One practical effect of attaching defilement to a dead body, and to all that touched it, etc., would be to ensure early burial, and to correct a pr…

This law was indeed a yoke of bondage which our fathers were not able to bear. It was meant to teach us how easily we can be defiled. Anywhere they…

And every open vessel
An earthen one, as the Targum of Jonathan; and so Jarchi interprets it; and Maimonides ^F1…

Why did the law make a corpse a defiling thing? Because death is the wages of sin, which entered the world through sin, and reigns by its power. Th…