What a Difference!
From time to time, we hear some statement having to do with the value of the human body. Our bodies are made up of 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen, 3% nitrogen, 1.5% calcium, 1% phosphorous, and much smaller amounts of potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, magnesium, iron, and iodine, and even smaller trace amounts of fluorine, silicon, manganese, zinc, copper, aluminum, and arsenic, . Together, all of the chemical elements in the body amount to less than one dollar’s worth! Add to that what is considered our most valuable asset - skin, of which we have about 14 to 18 square feet, and which is valued (based on the cost of cowhide) at about $3.50. That’s it. Our bodies are worth a little more than 20 shekel. And that’s before decomposition sets in.

And what about the value of our souls? Our minds? Our lives?

Ah, that’s just the point. The value of a living and breathing person is impossible to calculate, but we do know that it is... how to put it - immeasurably great? Infinite? Especially if we were to factor in one’s potential. The point is that there is probably nothing in the human experience that is as far apart than the value of the human body with a soul contrasted to the $4.50 body without one. And there is nothing that bring home to us this point more sharply than TUM’AT MEIT, thew ritual impurity of a dead body and that which is contracted from a dead body, by touch and even by being under the same roof.

Eggshells and orange peels are not worth as much as eggs and oranges, but when the egg and orange are removed from their containers, the containers are merely discarded (and sometimes are even of value).
The human body could have been the same. When a soul leaves a body, i.e. when a person dies, the physical container of that soul could merely be buried without the concomitant TUM’A and all the halachic details involved.
But with a state of Impurity comes a realization again and again of the infinite value of Life, especially of Jewish Life with its life-long challenge to become holy. To Jewish Life with its life-long involvement with Torah and Mitzvot. To its life-long commitment to raising a new generation in the Torah Values and observance that give our lives their infinite quality.

This is one of the messages of Parshat Para. Listen well.