The Nazir

Parashat Naso 5775/30 May 2015

The institution of the Nazir is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. For those of you not familiar, let me explain. In this morning’s Torah reading we are introduced to the laws of the Nazir. The Nazir is a person who is not satisfied with the religious obligations incumbent on the general population. He is someone who wants to emulate the level of piety withheld for the priestly class, even though he is not born of that class. The Torah provides for such a person to take on certain perks of piety for a specific period of time – and here is the mystery – when the period ends, either voluntarily or it is interrupted by his accidently becoming impure, he must bring a sin offering.

Why a sin offering? Why not a thanks offering or just a plain whole offering? This is the question that generations of commentators have been perplexed about. According to Rabbi Elazar, the Nazarite is worthy of praise and the sin offering was because he was leaving this state and returning to ordinary life. Rabbi Eliezar ha-kapar and Shmuel held the opposite view – the sin of the Nazarite was in his becoming one to begin with.
The argument is apparently about the nature of religious life. Should it be a life of withdrawal and asceticism or one of embracing the material goodness of the world, sanctifying and celebrating it?

One of the great Rabbinic minds of our time, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, points out that Maimonides, in his most authoritative code of Jewish law, the Mishna Torah, codifies both positions as binding. Assuming that RMBM would not contradict himself, Sachs asserts that this is evidence of RMBM’s insight that there is more than one way to approach religious life and different personalities choose different paths and both of these paths, the ascetic and what we might call the worldly, are correct.

With great respect for Rabbi Sachs, I disagree. In his other great work, The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides is explicit about the fact that that work will contain purposeful contradiction so that the astute reader will be “tipped off,” as it were, to mysteries beyond the ability of a logical discourse to contain. Who, then, is to say that RMBM did not purposely hide contractions in his Code of Law?

For what end? I would like to suggest that RMBM meant to teach that it is precisely not the avoidance of contradiction and the harmonization of disagreements that is at the heart of religious life, but the acceptance of them. That the purpose of religion is living not with certainty, but with mystery.

Tags: Mystery, Naso