Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim: Like and Likeness

The double portion of Achrei-Mot-Kedoshim is found near the very center of the Torah. Appropriate to its centrality, it deals with issues of literal life and death, including boundaries around sexuality, the annual collective cleansing rites enacted at Yom Kippur and the sacredness of blood itself.

When Achrei Mot tells us that the life force of a creature resides in its blood (Leviticus 17:11, 14), it is reiterating a concept introduced near the very beginning of the Torah. Leaving the ark, Noah and his family are instructed that they may eat meat, but they must take great care with the blood. Moreover, anyone who spills human blood, whether man or beast, will have their own blood spilled in turn. Why? “For the human being is made in the image of God.” (Genesis 9:4-6)

This same idea, that humans are special because of our likeness to God, pervades the Torah portion of Kedoshim. It opens with the famous line: “Be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) Later, we are told: “Sanctify yourselves and be holy, for … I, the Lord, am that which makes you holy.” (Leviticus 20:7-8) And still later, we are invited to “be My holy ones, for I the Lord am holy.” (Leviticus 20:26)

These declarations are intertwined with instructions about ritual and social behavior, so we might think our holiness is dependent upon our actions. But on a deeper level, Judaism considers the sanctity of the human being to be inalienable, precisely because of our likeness to the divine. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the strict instructions regarding the treatment of the body in death.

In his classic instruction manual The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning, Rabbi Norman Lamm compares the body of a deceased person to that of a Torah scroll no longer fit for ritual use: “It is revered for the exalted function it once filled. Man was created in the image of God and, although the pulse of life is no more, the human form must be respected for having once embodied the spirit of God, and for the character and personality it housed.”

The sanctity that inheres in the body even after death gives rise to requirements for its careful tending: It is treated gently and respectfully, ritually washed, clothed and prayed over, and ideally accompanied by living guardians from the time of death through burial. Any blood released before, during or after death should also be interred with the body, since, as we have seen, blood is the anchor of the spirit. Because of regard for the body, performing autopsies is undesirable, and there is debate about donating organs unless we are certain they will preserve another life. Lamm remarks: “As he was born, so does the deceased deserve to be laid to rest: tenderly and lovingly, not scientifically and dispassionately, as though he were an impersonal object of some experiment. The holiness of the human being demands that we do not tamper with his person.”

This is also why Judaism traditionally rejects cremation or any other wilful destruction of the body. Rather, it should be laid to rest and allowed to decompose gently in the ground. Deuteronomy states explicitly that even an executed criminal must be buried that same day, and that exposing the corpse would be “a curse upon God.” (Deuteronomy 21:23) Discussing this strange phrase, the Talmud offers a striking parable of two identical twin brothers, one of whom became king and one of whom was hanged for robbery. Were the corpse to be exposed, whoever saw it would say, “The king is hanging!” (Sanhedrin 46b) This, Rashi explains, is what it means to be made in the image of God. However we treat our own reflects directly on our creator. 

When someone dies, it is as if the image of God itself has been diminished. There are some that say that this is why we cover the mirrors in the shiva house: one image of God has been removed from the world, and we symbolically recognize and enact this diminution by hiding our own images too.

This article initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Reading Torah Through Grief newsletter on May 10, 2025. To sign up to receive this newsletter each week in your inbox, click here.

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