Question: Why is a watchman (Shomer) required to remain with the deceased prior to burial?

Answer: Thank you for your question. The Talmud instructs us to guard the body of a deceased person prior to burial as a protection against animals or other desecration. Accordingly, one could argue that in the absence of any concern for desecration a guard would not be necessary.

However, Kabbalistic sources make much of the need to protect the deceased’s body against negative spiritual forces. According to the Kabbalistic reasons a Shomer would be needed regardless of circumstances. The living human body, partnered with the soul, is a vehicle for doing good deeds in the physical world. After the soul departs, the body can no longer perform good deeds or serve G-d and man. A lifeless body in the physical world, devoid of the potential for positive, is vulnerable to ‘negative spiritual forces’. This vulnerability to negative spiritual forces is mirrored in the physical world by the attraction of flies and other animals to corpses. As such, the reasons given by the Talmud and the Kabbalah are essentially two perspectives of the same phenomenon. The human body prior to reaching its final resting place is ‘in a bad place’ – it exists in a world in which it cannot accomplish any good.

Wishing you well,
Moshe Becker