Parsha Naso: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the cult Western that catapulted Clint Eastwood to superstardom. The title of the film could just as easily have been taken from our parasha, which features a motley variety of characters, including the leper, the thief, the adulteress, the nazir, and the priest

The Nazir’s Hair

The most fascinating figure in the parasha is without doubt the nazir, whose vows are an opportunity for equality. All members of the Jewish people – man or woman; priest, Levite or layperson – are eligible to distance themselves from normative practice in order to seek holiness and intimacy with God. The basic requirements from the nazir are abstention from wine, growing long hair, and refraining from becoming impure through contact with the dead.

In order to better understand the nazir, let us compare him to the priest. Both the nazir and the priest partake of a special kind of holiness that precludes them from exposure to death. The difference between them can be found in the thing that has come to be associated with the nazir more than anything else: head hair. While the priest is forbidden from growing out his hair (Lev. 21:10), the nazir is prevented from cutting it. The nazir’s holiness is expressed through his hair, which the Torah says is “his consecration unto God.”

The Hebrew word often translated as “consecration” is “nezer,” which in this context connoted a crown. The prohibition against contact with the dead is also derived from this holiness, which is why any such contact requires the nazir to cut off his hair. When a nazir’s vow lapses, he shaves his head and burns the hair on the altar along with his offering (6:18). Like a burnt offering, the hair belongs to God. The story of Samson also drives home the idea that the main expression of Naziriteship is hair. When Delilah asks, “Wherein thy great strength lieth?” (Judges 16:15), Samson replies, “There hath not come a razor upon my head; for I have been a nazir unto God from my mother’s womb; if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man” (16:17).

The Zohar (Naso 121a) sees in the holiness of the nazir’s hair a similarity between him and God. The hair becomes a powerful metaphor for various attributes of the divine and its connection to reality: flow, bounty, and expansion from a single point into a boundless multitude.

Wild hair is also an expression of the spiritual state of the nazir, whose outlook is described in the following verse: “When either man or woman shall clearly (yafli) utter a vow, the vow of a nazir, to consecrate himself unto the Lord” (Num. 6:2). The Hebrew word “yafli” comes from “pele,” which connotes a movement above and beyond, outside the usual frames of reference. It is a movement that is expressed aptly in the nazir’s wild hair, which flows chaotically and unpredictably, breaking boundaries. Today, too, long hair is a symbol of rebellion among youths.

Therein is the heart of the difference between the nazir and the priest: the holiness of the priest is generated by a reality of normative order. Hence, the priest must be immaculate, with nary a hair out of place. The holiness of the nazir, on the other hand, is generated by a departure from social structures; hence its manifestation as wild hair. Another expression of a nazir’s departure from normative reality is the prohibition against his becoming impure through contact with the dead – including immediate family members. The nazir is an individualist. In the case of Samson, that individualism sometimes left him outside the consensus: fearing the repercussions of his provocations against the Philistines, the Israelites delivered him themselves into the hands of their enemy (Judges 15:11–12).

In his essay “The Souls of the World of Chaos” (Orot 121–122), Rav Kook describes a unique figure whose soul is hewn from chaos. Much of this essay is applicable to the nazir:

Conventional conduct – integrity and righteousness, in adherence to all virtues, rules and precepts – is an expression of the progression of the World of Rectification (Tikkun). Any deviation – whether in terms of frivolity and wantonness on one hand, or the ascension of consciousness and the awakening of supernal spirituality on the other – is an expression of the World of Chaos (Tohu)…. The souls of Chaos are loftier than the souls of Rectification. They are very large, and demand much of reality – beyond the capacity of their vessels to bear. They demand a very powerful light, and cannot tolerate anything that is bounded, limited, and ordered.

Rav Kook goes on to warn of the dangers posed by these souls of Chaos:

They strive far, far beyond their capacity, strive and fall. They realize that they are imprisoned by rules, by limiting conditions that prevent them from expanding into eternity, from rising up infinitely, and they fall, doleful, despairing, and raging. Consumed by fury, they become wrapped up in malice, wickedness, baseness, ugliness, loathing, and destructiveness – all that is evil.

Samson ends his own life with an act of destruction – he smashes the foundations of a sturdy building, killing himself along with his enemies (Judges 16:30). There is a lot of power to going with the flow and overstepping boundaries, but also danger. For Samson, the danger lies in sexuality. Our sages are very critical of his behavior in this area, condemning it as a damaging rebellion (Sota 9b). According to the Mishna (Sota 1:8), he is punished for it: “Samson went after his eyes, therefore the Philistines gouged out his eyes, as it says, ‘And the Philistines took hold of him and gouged out his eyes’ (Judges 16:21).”

The Mishna goes on to discuss the fate of King David’s son Absalom, who, according to the sages (Nazir 4b), was also a nazir: “Absalom was proud of his hair, therefore he was hanged by his hair. And because he had relations with the ten concubines of his father, he was pierced by ten spears.” Absalom’s hair is the source of his pride and the root of his rebellion against his father. Eventually, he pays with his life in a case of poetic justice: his hair becomes entangled in the branches of a tree, and David’s men are able to capture him (II Sam. 18:9). The Mishna also notes Absalom’s sexual transgressions – his relations with his father’s concubines.

In this context we can more readily understand the ban on nazirs drinking wine. For someone who has a problem with boundaries, wine can be deadly. Here is the Midrash:

God well knew that Samson would be led astray by his eyes; therefore, they warned that a nazir refrain from drinking wine, because it leads to lechery. Indeed we see that as a nazir he was led astray by his eyes, but were he to drink as well, he would have been eternally irredeemable due to the extent of his pursuit of lechery. (Numbers Rabba 10)

According to the Talmud, this is why the Torah discusses the nazir after the passages dealing with the sota: “Why does the section of the nazir adjoin that of the suspected woman? To tell you that whoever witnesses a suspected woman in her disgrace should withhold himself from wine” (Sota 2a). Perhaps, more than becoming a nazir can help one contend with the dangers of drinking wine, teetotaling is a method of dealing with the dangers of Naziriteship.

The juxtaposition of the nazir and the sota is also fascinating due to the shared motif of wild hair: “And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord, and let the hair of the woman’s head go loose” (Num. 5:18). Both the nazir and the adulteress defy the social order, one positively and the other negatively.

Our generation has placed major emphasis on individualism. The juxtaposition of the nazir and the sota, and their vastly different fates, sends a message to those who wish to break the boundaries of normativity. Such a departure can be either a blessing or a curse, a movement upward or downward. As we have seen in regard to drinking wine, much of the outcome is determined by the boundaries that one sets for oneself.