RABBI DR. TZVI HERSH WEINREB THE PERSON BY OU Executive Vice President, Emeritus IN THE PARSHA
Sanctity and Sanctimony
never shaving or taking a haircut, or to coming into contact with the dead, even at the funerals of his or her own parents or siblings.
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The very word “nazir” means to withdraw, to remove oneself from others and from worldly pleasures. The Torah describes such a person, over and over again, as holy. “He shall be holy...He is holy unto the Lord...” (Numbers 6:5 and 6:8)
e are all full of contradictions. There is a part of us which is noble, kind and generous. But there is another part that is selfish and stingy, and which can even be cruel. That is the way we were created. We have the potential for good, yet it is matched with our potential for evil. At different times in our lives and in different circumstances throughout our lives, one part or the other dominates. What is especially fascinating is that often we are both good and evil, kind and cruel, at the same time. It is no wonder then that we know so many people who can best be described in paradoxical terms: the wounded healer, the generous miser, the sinful saint, the foolish sage, the righteous knave. In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Naso, we meet an individual who displays both negative and positive qualities in the very same role. I speak of the Nazarite, or Nazir in Hebrew, the man or woman who vows to adopt an ascetic lifestyle, a lifestyle of abstention from wine and anything connected to wine, and who commits to 12
TORAH TIDBITS 1420 / NASO 5781
Yet, should the Nazarite inadvertently come into contact with the dead, then he is to offer a specified set of sacrifices. And these sacrifices are to “make atonement for him, for he sinned al hanefesh, by reason of the soul.” (Numbers 6:11) What does it mean to “sin by reason of the soul”? The simple meaning is that the “soul” here refers to the soul of the dead body with whom he accidentally came into contact. So he needs atonement for his chance exposure to a corpse. There is another opinion in the Talmud that says that “soul” here refers to the Nazarite’s own soul, and that somehow, in renouncing the pleasures of life, he has sinned against his very own soul. In the words of Dr. J.H. Hertz, whose commentary on the Bible has become, regrettably in my opinion, less popular than it once was, “... he was ordered to make atonement for
