The Nazirite Vow

Rabbi Margaret

Many years ago I heard a story that moved me a lot.  I met a young woman who had been in the Peace Corps, or something like that, in the Solomon Islands, which is a little cluster of six islands to the east of Papua New Guinea.  Apparently the food supply there was limited, and so the population needed to be limited too.  And so it would happen occasionally that a woman would give birth to twins, and one or another of the parents would need to commit infanticide. The grieving parent might then take on a private fast — say she would not eat papayas — as she lived through the grief of the death of this child.  She wouldn’t even necessarily tell anyone that she had undertaken this fast.  At some point, said the Peace Corps worker, the parent would see that her fast had gone on long enough, that her grief and spiritual dis-ease had been calmed.  At this point she would call the community together, serve a feast, announce that her fast was over, and eat her first papaya.  The person telling the story said that the least amount of time she was aware of that such a fast would last was seven years.  And often it was more like 25 years.

I have thought about this practice over the years and wondered: how does this fast work?  How does not eating papayas help the grieving parent to come to peace, or to atone, or whatever might be the purpose of the fast?  And most especially, how does he come to know that it is time for the fast to end?  Some process must have worked it way through and come to and endpoint. What goes on over those years and decades?

And so we enter the vow of the nazir:… Ish o ishah ki yafli lindor neder nazir l’hazir lADONAI… a man or a woman who undertakes a special vow…  

It’s not clear what nazir l’hazir means.  Nun Zayin Raysh seems to be a unique root — it basically means one who nazirs…  one who takes upon oneself a nazir vow in order to be a NAZIR to Adonai.  Our friend the BDB suggests that it might mean something like “consecrate.”  So one who consecrates oneself in order to be consecrated to HASHEM.  

It is something one does in order to be in some sort of consecrated relationship with the Divine.

The nazirite vow has three elements: one must abstain from grape product; let grow the pera hair on her head; and not come near any dead body, even that of one’s mother or father.  Sometimes one would take upon oneself a nazirite vow for a specified period of time.  If one should, even unwittingly, get near a dead body or otherwise violate the vow, one started again from the beginning.  When the period of the vow was completed there was a kind of party: the nazirite would come to the door of the Tent of Meeting, bring a substantial offering and then, in the presence of the Kohen, shave his or her head and place the hair on the pyre where the offerings are being roasted.

The Kohen would make a wave offering of a leg of lamb, a loaf of bread and one unleavened wafer.  And then the one whose vow is complete could have a glass of wine.  

Interestingly the rabbis ruled that the practice of taking on a nazirite vow could continue after the destruction of the Temple.  But, absent the Temple one could never conclude their vow.  So it had to be permanent.  

There are two famous biblical stories of nazirite vows, that of the prophet Samuel and of Samson (whose story in Judges is our haftara today).  In both cases they did not make the vow themselves.  Their mothers did.  Hannah was unable to conceive, and likewise with the unnamed wife of Manoah.  Both women vowed that if they were blessed with children (sons, I believe they each specified — I’m sorry) these children would be lifelong nazirim. 

I came across the story of another only slightly less famous nazir — Queen Helena of Adiabene.  I want to delve a bit into her story.  But before I do, let’s think about Samson:

From the book of Judges:

Then Samson went down and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of Timnath, and behold a young lion roared against him.  And the spirit of the LORD came mightily upon his, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand; but he told not his father or his mother what he had done.  And he went down and talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson well.  And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion; and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion.  And he took thereof in his hands and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and they did eat; but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion.  (Judges 14:5-10)

I am especially interested in the nazirite vow because of a beautiful, tender, poignant book by the great Israeli novelist David Grossman called Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson.  This is not a novel but rather Grossman’s book-length reverie on the story of Samson. 

David Grossman writes:

He looks at the lion and the honey pooling inside it.  Certainly he is strongly affected: after all, this image will figure in the riddle he will soon pose at his wedding party.  He sees the extraordinary scene that he himself created: it was he who killed the lion.  Because of him the bees built their hive there and made their honey, the sweet honey that now fills his mouth…and as his senses blend one into the other, is it not probable that he becomes spontaneously excited over something that is a powerful sight, oddly beautiful, utterly unique, and that also radiates a sense of deep, hidden, symbolic beauty?

How to define such a moment?  We have already called it ‘revelation’.  But may we cautiously add that this is also the moment at which Samson, the consummate strongman, suddenly discovers the way in which an artist looks at the world?  (p.55)

All of this makes me think not so much of why a person might undertake a nazirite vow, or when — but more about what happens to one’s soul during the term of the vow.  I think there is a temptation to simplify the spiritual life of the ancients, to assume that they lived lives of fear and want — they wanted the rain to fall, they wanted children, they wanted to win wars and protect their boundaries. To accomplish these things they tried to win God’s favor with sacrifice and ceremony.  And no doubt they did, and no doubt we do too.  

But we might imagine that they knew, as we know, that the world is one of mystery and beauty and unknowing.  And they, like we, wished to be consecrated, to offer their lives, or parts of their lives, into this Mystery, this Beauty, this unknown.  It is possible that they, like we, wished to grow in wisdom and deepen in spirit, to come closer to God.

Now let me introduce you to my new friend Queen Helena of Adiabene.  Queen Helena’s story is long and fascinating.  I learned about her from an article by Dr. Malka Z Simkovich on thetorah.com.    

Adiabene is said to be the contemporary Irbil in Iraq.  The historian Josephus tells her story in The Antiquities of the Jews.  A piece of the story is also told in the Mishnah, in tractate Nazir. 

It is related that Queen Helena, when her son went to war, said, “If my son returns in peace from the war, I shall be a nazirite for seven years.”  Her son returned from the war, and she observed a naziriteship for seven years.  At the end of seven years she went up to the land [of Israel] and Beth Hillel ruled that she must be a Nazirite for an additional seven years.  Toward the end of this seven years she contracted a ritual defilement, and so altogether she was a Nazirite for twenty-one years.  R. Judah said, “She was only a Nazirite for fourteen years.”  (Nazir 3:6)

Interestingly, Queen Helena was a convert to Judaism.  According to Josephus:

Now during the time when Izates resided at Charax Spasini, a certain Jewish merchant named Ananias (Hebrew חנניה) visited the king’s wives and taught them to worship God after the manner of the Jewish tradition. It was through their agency that he was brought to the notice of Izates, whom he similarly won over with the co-operation of the women. (Ant. 20:34)

Josephus says that Helena encountered another Jewish trader, and she converted.  Later she moved to Jerusalem, built a lavish palace there and gave golden gifts to the Temple. 

Her arrival was very advantageous to the people of Jerusalem, for at that time the city was hard pressed by famine and many were perishing from want of money to purchase what they needed. Queen Helena sent some of her attendants to Alexandria to buy grain for large sums and others to Cyprus to bring back a cargo of dried figs. Her attendants speedily returned with these provisions which she thereupon distributed among the needy. She has thus left a very great name that will be famous forever among our whole people for her benefaction. (Ant. 20:51-52)

We know the least about Queen Helena’s experience.  We know that she chose to become Jewish, and once she did so she chose to take upon herself a nazirite vow for seven years.  There are stories in here too, though we don’t know them, about the movement of her soul.  She must have had moments of expanded consciousness, as did Samuel and Samson before her.  She must have had encounters that felt intense and profound.  She must have found herself seeing her life and her world differently than she had.  She must have been moved by these experiences of the Holy to reorder her life’s commitments.  At the end of seven years of naziriteship she left her throne and her world and moved to Jerusalem, the holy center of the Jewish people.  And there she lived a life of charity.  Her sons, similarly inspired, later saved the Jewish people in Judea from starvation.  

Samuel, son of Hannah, became a prophet of God, appointing King David in the pasture and speaking words of challenge and conscience to the King throughout his life.  Samson, at least as David Grossman reads him, became a master of symbol, a person with heightened ability to see mystery.  Queen Helena became a Jew and moved to Jerusalem to live near the Temple and partake of its holiness.

There is something in here about the movement of the soul, about soul-narrative.  Our souls live narrative lives.  Stories are happening inside us.  We become occupied by something we hadn’t noticed before.  We become uneasy with a situation.  We notice that we are at peace with something that had troubled us.  We are inspired to make a change.  We feel, as we say, “moved.” 

Hannah vowed that if she gave birth to a son he would be a nazirite.  The wife of Manoah did the same.  Queen Helena vowed that she herself would become a nazirite if her son returned home from war.  One might think of all these vows as being instrumental — a quid pro quo offered to the Divine in return for something they desperately wanted.  But after sitting with these three women for awhile, and their offspring, I find that I am looking at their motivations a little differently.  There is nothing in Torah’s description of the nazirite vow that promises that one will get any benefit in return.  It is a practice not of propitiation but of consecration.  I wonder if each of these powerful and anguished women decided to engage the soul journey more deeply —their own and that of their children.  They consecrated themselves and their families to the Mystery.

And so they, and we, are given this tool of the nazirite vow.  It’s not really very difficult to undertake: don’t cut your hair, don’t eat raisins, don’t go to funerals.  It’s possible that one could even do it in private, without anyone else knowing. 

Spiritual practices that we take on intentionally intensify our soul-narrative, and they make us more conscious of these inner movements.  

Each of us has undertaken the practice of this Shabbat morning service — whether for one morning or many years.  It’s a funny little practice, like the nazirite practice.  It seems easy on the surface.  You come to the shul, or to your zoom, and you do whatever Fran tells you to do.  Then you listen to me talk for awhile and then to Luna chanting Hebrew.  Then you drink wine and eat bread and chat with your friends.

But things happen inside our souls because we have undertaken this practice.  Maybe not even what we thought we wanted.  Maybe we don’t get pregnant, and our sons do not return home from war in peace.  Maybe life remains difficult.   But we are transformed — moved — in very personal, idiosyncratic ways.  We may not ourselves take on a nazirite vow — or maybe one or another of us will!  But in various ways we can each place ourselves in the hands of the Mystery — we can consecrate ourselves — to honor and cultivate and deepen the story of our souls and to be transformed.  

I think again of that grieving mother or father in the Solomon Islands and their silent fast.  Their child does not come back to life.  But somehow, with the support of their vow, over the years the narrative of their soul changes and they are again able to live whole lives, despite the immutability of their loss.  So may it be for all of us.