In this week’s Torah portion, we come across the holy Pinchas. Despite being a male descendant of Aaron, Pinchas was not supposed to become a kohen, priest. Because of his great zealousness in upholding G-d’s honor, he was rewarded with the gift of kehunah, priesthood.
Being a kohen is a great privilege. Along with the privilege of kehunah comes a few restrictions that are meant to safeguard its holiness. The restriction that is most relevant to our discussion is the law that kohanim, members of the priestly tribe, are not allowed any form of contact with a corpse, which causes ritual impurity. The kohen need not physically touch the corpse to become defiled. Merely being under the same roof as a corpse is enough to contaminate a kohen. It is for this reason that many kohanim have the practice not to fly on the same airplane as a casket.
This makes for a fantastic story:
There was once a kohen, A, who wished to fly from Kennedy Airport in New York to Israel. The problem was that there was a casket being transported to Israel on the same airplane. So what did he do? He decided to wrap himself up in hard plastic from head to toe so that he would be under a different roof than the corpse.
A’s two friends wrapped him up and put him on a stretcher. They began walking toward passport control. The Israeli security officer began to question the pair.
“What’s in your luggage?”
“My friend!”
“Did you wrap him yourself?”
“Of course I did! My friend can’t even carry a tune. Do you think he could be a WRAPPER?”
“Did your friend always look so strange?”
“No. This is a brand-new look. He just recently had PLASTIC SURGERY!”
“Do you mind if I open your friend/luggage to look inside?”
“Why would you need to open him up- to see him? He’s a CLEAR CUT TYPE OF GUY. WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET!”
“All right, I will let you move on to the conveyor belt and the X-ray machine. GOOD LUCK GETTING HIS SHOES OFF!”
By Yankel Moskowitz
