Pemikiran Yahudi Imamat 21:5: Sefer Yesodei HaTorah

And in order to impress upon the people their being holy and a chosen people, the Torah states (Devarim 14:1-2) "Children are you to the L-rd your G-d. Do not lacerate yourselves and do not make baldness between your eyes (i.e., adjoining the forehead) for the dead. For you are a holy people to the L-rd your G-d", (Vayikra 19:27-28) "You shall not round off the corners of your head, and a cutting for a (dead) person you shall not make in your flesh." Now aside from the injury and the pain to the body resulting from these actions they render a person prone to short-temperedness and wrongdoing and distance him from the trait of patience which invests us with life and peace and rescues us from all sin. And it again commanded the Cohanim specifically against this, (viz. (Ibid. 21:5-6) "They shall not make a baldness upon their heads, and the corner of their beards they shall not shave off (with a razor), and in their flesh they shall not make any cutting. Holy shall they be to their G-d." And it added for them that they were not to render themselves unclean (tamei) for their (dead) kin, adding for the high-priest that he is not to render himself tamei even for his father or his mother. All this, so that the holiness of the Cohanim be especially impressed upon them and upon all of the people. Now see and understand that the Torah greatly loved the trait of compassion and kindness which produces fruit, which leads one man to help and benefit another; and it does not love that compassion which has no fruit ("pri"), but only "flowers" ("p'rachim"), the kind which moves a man to cry profusely over the dead one and to lacerate himself and make himself bald over him. For this is not a positive trait at all, but a deficiency of intellect and of belief in the L-rd. The will of the Torah was that all of the people be strong in their belief in the L-rd, and the Cohanim more than all the people, and the high-priest more than all the Cohanim.