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Can a Cohen Visit the Bodies Exhibit or is Tumah: Ritual Impurity a concern?

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I asked my Rabbi about this a while ago, and he agreed with me that it's assur for anyone, Cohen or Yisroel, to go to the Bodies Exhibit (other than medical students). The exhibit displays desecrated human bodies, and it would be assur to go be entertained by it. If a Cohen is a medical student, then for pikuach nefesh he (along with any other medical student) would be allowed to go, but only for the purpose of studying the bodies, not just to see "art" or be "entertained".

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  • Who said a Cohen can be a medical student?
    – Curiouser
    Jul 8, 2011 at 19:07
  • Medical students spend a fortune in tuition, and one of the things that money goes to is cadavers they get to dissect themselves. I don't expect that there'd be much additional benefit to observing one of these necro-entertainment exhibitions.
    – Isaac Moses ♦
    Jul 8, 2011 at 19:08
  • I can see the exhibit being beneficial for a medical students as it could help them to visualize the entire human body, including parts they normally wouldn't dissect, in three dimensions and in positions they wouldn't normally see a cadaver in.
    – zaq
    Jul 8, 2011 at 19:37
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I believe that one could assume that the bodies are of non jewish, meaning it has no tuma

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    Who said non-Jewish bodies don't have tumah? See Shulchan Aruch YD 372:2
    – Double AA ♦
    Dec 25, 2011 at 2:39
  • IIRC its still metame binegia just not beohel. Even then, the Shulchan Aruch writes that a cohen should not walk over non-Jewish graves; there's a chashash that even being ma'ahil is an issue
    – Baal Shemot Tovot
    Mar 29, 2012 at 2:46

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