Question:
The following question has been asked by a chaplain:
"Under the present law, when a veteran in a Veterans' Administration Hospital is operated on, the part of the body that is removed has to be cremated. The question is whether or not historic Jewish tradition calls for burial in a Jewish cemetery of the parts which are removed through surgical operation."
Answer:
It is the well established procedure from ancient times that parts removed from a body of a living person should be buried. In the Babylonian Talmud (b. Kethuvoth 20b) in speaking of a cemetery, Rabbi Hanina says: "There the diseased limbs (which have been cut off) are buried". In other words, even in Talmudic times it was taken as an established procedure. The reason for the burial of limbs taken from a living person is not identical with the reason for the burial of the body of the dead. The body of the dead must be buried either out of respect for the dead (mishum bizayon) or because burial in the ground is considered atonement (kapparah). Neither of these two motivations is the reason for the universal custom of the burial of limbs from the living. The reason in this regard is the ritual uncleanness which is brought about by contact with a dead body. The law is clear that contact with a limb from a living person is a source of ritual uncleanness just as much as a dead body would be. This law goes back to the Mishnah (Eduyoth VI No. 3) and is clearly stated by Maimonides ("Yad" Hilchoth Tumath Ha-Meth II No. 3): "The limb cut from a living man is as unclean as a whole corpse."
It should be stated that these laws of uncleanness apply nowadays only to the contact of priests with dead bodies or parts of dead bodies. They do not apply to contact of non-priests with dead bodies, inasmuch as all the laws of uncleancontact apply only to the Temple in Jerusalem (See Maimonides, Yad, Hilchoth Tumath Ochlin XVI, 8.) and are still kept applicable to priests.
While there has been the custom to bury amputated limbs, there is no law that the specific mode of disposal be burial and not (for example) burning. With regard to the body of the dead the law requires burial as a specific mode of disposal, since the earth provides atonement (or as an alternate explanation, it is a disgrace to the dead to remain unburied). But as to amputated limbs of the living, neither "atonement" nor "disgrace" apply. See Jacob Reischer (Shevuth Yakov II, 10.) who specifically makes this point, and also Ezekiel Landau (in Noda Bi'Yehuda II Y.D..#209). Jacob Reischer therefore concludes that since burial as such is not mandatory, one may simply put the limb away in a room where priests are not likely to come into contact with it.
Jewish law therefore does not specifically require burial of amputated limbs. If, of course, the patient or his family prefer to have the limb buried, the law has no objection to it, and indeed this has been the custom. But the law requires merely disposal of it so that no priest be defiled by contact with it. If it is the procedure of the hospital to burn the limbs, Jewish law has no objection to the procedure.