To Be Jewishly Inspired - Find Inspiring Jews!

Parshat Naso

by Rabbi Avi Billet

One of the laws discussed in Parshat Naso concerns the Nazir, a person - man or woman - who chooses to remove himself or herself from society to a limited degree, through not consuming wine and grape products, refraining from cutting hair, and avoiding becoming “tameh” through contact with a dead body. Much has been written as to why a person would want to take on these borderline ascetic practices, and those answers are beyond the scope of this essay.

Suffice it to say, Seforno reminds even those who will take on ascetic practices that there is a realm of asceticism that the Torah supports (although perhaps begrudgingly), and there is a level that is “too far,” that even puts the ascetic at risk.

“He shouldn’t torture himself with fasting – which takes him away from serving God, and he should not flog himself or torment his body – as is the way of ascetics in other religions. He must merely separate himself from wine, which otherwise leads to licentiousness. This way, he will not weaken himself (through denial of necessary food).”

Getting back to the Nazir, what is only a little troubling is the prohibition on grape products other than wine. A restriction on wine is completely understandable. We all know what a little too much wine can do to the mind, to reason, and to one’s ability to think and act rationally.

But grapes? Raisins? You can eat as many of these as you want and never even get close to drunkenness, because without fermentation, there will be no alcohol! So why doesn’t the Torah give allowance for eating raw and unprocessed grapes, while disallowing the Nazir from imbibing in wine?

The simple answers that are offered by some of the commentaries seem intuitive. It’s a fence to prevent a slippery slope – consuming grapes will lead to consuming wine (Ibn Ezra). Grapes are what produce wine, so it’s one step removed. (Alshikh) Alshikh goes on to say that “anyone who distances oneself from sin, and from that which causes sin… there is no doubt that he will be considered holy.”

And so we see that even the Torah sets up the concept of a fence, of a slippery slope, of a need to take on restrictions that go beyond the level of the law, just to preserve the law.

How often are we willing to do this? I recently finished reading an OTD memoir, written by someone who is no longer part of the observant community. Reading about the community of Jews who have abandoned all forms of observance to be “freed of the shackles of Judaism” and in order to “be the true me,” one tends to wonder how much a slippery slope played into the choices that were made. It is hard to know how many people could find fulfillment in a different “stream” of Orthodoxy than the kind they reject if they only saw the options available to them.

At the same time, a “crisis of faith,” or even just a “breaking of the bonds” may be the end result of a circumstance, situation and process that is impossible to summarize in a very short essay.

One question that stuck out at me from this memoir went something like this: “If I hadn’t been born into this religion, would I choose it on my own? Would this particular brand of living we live have had any appeal whatsoever?”

The author didn’t satisfactorily give an answer. But I will take a simple stab at it. Every person in the world, upon reaching adulthood, has the opportunity to ask real questions, take long looks in the mirror and ask ‘is this who I am?’ A friend of mine who works on a college campus once told me that he gets several inquiries a week from students who are looking to explore Judaism (most are not serious, they are just experimenting college kids looking for their flavor of the week).

But I look at the great rabbis of old, and of our own times. I see their brilliance, I read of their scholarship and their dedication to find answers to some of the most difficult moral and ethical dilemmas humans can face, and how they scour all of rabbinic literature to come to their fantastic and inspirational conclusions. Are they perfect humans? Never. But are they tremendous sources of inspiration? Yes. And did they find the truth in the Judaism they knew and draw out incredible lives from it? Absolutely.

I look at the righteous converts to Judaism. Those who “had it all.” They were “free of the shackles of Judaism.” They could go where they wanted, eat what they wanted, do whatever they wanted. But they found their lives to be missing something – and whatever that something was, they found it in observant Judaism.

And I am inspired. Because they chose to put up fences. They chose to accept that when wine is forbidden, grapes are forbidden – even though grapes, in and of themselves, are harmless and will never do what wine does to a person.

Is everything about Judaism perfect? Surely not. To bring one silly example – I would love to get to an airport three hours before my flight, and sit down to have lunch at a restaurant airport. Right now, it’s only in the cards to do this at Ben Gurion airport, and that’s OK.

For this life that we choose to be meaningful, we must jump into it fully, accept that it is imperfect, and be comfortable living with questions. And, as the grapes and raisin prohibition for the Nazir teaches us, we need to see that even in an effort to make Judaism more deeply meaningful, we still have fences and boundaries we put up, to make sure we don’t go too far in any direction; not too far that we damage ourselves and our health, and not too far that we lose sight of what our observant life is supposed to do for us in giving us a meaningful existence.

May we all be blessed to find the right kind of balance and continue to enhance our relationship with the God we know is One, Whom we serve with all our hearts and souls.

Embracing Mitzvot Properly

Parshat Naso


by Rabbi Avi Billet

The Yalkut Shimoni (Naso 6:710) raises an interesting non-halakhic debate between Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Shimon as to what was the motivation for becoming a Nazir.

Rabbi Yehuda claims the Chassidim Harishonim (the early pious ones) would take upon themselves the vow of Nezirut (abstaining from cutting hair, drinking wine, and becoming tameh to a dead body) in order to obligate themselves to bring a Sin offering on the completion of the vow.

Rabbi Shimon disagrees as he finds it unconscionable that people would take a vow of Nezirut for the sole purpose of having to bring a certain sacrifice afterwards. For instance, there are many offerings people could commit to bringing without having to go through a process that, noble and ascetic as it may be, brings about an obligation for a sin offering upon its completion. In fact, claims Rabbi Shimon, they would never commit to be a Nazir because they did not want to have a sin – mild as it may be in the scheme of things – on their record. Regardless of the impetus, bringing a Sin-offering is a sure sign that the one bringing it has sinned. 

The question of who is right is either a question for historians to explore or for the philosophers to debate. My gut tells me Rabbi Shimon is correct. At the same time, I am fascinated by the thought Rabbi Yehuda ascribes to these early pious ones.

 Chapter 6 describes the personal and spiritual responsibilities and goals of the Nazir during the Nezirut period, a time in which the Nazir is considered holy, and consecrated to God (Bamidbar 6:8). The Children of Israel, certainly have a responsibility to achieve that end as much as we can (Vayikra 19:2).

But the method that is utilized by the Nazir, as it were, is highly criticized. What gives a person the right to withdraw completely from the world? To swear off wine – which is considered one of the sources of true joy (Tehillim 104:15, Kohelet 10:19)? During the minimal one month period of Nezirut, for example, the Nazir will miss 4 or 5 opportunities to perform Kiddush properly on Shabbos!

What gives a person the right to neglect one's grooming, to have the appearance of a mourner?

What gives a person, especially a non-kohen, the right to swear off becoming tameh to one's relatives?

To understand the thought process of the Nazir is to understand one who either is trying to commit wholly to God at a price, or who is looking to get away from the world because that seems the best choice at this time, in a manner that successfully pushes off one's problems for the duration of the Nezirut (of course there may be other reasons driving a person).

According to Rabbi Yehuda, the early pious one purposely sought this existence not necessarily because they felt being a Nazir was a good thing, but because they wanted to be able to fulfill a mitzvah they could not otherwise do without going through the process.

Imagine a person wants to make the Yom Kippur confession and repentance a more meaningful experience. A person might deliberately sin, might deliberately eat forbidden foods or engage in sinful behavior as a one-time shot, knowing full well that a one-time satisfied craving will be enough to last a life-time, such that it will never really be a challenge again, in order to be counted as sincerely penitent on Yom Kippur, in a manner the person knows can be maintained. A real baal teshuvah!

This method is certainly a lot easier than promising not to return to the sinful ways we nonetheless return to each year. And yet we know it is ludicrous. How does the future penitence justify the current wrong behavior? It doesn't! Being committed to the Torah and its mitzvot does not mean a person needs to fulfill every one of the mitzvot.

It does mean that one's heart and mind is committed to the life-system that is ordered by the Torah. I don't need to kill an Amalekite, I never to need to send away the mother bird, and I don't need to become a Nazir.

Any marriage that lasts a lifetime never needs to see the issuance of a get. Even the prophet Shmuel chastised the people for asking for a King – there is an element of ideal in a Jewish king, but apparently it is not always the best option for the people of Israel.

A committed Jew seeks to perform mitzvot either because they are simply available without arm-twisting, or because they enhance a person's life. But mitzvot that are set-up as a follow up to a less than ideal circumstance – such as denying certain pleasures we are encouraged to enjoy – are not meant to be for everybody. They are not mitzvot that must be fulfilled at all cost.

Rabbi Shimon said it best when he said "Chas Veshalom" that a person feel obligated to t ake such a route. This is an aberration of the Torah's stance on commitment and obligation. It is a sign of weakness and false piety – certainly not a sign of strength.