Nezer and the Nazir: Diadems, Diatribes, and Dialectics ›

cc: flicker By 4ocima Monk

Commentary on Parashat Naso for Rabbis for Human Rights, June 2011 / Sivan 5751

Parashat Naso, in its account of the nazir, the person who swears off grape products and haircuts, refers repeatedly to the nezer of the nazir’s head. What—as young people like to say—is that about?

A nezer is usually a crown. That this is so is evident from biblical verses elsewhere. For example, Exodus 29:6: “Put the headdress on his [= the High Priest’s] head, and place the holy nezer upon the headdress.” Or 2 Samuel 1:10, where the man who claims to have finished off a wounded King Saul tells David, “Then I took the nezer from his head and the armlet from his arm, and I have brought them here to my lord.”

The nazir passage in our parasha, Num. 6:1-26, uses words with the root n.z.r. 18 times, beginning with six words in the first four verses. Of those six, four are verbs (in the hif‘il construction, for you grammar aficionados), and the context makes clear that they mean “swear off” or “stay away from.” The two nouns are in phrases—“the days of his nezer” (a phrase that subsequently appears three more times) and “his nezer vow”—that are obviously part of the same semantic field. That is, they refer to “his period of abstinence” and “his vow of abstinence.”

The seventh use of the root, again the noun nezer, is therefore puzzling. Continuing from the prohibition in v. 6 against a nazir being in the presence of a corpse, v. 7 tells us: “Even if his father or mother, or his brother or sister should die, he must not defile himself for them, since the nezer of his God is upon his head.” Is this a reference to his vow, as the Jewish Publication Society’s translation has it (“…since hair set apart for his God is upon his head”), or is it instead a different meaning introduced all of a sudden: “the crown of God is upon his head”?

Well, it’s hard to tell. Several phrases in the verses that come later seem to be so concerned with the nazir’s head that one suspects we should construe the word in v. 7 as “crown”: the phrase rosh-nizro (“his nezer-head”) occurs once in v. 9 and twice in v. 18), and in v. 19 we read this clause: “[…]and place them on the hands of the nazirite after he has shaved his nezer.” But other uses of nezer after v. 7 are more likely to be in the “abstinence” category.

The vow and the crown have somehow come together in the nazir’s long, uncut hair, which must have appeared like a mane or a crown. But what was the effect of seeing that hair? Did he look to his contemporaries like a man in possession of God’s own truth or like a man of no possessions, a homeless street person in a modern metropolis?

The Torah’s sly game, sliding and oscillating between “abstinence” and “crown,” keeping us guessing. That is intended, I think, to be ironic or even sarcastic. To the nazir, his vows and his unmistakable outward appearance are a virtual crown, a symbol of his spiritual elevation. They make him regal—in his own eyes. But the Torah’s view of the nazir is distinctly less positive. As many commentators, classical and modern, have noted, the nazir must conclude the period of his vow of abstinence with expiatory sacrifices. The clear implication is that he has done something wrong. By swearing off even a small, regulated part of the abundance with which God has blessed the world, he has committed a theological affront, an act of ingratitude. His showy piety earns him references to his “crown” in a tone that would require quotation marks if such a thing had existed in Biblical Hebrew.

Others have noted the Torah’s ambivalent treatment of the nazir in law. A sensitive reading reveals that the Torah’s diction and tone, too, express a subtle diatribe against the self-abnegation that, dialectically, leads to self-aggrandizement. There is a lesson in that for all of us.