Dead Reckoning: May We Endanger the Living to Retrieve the Dead?

Adapted from the writings of Dayan Yitzhak Grossman

February 19, 2026

Israeli president Isaac Herzog recently posted on Twitter/X:

Ran Gvili, our hero, has returned home after 843 days.

Ran, a special forces police officer, went out to battle heroically in order to save lives on October 7th. Finally, Ran has been returned home to his family in Israel.

The entire people of Israel are moved to tears. Our hearts are with his parents, Talik and Itzik, who fought a noble and heroic battle to bring him home. Thank you to all those involved in the operation to bring Ran home. This was an operation of immeasurable importance in fulfilling the sacred obligation to redeem captives.

After many difficult years, for the first time since 2014, there are no Israeli citizens held hostage in Gaza. An entire nation prayed and waited for this moment.

May Ran’s memory be a blessing.

The post does not mention the fact that Gvili was not returned alive. I am not aware of any basis in halacha for considering the “bringing home” of human remains a fulfillment of “the sacred obligation to redeem captives” (pidyon shvuyim). R’ Yaakov Ariel indeed categorically rejects such an idea:

There is no mitzvah of pidyon shvuyim…the duty of pidyon shvuyim as a great mitzvah[1] is applicable only to live captives. There is no obligation to redeem the dead.[2]

In this article and a follow-up, we consider whether there is an obligation to “bring home” the dead, as well as the critical question of how high a price should be paid to accomplish this.

The Gemara teaches that the imperative to bury a meis mitzvah (a dead person who has no one to bury him) is of paramount importance: A nazir or kohein gadol may not become impure via contact with a corpse even to bury his parents, but even someone who is both a nazir and a kohein gadol and encounters a meis mitzvah on the way to shecht his korban Pesach—a mitzvah that carries the penalty of kareis (excision)—must bury him, even though the resultant tum’ah will render him unable to bring the korban. The reason is that “Gadol kvod habriyos (great is human dignity), as it overrides a prohibition in the Torah.”[3]

Is a dead Jew in the hands of non-Jewish enemies a meis mitzvah? If he hasn’t been buried, and the non-Jews are refusing to bury him, he obviously is. But what if he has been or will be buried? Would retrieving him for a proper burial by Jews in kever Yisrael (a Jewish cemetery) be a case of meis mitzvah?

The Acharonim debate whether a kohein may become tamei by burying someone if non-Jews are available to do it.[4] But they are discussing someone who is yet unburied, and the potential justification for a kohein to become impure is in order to have Jews perform the burial. If a Jew is already buried, but not in kever Yisrael, the Chacham Tzvi rules that he may be reinterred, despite the general prohibition against transferring a body to a different grave.[5] He adds that it is a mitzvah, “because the non-Jew wants to plow and plant on top of it, and there is no greater disgrace than this.” But the implication is that absent such a concern, while the transfer would be permitted, it would not be a mitzvah.[6] R’ Tzvi Hirsch Bushka also permits moving the dead from non-Jewish cemeteries to Jewish ones, particularly where there is another pressing reason to do so, but he does not either say that it’s a mitzvah.[7] R’ Moshe Feinstein, however, does assert a general obligation to make such transfers.[8] But I am not aware of anyone who characterizes such a case as a meis mitzvah and allows a kohein to become tamei to rectify it.

Even with respect to a bona fide meis mitzvah, recent and current poskim rule that lives should not be risked for his retrieval. R’ Zalman Nechemiah Goldberg writes:

The burial of a meis mitzvah is a very important mitzvah, and it is permitted to violate any other mitzvah—such as the milah of one’s son and korban Pesach—in order to bury the dead. The reason is that gadol kvod habriyos. Nevertheless, human dignity does not override pikuach nefesh (protecting life), for the entire Torah is overridden due to pikuach nefesh. Therefore, one should certainly not enter a place of danger and the possibility of danger in order to fulfill the mitzvah of burial, even of those who have been killed. All this is clear-cut and beyond any doubt.[9]

(Rav Goldberg’s remarks were published in the Teguvos Vehe’aros section of the journal Hama’ayan in 5764/2004 without any indication of what prompted the note. R’ Yehudah Zoldan says the context was the search for soldiers’ body parts in Gaza’s Philadelphi corridor;[10] I do not know how he knows this, nor the circumstances of the search.)

Rav Ariel, after categorically rejecting the idea that bringing home a body is included in pidyon shvuyim, proceeds to sharply critique the IDF policy of risking soldiers’ lives and allowing chillul Shabbos in order to retrieve the dead. He concedes that one should make every effort to retrieve the bodies of fallen soldiers,

but nevertheless, they cannot be compared to live captives, whom there is a mitzvah to redeem at any price.

…I do not know on what basis they allowed soldiers to be endangered for the purpose of bringing their comrades to burial, or for Shabbos to be desecrated for them. We may similarly wonder about prominent speakers who have declared that the IDF has obliged itself to return a soldier to his family, whether alive or dead. The equating of the dead to the living is not correct. It is certain that lechat’chilah (ab initio) we must do everything in order to bring the dead to kever Yisrael, and we find that a meis mitzvah overrides the sanctity of a kohein gadol and a nazir on Erev Pesach, but we do not find permission to risk human life or to be mechallel Shabbos for the sake of a meis mitzvah…

It appears to me that we have gone too far with regard to the honor of the dead, to the point that we risk the living on their behalf. This is a stringency that brings to leniency, and for this we confess in the Vidui of Rabeinu Nisim…: “Where You are lenient, I was stringent, and where You are stringent, I was lenient.”

He proceeds to suggest that the critical importance of allowing a soldier’s wife to remarry (heter agunah) might justify the living assuming a certain level of risk (e.g., by freeing terrorists in exchange for a soldier’s body in order to verify his death). However, he says, there is no doubt that heter agunah is more important than kever Yisrael, so while some risk to the living might be justifiable for the former goal, it would not be for the latter.[11]

Even paying an excessive monetary cost to enable burial may not be obligatory, as one is generally not required to spend hon rav (a large fortune) on positive mitzvos[12] or on negative ones violated by inaction (sheiv ve’al ta’aseh),[13] per the Gemara’s exhortation that “One who lavishes money should not lavish more than a fifth.”[14] Indeed, the Chavos Ya’ir and others say that one is not obligated to spend all his money to avoid violating a mitzvas lo sa’aseh by inaction, which he is obligated to spend to avoid violating one bekum va’asei (actively). He makes this point in the course of ruling that one is not obligated to pay a non-Jewish ruler an exorbitant sum to release for burial the body of a Jew executed for theft.[15]

R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach writes:

It is obvious that one who finds a meis mitzvah that it is impossible to bury without monetary loss is certainly obligated to spend up to a fifth of his assets in order to bury him. For the burial of a meis mitzvah overrides grave negative and positive mitzvos of the Torah, and a fortiori it is necessary to spend at least a fifth to do so. And this may be derived a fortiori from that which the Rama writes that we are obligated to spend money in order to save graves from non-Jews.[16]^,[17]

R’ Shlomo Zalman’s point here is that one is obligated to spend at least a fifth of his assets to bury a meis mitzvah, but his language implies that there is no clear basis for an obligation to spend more than that, just as there is no obligation to do so to fulfill other mitzvos asei.

In the following article, we will iy”H consider various arguments that have been advanced in favor of risking life to retrieve fallen soldiers.

[1]A reference to the Rambam’s language in Hilchos Matnos Aniyim 8:10.

[2]Be’ahalah Shel Torah cheilek 5, Ma’amarim, siman 7 os 7. He references there his earlier treatment of our topic in Techumin Vol. 25.

[3]Brachos 19b-20a (see Tosfos there s.v. Vela’achoso and s.v. Amarta).

[4]Pachad Yitzchak (Rav Lampronti) os mem s.v. Meis mitzvah eizehu p. 233; Ikarei Dinim Y.D. siman 35 os 6; Shu”t Maharatz Chayes siman 26; and cf. here.

[5]See Shulchan Aruch Y.D. 363:1.

[6]Shu”t Chacham Tzvi siman 50, cited in Pis’chei Teshuvah ibid. s.k. 1.

[7]Shu”t Tiferes Tzvi (Rav Bushka) Y.D. simanim 58-60, cited in Pis’chei Teshuvah ibid.

[8]Shu”t Igros Moshe Y.D. cheilek 3 siman 146. Cf. Shu”t Bemar’ei Habazak cheilek 10 siman 71 os 1.

[9]R’ Zalman Nechemiah Goldberg, Hama’ayan kerech 44 gilyon 4 (Tamuz 5764) p. 76.

[10]R’ Yehudah Zoldan, Hashpalah Vehistaknus Lema’an Kvuras Lochamim.

[11]Be’ahalah Shel Torah ibid.

[12]See Rama to Shulchan Aruch O.C. 656:1 and Mishnah Brurah ibid. s.k. 7-8; Shach Y.D. siman 157 s.k. 3.

[13]See the discussion of this point in Pis’chei Teshuvah Y.D. ibid. s.k. 4.

[14]Ksubos 50a.

[15]Shu”t Chavos Ya’ir siman 139. Cf. R’ Azriel Ariel, Sikun Chaim Lema’an Kvuras Chalalim.

[16]Shulchan Aruch Y.D. 368:1.