Parshat Nasso

Is it better to try to divorce oneself from the physical pleasures of this world to live a truly spiritual life, or is it better to be a part of this world and try to elevate the experience of physical pleasure into a spiritual experience as well?  There are many different religious perspectives with regard to this question.  Judaism also has a variety of perspectives on this question.  The debate about whether it is possible for physical pleasure to be something positive or not comes up in this week’s Parsha. 

This week’s Parsha has contains the laws of the Nazir.  The Torah (Numbers 6:1-11) describes the Nazir as someone who makes a vow to separate oneself as a result of a religious conviction: they are forbidden to consume anything made from grape products, cut their hair, or come in contact with dead bodies.  The question about whether this is positive behavior or negative behavior comes up here as a result of two seemingly conflicting verses.  Verse 8 says, since “he separated himself unto the lord, he shall be holy.”  But, verse 11 says that a part of the offering brought by the Nazir in the temple was a sin offering.  If the person is doing something holy, why is their required sacrifice considered a sin offering?

Nachmanides explains this contradiction according to the simple meaning of the verses.   His perspective is that the state of separateness is a good thing; a person should always desire to separate themselves for the sake of coming closer to God.  So the sin offering is brought because the Nazir is leaving the holy state that he/she had been in. 

An alternative perspective in the Jewish tradition is championed by Maimonides.  Maimonides in his introduction to Pirkei Avot says explicitly the Nazir is a warning against the ascetic life.  Maimonides explains that the Torah ideal is to do everything in moderation: “he should dwell amidst society in uprightness and faith and not in deserts or mountains.”  Furthermore, in Maimonides’ Mishna Torah (Deot 3:1), he quotes an opinion in the Talmud in response to someone who wishes to live the life of an ascetic:

Therefore, our sages commanded man to deny himself only the things denied him by the Torah.  He should not inflict on himself vows of abstinence on things permitted to him.  Thus our Sages stated: “what the Torah has forbidden to you is not sufficient?  You need to forbid yourself other things too?! ...To such things King Solomon referred when he counseled (Ecclesiastes 7:16), “So don’t overdo goodness and don’t act the wise man to excess, or you may be dumbfounded.”

If we are not supposed to deny ourselves things that the Torah permitted, why does the Torah permit a person to become a Nazir, and why is that person called holy?  In my opinion, I think that the both the perspectives of Nachmanides and Maimonides are important religious tools.  For most of us, most of the time, the lesson of Maimonides is most useful.  We need to have realistic religious goals, it needs to be a life that we can maintain and enjoy.  There is no reason to forbid ourselves anything that is permitted by the Torah; but that does not mean that Nachmanides’ message is irrelevant.  The religious ideal is to be connected to God at all times.  Maimonides’ middle path approach might not be assuming that we are disconnected to God, but his middle path approach is description on how a religious life should be led and not advice on how to make our daily lives more religious.  While the life of the ascetic might not be a realistic religious goal for us, its lesson is still a relevant one.  There are times when we can strive to push ourselves harder so that we can experience for ourselves what it means to be more connected to God.  The occasional experience of religious passion can have a trickledown effect into our normal lives.  Hopefully, by making the effort to separate ourselves in order to be holy from time to time, we can inject the rest of our lives with lessons learnt from those experiences.