המתים והחיים בברכות יח עמ׳ א – כ עמ׳ א

Raḥava said that Rav Yehuda said: One who sees the deceased taken to burial and does not escort him has committed a transgression due to the verse: “He who mocks the poor blasphemes his Creator.” (Proverbs 17:5) And if he does escort him, what is his reward? Rav Asi said: The verse says about him: “He who gives to the poor gives a loan to the Lord, and the Lord will repay him” (Proverbs 19:17), and: “He who oppresses the poor blasphemes his Creator, but he who is gracious to the poor honors Him” (Proverbs 14:31). The Gemara relates that Rabbi Ḥiyya and Rabbi Yonatan were walking in a cemetery and the sky-blue string of Rabbi Yonatan’s ritual fringes was cast to the ground and dragging across the graves. Rabbi Ḥiyya said to him: Lift it, so the dead will not say: Tomorrow, when their day comes, they will come to be buried with us, and now they are insulting us.

(5) since the living know they will die. But the dead know nothing; they have no more recompense, for even the memory of them has died.

(22) He feels only the pain of his flesh, And his spirit mourns in him.

Rabbi Yonatan said to him: Do the dead know so much? Isn’t it stated: “And the dead know nothing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5)? Rabbi Ḥiyya said to him: If you read the verse, you did not read it a second time, and if you read it a second time, you did not read it a third time, and if you read it a third time, they did not explain it to you properly. The meaning of the verse: “For the living know that they will die, and the dead know nothing and have no more reward, for their memory has been forgotten” (Ecclesiastes 9:5): For the living know that they will die, these are the righteous, who even in their death are called living. An allusion to this is as it is stated: “And Benayahu, son of Yehoyada, son of a valiant man of Kabze’el, who had done mighty deeds, he smote the two altar-hearths of Moab; he went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow” (II Samuel 23:20).

In contrast to the righteous, who are referred to as living even after their death, the verse states explicitly: “The dead know nothing.” These are the wicked, who even during their lives are called dead, as the prophet Ezekiel said in reference to a king of Israel who was alive: “And you are a slain, wicked prince of Israel” (Ezekiel 21:30). And if you wish, say instead that the proof is from here: “At the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses the dead shall be put to death” (Deuteronomy 17:6). This is puzzling. As long as the accused has not been sentenced to death, he is alive. Rather, this person who is wicked is considered dead from the outset. The Gemara relates a story on this topic: The sons of Rabbi Ḥiyya went out to the villages to oversee the laborers. They forgot what they had learned and were struggling to recall it. One of them said to the other: Does our deceased father know of our anguish? The other said to him: From where would he know? Isn’t it written: “His sons are honored yet he shall not know it, they come to sorrow and he shall not understand them” (Job 14:21)? The dead do not know. The other said back to him: And do the dead truly not know? Isn’t it written: “Only in his flesh does he feel pain, in his soul does he mourn” (Job 14:22)? Based on this verse Rabbi Yitzḥak said: Gnawing maggots are as excruciating to the dead as the stab of a needle to the flesh of the living. The dead must have the capacity to feel and know. In order to reconcile this contradiction they said: They know of their own pain but do not know of the pain of others.

The Gemara cites an additional proof from a baraita. Come and hear what was said in the Torah with regard to the Nazirite: “He shall not become impure for his father or his mother or his brother or his sister in their death, for the crown of his God is on his head” (Numbers 6:7). Since it was already written with regard to the Nazirite: “He shall not come upon a dead body” (Numbers 6:6), why is it necessary to elaborate and specify his parents and siblings? The Sages derived through halakhic midrash that each of these relationships come to teach a specific nuance of the law. They learned: To what purpose did the verse state: And his sister? To teach that one who was going to slaughter his Paschal lamb and to circumcise his son, both of which are positive mitzvot that if he fails to fulfill them, he is punished with karet, and he heard that a relative of his died, I might have thought that he should return and become ritually impure with the impurity imparted by a corpse. You said: “He shall not become impure”; the death of his relative will not override so significant a mitzva from the Torah. I might have thought: Just as he does not become impure for his relatives, so he does not become impure for a corpse with no one to bury it [met mitzva]. The verse states: “And his sister”; he may not become impure for his sister, as someone else can attend to her burial, but he does become impure for a met mitzva. Here too, the question is asked: Let us say that the obligation to bury a met mitzva, which is predicated on the preservation of human dignity, should not override mitzvot explicitly written in the Torah, as it is stated: “There is neither wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord.” The Gemara answers: There it is different, as it is explicitly written: “And his sister,” from which we derive that although he may not become ritually impure to bury his sister, he must do so for a met mitzva. The Gemara suggests: Let us derive a general principle that human dignity takes precedence over all mitzvot in the Torah from this case. This possibility is rejected: This is a special case, because a case of “sit and refrain from action” [shev ve’al ta’aseh] is different. Engaging in the burial of a met mitzva is not actually in contravention of a mitzva. Rather, by doing so he becomes ritually impure and is then rendered incapable of fulfilling that mitzva. We cannot derive a general principle from here that human dignity would also override a Torah prohibition in a case where that prohibition is directly contravened.