate the Jewish people. The Talmud tells us that when his lot fell in the month of Adar, he rejoiced because Moses died in Adar. The Talmud (Megilah 13b) tells us that Haman made a fateful error; he did not know that Moses was also born in Adar.

If Haman was familiar enough with Jewish history to know the month of Moses’ death, why did he not know the month of Moses’ birth? One rabbi explained that the Talmud was not just talking about Moses’ birthday, though Moses was born in Adar. The Talmud was referring to the day of Moses’ passing. You see, Moses was born in Heaven on the day he died on Earth.

Haman could not understand this because he was unfamiliar with the soul. He lived on earth like an animal, his entire being focused on earthly pleasures. He was greedy, lustful, power-hungry, envious, etc. Thus, Haman could never understand what it means to live for the soul. He could never understand that the day of Moses’s passing was not a bad day for the Jews but a good day.

From Haman’s perspective, death was the end of the line. As Moses died in Adar, so would the Jews, he thought. But Haman did not realize that only Moses’ body died in Adar. His soul was reborn in Adar. From his soul’s perspective, the seventh of Adar was his birthday. The day his soul returned to Heaven.

Soul In a Body
Abraham told the Hittites he was a foreigner first and a resident second. He did not say, I am a resident and a foreigner. He said I am a foreigner and a resident.

There are two kinds of people. Some are bodies with souls, and others are souls in bodies. The difference is subtle but immense. If you are a body with a soul, your focus is primarily on bodily pursuits and earthly pleasures. Your soul provides you with a spark of life, but your life is devoted to material endeavors. You define yourself as a body.

If you are a soul in a body, you are an entirely different kind of creature. You have no interest in bodily pursuits. You eat and sleep to keep yourself alive, but you don’t live to eat. You don’t salivate over your food, waste time planning a perfect menu, or finding a delectable recipe. You are not interested in traveling the world, seeing the sights, or playing golf in the world’s watering holes. You don’t care for Monte Carlo or the Riviera. These things are temporal and transient. There is nothing immortal about them. Your world is the world of the soul. The world of contemplation and Torah study. The world of kindness and humbleness. The world of integrity and moral character.

Abraham was a foreigner first and a resident second. He was a soul in a body. When you are a soul in a body, the holiness of your body seeps into your soul. When you are a body with a soul, the body resists the soul’s holiness and influence. The body is not inherently holy; it only becomes sacred because it absorbs the holiness of the soul. If it resists the holiness, it remains unholy.

When the body absorbs the soul’s holiness, it remains holy even when the soul departs, and the body dies. Our sages (Talmud, Berachot 18a) compared the human to a Torah scroll. The parchment is like the body, and the letters are like the soul. When the Romans burned the Talmudic sage Rabbi Chananiah Ben Tradyon at the stake, his students asked him what he saw. He replied, “I see parchment burning and letters dancing” (Talmud, Avodah Zara 18A). The parchment dies, and the soul dances on.

The parchment is just a piece of hide; it is not holy. However, when the hide is fashioned into a parchment on which the Torah’s letters are transcribed, the parchment becomes holy—the letters’ holiness seeps into the parchment. If the letters fade and disappear, the parchment is not discarded; it is laid to rest. The same is true of the human body. The holiness seeps into the body when we live as souls in bodies rather than bodies with souls. The body is not discarded when the soul departs and returns to Heaven. Like a Torah scroll, it is regarded as holy and is laid lovingly and with dignity back into the earth from which it came.

Of course, all humans deserve to be buried because it is not up to us to judge the quality of another’s life. Someone might have seemed to live a body-oriented life, but how do we know what went on in their heart of hearts? For all we know, they were ecstatic ethereal souls trapped in corporeal bodies. Thus, we bury everyone. Indeed, when we choose to cremate a loved one, G-d forbid, rather than bury them, we make a terrible statement about the quality of their lives. We would never want to say that about our loved ones.

Just the same, it behooves us each to ask if the holiness of our souls seeps into our bodies. Are we bodies with souls or souls in bodies? This is not a question about how we will die but rather how we live.