Parshas Nasso 5775
This week’s parsha introduces the subject of nezirus, in which a person undertakes a regimen of self-denial. Rashi explains that the Sages recommended such a practice to a person who had been exposed to immoral behavior, even if he himself was not guilty of this. Indulgence in wine is known to lead to such sins. The sages feared that exposure to immorality could lead a person to taava. They therefore recommended nezirus as a way for a person to restrain himself from sin.
Nezirus was often no easy task, as it required a long stretch of consecutive days of abstinence from wine and all grape products, haircuts and contact with the dead. If the nazir accidentally walked into a cemetery or had any other contact with the dead, the count of days was lost and he had to bring special korbanos and begin counting anew.
When Shimon Hatzaddik was serving as kohen in the Beis Hamikdash, he refused to eat of such offerings, claiming that if the nazir regretted accepting his vow of nezirus, it might invalidate the korban. -The Gemara (Nedarim 9b) records one notable case in which Shimon Hatzaddik did eat of such a korban. This was a young shepherd from the south who once caught a glimpse of his reflection in a well and, realizing that he was a handsome young man, let his imagination roam for a moment. Quickly, he stopped his train of thought and cried out: “Rasha, why do you flaunt yourself in a world that is not yours!” He accepted upon himself a vow of nezirus, so he could shave off his hair for the sake of Hashem when he completed it.
This young, idealistic nazir, Shimon Hatzaddik decided, surely did not regret making his original vow of nezirus.
Still, we can ask why Shimon Hatzaddik did not give the other nezirim the benefit of the doubt. After all, a nazir by definition is someone who, out of idealism, vows to elevate himself above the material world. What was so unique about this nazir?
Rav Daniel of Kelm explains that nezirus is normally accepted to help a person practice restraining himself from sin. Meaning, the nazir recognizes his passion for worldly pleasure but wants to master it. If self-restraint eventually proves to be too difficult, however, the nazir will regret his decision. This undermines the sincerity of the nezirus.
In the case of the young shepherd boy, his approach to nezirus was entirely different. “This is a world that does not belong to me,” he reasoned. In such a case, there is no room for regret, because the pleasures one is missing do not belong to him. This is a way of taking on the yetzer hara, to erase the basis for sinning by relating to it as having nothing to do with you.
Rav Aharon Kotler notes that even though people want to avoid sin, they don’t exclude it from themselves in an absolute sense. The Torah expresses (Bereishis 4:7) this in saying that sin “lies by the entrance.” If we let sin continue to lie there, it can at some point cause us to fall. The way to combat this is to declare that sin is poison. When sin is tantamount to poison, or when we declare that it is “not part of our world” as did the shepherd boy, we have succeeded in overcoming the yetzer hara.
But we can still ask, why must a nazir shave his hair? If his goal is to restrain his passions, it would seem that abstaining from wine would be enough.
The Ramban explains that letting one’s hair grow is a way of instilling in himself the awareness that he is different from the general society, where hairstyles and the like can serve as vehicles to sin. Each day, as he feels the unruly tuft of hair on his head growing longer, he is deepening his ratzon to be a ben aliya and rise above the vanities of this world. When a person’s head is occupied with aliya, he doesn’t fall (Mishlei 16:24).
Every person has bad and good in him, but if one devotes himself to developing his good qualities, the good increases and the bad traits shrink away of their own. This is a way for a person who has problems with his yetzer hara, and is not at the level of that righteous shepherd boy. Still, he too can resolve to occupy himself fully in aliya and developing the good in him. This automatically reduces the power of his yetzer hara.
“The problem today,” Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv would say, “is that people are not focused all day long on their own spiritual aliya. When they have difficulties, they get distracted and their aliya falls by the wayside. If I would have stopped focusing on my own aliya for even one minute, I would have fallen a long time ago.”
May we be zocheh to be bnei aliya!
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