A question arose during our shiur:
A Cohen\Nazir happens upon a Jewish corpse and no other Jew in hailing distance, only goyim. Can the Cohen\Nazir ask the goyim to bury the corpse and avoid tumah? What is the halacha and the source for this?
Kol tov,
Jeremy Kanzen / London
The Shulchan Aruch (YD 374:3) says that if there are no other Jews in hailing distance, then the Kohen must bury the body himself. This would suggest that non-Jews cannot be used to do the burial. The Gemara in Beitzah (22a), however, tells us that it is possible to perform the Miztvah of Kevurah using non-Jews. Rava, there, says that if one dies on the first day of Yom Tov he should be buried by non-Jews. Therefore, it would seem that if there are non-Jews nearby that are willing to do the burial, then the Kohen could ask them to do so.
I think the resolution to this contradiction is provided by the Rema (ibid.). He says that the Kohen is not obligated to hire people to do the burial (e.g. there are Jews around but they refuse to work for free) and can be Metamei himself to do the Kevurah. The assumption in the Shulchan Aruch is that non-Jews, who have no Mitzvah to do the burial, will demand to be paid for their services, therefore we are only concerned with whether there are Jews - who are obligated to do it for free - in hailing distance. But certainly if the Kohen wants to hire the non-Jew to do the Kevurah, he is permitted to do so.
Kol Tuv,
Yonasan Sigler
This is not a Psak Halachah.
If the nonJew CAN do the kevurah, should not the kohen be obligated to spend all his money to prevent being oveir on a lo sa'aseh (of tum'as kohen)?
Gershon
An excellent question. One answer is that in the case of a Mes Mitzvah, the Isur Tum'ah is non-existent (Hutrah) and therefore there is no reason for him to spend his money for someone else to do the Kevurah.
Another possible answer is that the Torah only places the obligation of Mes Mitzvah on the body of the person that finds the Mes, but not on his money. In other words, the Mitzvah of burying the person remains a Mitzvah on him even though the possibility exists of having the Mitzvah performed with his money, and therefore the Mitzvah pushes off the Isur Tum'ah. The only time he would have to spend his own money to do the burial is if it were impossible to bury him otherwise.
See the Minchas Shlomo (Vol. I, Chap. 7) for an extensive discussion of your question. Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach derives a very important Halachah from this Din of the Rema: if a person is faced with a situation of Piku'ach Nefesh on Shabbos and he could avoid being Mechalel Shabbos by using his money (for example: he could pay a non-Jew to drive a very sick person to the hospital or he could drive him himself), he is not obligated to spend his money and he could drive him himself (see Shemiras Shabbos k'Hilchasah 32:65,74). Again the only time he is obligated to spend his money for Piku'ach Nefesh is if it is impossible to save the person otherwise.*
Kol Tuv,
Yonasan Sigler
This, of course, is not a Psak Halachah.