An Ethics of Erasure: The Jewish Moral Response to the Dead Body

Ethics is sometimes thought to be narrowly a concern with our treatment of the Other, necessarily a living thing: the neighbor, the loved one, animals, the earth, or God. However Jewish ethics also has a robust understanding of our obligations for the no longer living, for the no-longer-human. Of course Jewish rituals around death and mourning are well known and well studied. What has received less attention is our moral obligations to the dead body itself. By studying the Jewish visual response to the corpse, namely how Jews traditionally (do not) depict and gaze upon the dead, I argue that ultimately it is the ethical agent’s moral responsibility to render the dead body invisible.

In general in ethics it is thought to be morally good to render something visible, to bring injustice or moral heroism to light. Ethicists argue that the Other should be seen in all of their humanity, and that we ought to turn our gaze to the moral problems that trouble us. When one studies the Jewish response to the corpse however, it becomes clear that the tradition has developed into one in which the moral agent is enjoined to turn away from the dead, to not look, to not make a picture of, to bury in the ground as quickly as possible. 

For example, Delphine Horvilleur, a French Rabbi and essayist, writes, in reaction to learning about nineteenth century traditions of photographing the dead body of loved ones that “Jewish tradition prohibits [making images of the dead] altogether. It demands that the face of the departed remain covered: it’s unthinkable to observe a person who cannot look back at you,” (Horvilleur, 144). Other traditional anti-visual responses to the dead in Judaism include the immediate shutting of the eyes and covering of the face of the deceased, the simplicity of the shrouds and coffin, covering the mirrors in mourners’ homes, and the prohibitions on embalming, viewings, and the later reopening of graves. At least some of these anti-visual practices go back to the rabbinic period when the sages instituted a set of bans on ostentatious burials. 

What is the ethical nature of this anti-visual response? The moral concept most at play in Jewish discussions of the dead body is that of kavod hamet, honoring the dead. In guidebooks and other popular literature on death this term is used to explain why Judaism bans embalming and viewings, and other visual encounters with the dead. For example, Anita Diamant, in her popular guide Saying Kaddish: How to Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead, and Mourn as a Jew, states rather harshly that “wakes, open caskets, and viewing the body are Christian burial customs” and that “these practices run counter to the principle of kevod ha-met by turning the body into a thing that is manipulated for the benefit of others,” (Diamant, 61). She encourages her readers to “remember the deceased as a vibrant human being rather than as a dressed up corpse,” (Diamant, 61). But in other traditions, including many denominations of Western Christianity, respect for the dead involves a robust visual economy, from the many depictions of the dead body of Christ, to celebratory wakes that involve viewings of the deceased. Not seeing the dead must be intrinsic to what the dead are and what our duties are to them in Judaism; anti-visuality is not definitional to respecting the dead in general.

One potential answer to the anti-visual nature of our obligations to the Jewish dead body comes from Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. He articulates anti-visual responsibility to the dead body as the obligation to render the corpse invisible through burial. Levinas’ writings discuss how the dead’s family members have a responsibility to the corpse – namely burial– which he specifies as part of the “ethics proper to the family,”  (Levinas, 85). Burial is the key ethical duty to the deceased because of the need to render the dead invisible, no longer able to be seen. The dead body for Levinas is a being who once had consciousness and “is now submitted to matter,” the very thing that as a human she had power over. This state of powerlessness, of nature overpowering humankind, requires that “the one who had been conscious must be rendered invisible,” (Levinas, 85).   

By studying the ontology of the dead body in Jewish texts and rituals, one can begin to understand why, as a no longer human being, the corpse demands to be erased, to be rendered invisible. In Jewish texts and ritual practice the dead body is seen as a liminal being, one that can still experience shame and disgrace, and one that is still made in the image of God. The soul is still present, hovering above the body, vulnerable to the eyes of the living. This understanding of the corpse constructs a particular sense of honor and of disgrace, creating the need for the body’s own erasure in order for it to be treated respectfully. If usually in Western ethics rendering something visible is a way of showing honor, attention, and moral concern, the opposite is the case with the Jewish corpse. As a liminal, no-longer-human being the Jewish corpse morally demands to be erased, buried in the ground, no longer available to be gazed upon by the living.