Hello and welcome to another episode of Covenant and Conversation with me, Rabbi Sachs.

In each new episode, we'll explore a Jewish idea from the Hebrew Bible based on the Torah reading of the week.

Sages and saints. Parachat Nassau contains the laws of the Nazirite, the individual who

undertook to observe special rules of holiness and abstinence,

not to drink wine or other intoxicants, including anything made from grapes,

not have his hair cut, and not to defile himself by contact with the dead.

Such a state was usually undertaken for a limited period.

The standard length was 30 days.

There were exceptions, most famously Samson

and Samuel, who because of the miraculous nature of their birth, were consecrated before birth,

as Nazarites for life. What the Torah doesn't make clear, though, is, number one, why a person

might wish to undertake this form of abstinence,

and number two, whether it considers this choice to be commendable or merely permissible.

On the one hand, the terror calls the Nazarite holy to God. On the other, it requires him at

the end of his period to bring a sin offering. This led to an ongoing disagreement

between the rabbis in Mishnec, Talmudic and medieval times. According to Rabbi Elieuza and later to

Nachmanides, the Nazarite is praiseworthy. He is voluntarily undertaken a higher level of holiness. The prophet Amos said,

I raised up some of your sons for prophets and your young men for Nazarites, suggesting that

the Nazarite, like the prophet, is a person especially close to God. The reason he had to bring

a sin offering was that he was now returning to

ordinary life. His sin lay in ceasing to be a Nazarite. Rabbi Eliezer Haqapa and Shmuel held the

opposite opinion. For them, the sin lay in becoming a Nazarite in the first place, and thereby denying himself some of the

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