Parashat Naso II: The Nazirite: Good or Bad?

This week’s parsha includes the laws of the nazir, the nazirite (Num 6:1-21). The nazir is a person who voluntarily takes upon himself or herself certain life restrictions for a prescribed period of time. There are three such restrictions: 1) no eating or drinking of wine or any grape product (including raisins!); 2) no cutting of one’s hair; and 3) no contact with a dead body.

These restrictions imply a special level of purity (like that of the priest), and also a certain removal from society with all its attendant pleasures and social contacts (even with the dead). The free growing of one’s hair may be part of this removal from society; the Torah describes the resulting hair as pera, “wild” and unkempt, possibly rendering the wearer unfit for proper social company. Indeed, this separation from society is one of the ways the nazir differed from the priest; the priest kept himself holy in order to serve as a vehicle for the people to access God. The nazir kept himself pure in order to fulfill his own idiosyncratic religious inclinations. (See Jacob Milgrom’s JPS commentary to Numbers, Excursus 11, for more on this idea).

Nehama Leibowitz cites a long history of debate over whether such voluntary asceticism is a good thing. She first points to the Torah itself. On the one hand, the Torah calls this person kadosh, holy. On the other hand, when he is finished with his prescribed period of consecration, he brings a sin-offering, implying that there is something sinful about his actions.

As Professor Leibowitz points out, this biblical ambivalence is played out in the Talmud (Ta’anit 11a) as a debate. Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar says that anyone who, like the nazir, purposefully does not take part in something allowable and pleasurable in this world, is considered a sinner. On the other hand, Rabbi Elazar says that anyone who, like the nazir, takes upon himself any additional restriction in life is considered kadosh, holy.

Finally, Professor Leibowitz points out that the medievals continued the debate. Maimonides, advocating the golden middle road, considers the nazir too extreme. One should not stop drinking altogether; one should simply drink in moderation. Nachmanides, on the other hand, sees the nazir’s actions as essentially laudatory; in fact, he claims that the nazir brings the sin-offering at the conclusion of his prescribed period because it is a sin for him to return to his normal state after his period of holiness.

What do we make of this debate? Elu ve’elu divrei elohim hayim, “These and these are the words of the living God.” Both points of view must have some truth to them. There is value to a person’s intense desire to serve God in an extra rigorous and ascetic fashion, but it is also dangerous and certainly not the way to run a society. Perhaps that is why the Torah suggests that the nazir , as an individual, take on these restrictions for a prescribed period of time. This type of behavior is good, but it is not for everyone and not for all the time; it must be contained in time and person.

A Note on the Haftarah:

The haftarah deals with another nazir, Samson (Judges 13). Samson was not a temporary nazir, but a life-long nazir from the time of his conception. His final downfall comes when a woman he falls in love with, Delilah, reveals to the Philistines that the secret to his physical strength is his uncut hair. It is significant that his downfall comes from a woman. He is portrayed throughout these narratives as being in constant pursuit of women. One wonders whether this sexual appetite is connected in some way to his status as a nazir. Perhaps the nazirite restrictions caused an imbalance in him so that his other appetites grew stronger and less controllable. In some ways, his sexual life seems like his hair, wild and uncontrolled. Perhaps it was not the feeling of restrictiveness that led him in that direction but the feeling of unrestrictiveness with regard to his hair, the lack of adherence to societal norms. Either way, the parsha’s suggestion that such nazirite practices should be restricted to a short period of time seems in some ways to be an attempt to prevent exactly the kind of excessive behavior seen in Samson.