The prescribed purification process for contact with the dead is the paradigm of the mysterious class of torah laws called Chukim. The sages connect this process to Job's lamenting of man's mortality, and state that Job denied the resurrection of the dead. In perhaps our deepest and most wide-ranging discussion to date we posit that the essentially human tendency to view death as tragic paradoxically point to our eternal essence. Along the way we discuss the distinction between grass and trees as symbols of life, and conclude by suggesting that the human connection to the good paradoxically necessitates inscrutable laws in an imperfect world.
