(The Chachomim)
established the blessing of "HaTov v'haMaitiv" ("He who is good
and does good to all") in Birchas haMazon, in response to those killed in
Beitar (whose bodies did not decompose and who were eventually brought to
burial.
The Anaf Yosef quotes the Tzlach who asks given that the
bodies did not decompose what was the necessity of burial, since it is the
decomposition which is the embarrassment for the body? His response is that
burial is needed for the "nefesh" allowing the spirit to cleave to
G-d. The Mekubalim explain that while each person's body is individual, his
spirit is a fragment of a unified G-dly whole. That the body does not compose
is Tov, good, but the good is confined to the individual; that the nefesh via
burial can rejoin with the entirety of the G-dly whole, is Maitiv, it does good
for the klal, for the community of Yisrael.
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