In this week’s sedrah, the Torah describes the person who chooses that special path in the service of Hashem: If a man is yafli, to take upon himself the vow of a nazir, of separation (Bamidbar 6:2). That’s what the word nazir means, to separate, as in Vayikra 22:2.
And for what purpose was this separation? He takes a vow of separation in order to separate himself for Hashem. It means he separates himself from the usual behavior of those around him in order to be dedicated to the service of Hashem.
Now we have to study that for a moment because actually in the Torah there’s no mention of any especial service of a nazir; nothing is stipulated here what he has to do to serve Hashem. A nazir lived a normal life. He wasn’t a monk who went out to hide in the caves in the wilderness. He lived in society; he worked. He was married – everybody was married – and so he had to provide for his family.
The Homebound Nazir
But still the nazir restrictions kept him aloof. First of all, he had to beware always of coming in contact with certain kinds of tumah, certain kinds of impurity that would cause him to profane his nezirus, and so he couldn’t go to funerals or to cemeteries. He had to be careful not to go into a home or a building where there was a dead body, and so on.
Also, because he was forbidden from drinking wine, so going to weddings was a problem, of course, because they were pouring wine there in abundance. After all, the halacha is that we tell a nazir, “Go around, make detours, don’t come close to a vineyard”. It means that when the nazir is traveling on the road, he’s told that he shouldn’t even pass by a vineyard; he has to take a devious, roundabout route in order avoid the vineyard. And so to a place where they’re pouring wine in abundance, surely he can’t go.
But even to eat regular meals with chaveirim was a problem because wine was the staple drink in those days. The water wasn’t so safe to drink, but the wine, because it was sterilized by the alcohol, was more safe from germs, and so everybody drank wine at their meals. And therefore all of these seudos were off limits to him.
It means that a nazir couldn’t be convivial; he couldn’t associate too much with people. And so whatever a nazir was – there’s no mention of any special avodah he undertook – more than anything else he was separating himself from the people around him.
Time for G-d
Of course, it doesn’t mean that’s everything. Just to be a hermit, a recluse, that’s nothing. It’s like the man who wanted to be like the Vilna Gaon; the Vilna Gaon used to go into a room alone and close the shades and learn all day. But this man, he would close the shades and then fall asleep. No, that’s not it.
We understand that the nazir, because of his circumstances, he is forced to remain aloof from the rest of the people, and he was therefore able to find more time which he devoted to meditating in the Torah. Also more tefillah too – he prayed to Hakadosh Baruch Hu longer than others did. He had time to contemplate, to reflect, to think about Hashem, to ponder the verities of life.
And yet even though all that is true – and much more – the one thing we see in the pessukim is that the nazir was separating himself from the crowd; lifting himself up from the humdrum, above the way of life of his fellow Jews. He wanted to become better.
Separating From the Best
Now we have to realize that when a man or woman in those days lifted themselves from the people, they weren’t separating from a crowd of agnostics, chas v’shalom. They weren’t separating from people who were disloyal. In those days, the entire Jewish people kept the Torah. Everybody ate kosher. Everybody kept Shabbos. Every Jew in those days had a fiery patriotism burning in his heart; they were proud of their nation. Halevei oif unz gezogt! And even the Jews who weren’t as careful as others – the amei haaretz – they were all proud of their Torah. It was their constitution; they had no other code of laws except the Torah.
Now, there may have been some who were ignorant of some halachos. They maybe didn’t know all the shevusim d’Rabanon in Shabbos. They didn’t know all the halachos of borer on Shabbos maybe; but they were all Jews who practiced the Torah with mesiras nefesh. And therefore, when a nazir separated, he wasn’t separating from a low multitude. He was separating from what today would be a very good public, people who would be admired today.
And yet, when a man separates in order to become better, Hakadosh Baruch Hu approves of him. After all, it takes a person of remarkable character, remarkable drive, to be better. To lift yourself beyond the normal Orthodox living was especially favored by Hashem.
The Natural Crown
How favored was he? As a result of this, the nazir was given a special mark of honor – a big shock of hair on his head. Everyone knows that the nazir was forbidden from cutting his hair.
Now, one of the reasons for that was the element of not following the fashions of the times. Because cutting the hair in a certain way is always done by people who are dandies, people who are fastidious about their appearance and want to make an impression. And so the nazir, in order to lift himself up above those more base attitudes, he cannot do anything to his hair. He can’t cut anything. He can’t even pull out a hair from his head. And so his hair grew. And it was not styled or coifed; it just fell down over his shoulders any which way and it served therefore as an antidote to the yetzer hara of ostentation, of following the ways of the world.
But actually that’s not the most important element; in the matter of not cutting the hair the primary purpose is to give him a crown: The crown of Hashem is on his head (ibid. 6:7). The word nazir and the word nezer are both the same; both words are related because the nazir has to know that he’s wearing the crown of Hashem on his head. The long hair falling down over his shoulders was intended as a diadem to demonstrate that he was chosen, especially beloved by Hashem.
Hashem’s Prince
Hakadosh Baruch Hu crowns him in order to demonstrate His approval of people who want to get ahead of themselves. People who don’t want to remain in a rut and instead they try to lift themselves out of their ordinary routine, their ordinary environment, and they seek to do things that other people would not do.
You’re going to devote yourself to that program for thirty days? For a year? A lifetime? Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, “I consider the hair growing on your head as a crown that demonstrates that you are close to Me. Anybody who is willing to separate from the ways of the world and come closer to Me, that’s My special child. “
Now, we must understand that this principle of wearing the crown of nezirus, was intended as a model for our nation. Because even if one isn’t actually going to accept upon himself all the restrictions of nezirus – you can’t do it today anyhow because you cannot bring your korban nezirus; so don’t think of trying it today – but the ideal of why a person would choose that, of what might inspire him to do that, was intended for everyone. And I want to take a few minutes now to explain that.
The Opposite of Nazir
The Gemara (Sotah 2a) says, Why was the parsha of nazir placed right after to the parsha of the sotah? In the Torah, immediately preceding the nazir, the Chumash tells us about a woman whose husband warned her not to go into any private places with a certain man and then she did it anyhow; she went someplace with that man and now her husband suspects her of doing an aveirah. It’s the opposite of a nazir’s crown; we’re talking now about a woman whose crown of glory is removed from her and she is disgraced in public.
What would they do? It was a big procedure. She was forced to come to Yerushalayim, into the courtyard of the Beis Hamikdosh, where the Sanhedrin Hagedolah was sitting and she had to go through a humiliating ceremony. She had to drink a certain water in which they erased a megillah.
They wrote a megillas sotah, in which a curse with the name of Hashem was inscribed, and that ink was dissolved in the water and she was supposed to drink it.
And then if she was guilty, it would happen a miracle to her and she would be smitten with an illness immediately – a miraculous punishment. And if she’s innocent, she would survive. It wasn’t like the Church’s “trial by water”, where a person needed a miracle to survive. Just the opposite – the sotah procedure meant that there was nothing that would convict her except a miracle. But the ordeal of going through such a test was a great disgrace; and it was something she brought upon herself by means of her promiscuous behavior.
Connecting the Dots
Now, our Sages made note of the fact that this parsha of the nazir who crowns himself by going above and beyond, comes immediately after the story of the sotah and so they asked about that. Why is it that right after the story of this disgraced woman, the Torah comes along and teaches us about a nazir? What’s the connection between the two?
And the answer they give is that the Torah is teaching us an important lesson here about how to succeed in this world: To teach us that when someone sees the disgrace of the sotah, he should become a nazir; he should separate from wine. Because if you are witness to a downfall like that, it requires that it should wake you up from your slumber, from your sleepwalk through life, and you should separate from whatever was the cause of that disgrace.
Now, that answer included a very important principle, an important way of living, that has many ramifications for ourselves. Only that it has to be understood properly and that’s going to be our subject now.
