This week''s parsha opens with the injunction to the Kohanim/priests, “Let none defile himself for a dead person among his people.” Contact with the dead renders the priests impure and unable to serve in the Temple. Although we have no Temple service today, the tradition remains of Kohanim separating themselves from death. And its quite remarkable that this tradition has endured so. I think of my father, Gary Kaplan (the name Kaplan being one of the most well-known of priestly names, connected to the German word ''chaplain'' or priest.) My father is highly Jewishly involved. He stands as the best of cultural Judaism, passionate about and supporting synagogues, JCCs and Jewish life. And yet when it comes to the actual observance of Jewish law...well, its simply not where he connects. Except, that is, when it comes to this tradition of the Kohain distancing himself from death. Though otherwise unobservant, he “religiously” stands outside the cemetary gate at every funeral. And its not just him. How many times have I seen him and the other kohanim in the community congregate together at the cemetary entrance, quietly conversing with eachother while everyone else enters. Remarkably this is one of the few vestiges of observance that many of these men maintain. Why has this law so endured? While there is no clear-cut answer to such a query, I do see an interesting parallel. Just as the priest is separated out from the rest of the people, and just as the priest separates himself from death, this very act of observance has been separated out, upheld and kept even while the larger body of Jewish law may not be. It is as if these kohanim at the gate stand as human symbols of something much larger. Their stance of removal is an embodiment of the necessity of making separations. Indeed, the Hebrew word for holy, kadosh, means that which is set aside, dedicated, separated. The High Priest himself wore a silver plate on his forehead that read, “Kodesh l''Hashem”, holy/separated for God. Even in the face of rising tides of assimilation, this ancient tradition of the kohanim separating themselves holds firm. Outside the Gate I remember from my youth Erwin Cohen in his charcoal mourning suit Shvitzing something epic on the melting asphalt of Rozelle Street There in the far reaches of South Memphis where the cemetary chapel sat doleful as a rector reciting Psalms in a foreign tongue that no one understood and no one hummed along And yet knee-deep in the symbolic soot of Rozelle Street Erwin Cohen stood - outside the gates - and greeted each approaching face with moist eyes and buried smile And somehow amidst all that anguish of August scorch and human loss he made eye-contact with each individual in each advancing car Greeted us all muted and gracious with this single tenacious enactment of a priestly rite A rite that refused to be left behind and lost in the wash of assimilation there in the marsh of an increasingly uninterested generation of Southern Jews And yet Erwin stood pious and plaintive solid as a statue of a statute that refused to be eradicated despite time and distance set adrift, unaffiliated endangered with disinterest A human-symbol of separation between sacred and profane between life and lifelessness between cohort and cohain A meager reminder of something meaningful buried deep in the dirt of Post-Holocaust nearly lost to us all An inheritance brought to life at the brink of death where the priestly caste stands intact in Erwin Cohen''s wilted stance of black-suit sack-cloth and sweat In spite of the numbing haze of tradition lost but for DNA the priests of our people shvitz something epic outside the gate a human symbol of an obstinant and enduring faith
(photo credit: The Jerusalem Post)