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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.