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

terror 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 Nakhmanides,

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 Hakapa and Shmuel held the opposite opinion.

For them, the sin lay in becoming a Nazirite in the first place, and thereby denying himself

some of the pleasures of the world God created and declared good.

Rabbi Eliezer added, from this we may infer that if one who denies himself the

enjoyment of wine is called a sinner, all the more so someone who denies himself the enjoyment of

other pleasures of life. Clearly the argument is not just textual, it's substantive. It's about

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