In a way, this is the most well-known Naso is the most well-known Torah portion. In fact, we quote it every week at the end of the service. We slow down for the Priestly Blessing — Yivarechecha Adonai v’yishmerecha — those beautiful words that offer our blessings upon each other. Yet, in some ways it makes us blind to another part of the portion. A story, really, that we tend to rush past since it doesn’t really seem to impact us. But that is an illusion because it does impact us in so many way.
I am speaking about the Nazir – the Nazarite who decides to disappear into the desert for a month. He takes a vow of abstinence from wine, haircuts and sex. Ancient stuff and hardly the stuff of spiritual elevation.
But that is not really true. In fact, I want to suggest this morning that the Nazarite carries one of the Torah’s most urgent social teachings — and that it is not about what happens during the vow. It is about what happens at the end.
The Nazarite, described in Numbers chapter six, withdraws. Voluntarily. Deliberately. He or she steps back from wine, from the festive table, from the ordinary texture of communal life. The hair grows long — visibly, unmistakably different. Anyone who sees a Nazarite knows: this person is not fully here right now. This person is somewhere else. In fact, this person looks like he came from another planet. Imagine him walking back into the town. He is dusty from the desert. Probably lost a few pounds. Hasn’t washed himself or his clothes in a month and hasn’t taken care of himself in all that time. In fact, he looks like someone who just ignored all the customs of life and just shlepped 1500 miles on his own on the Appalachian Trail. He didn’t worry about what he looks like and only focussed on his own quest. His community was bereft of him while he sought out something else for a short while.
We all know people like this. Maybe we have been people like this.
Think about it. Someone loses a significant other and simply… disappears from the temple for a year. Someone goes through a depression and stops answering texts, stops showing up to Shabbat dinner. Someone carries a private crisis — addiction, illness, shame, grief — and withdraws into their own interior wilderness. They are not gone forever. But they are gone. They are struggling through their own desert and are on their own quest. We wait for them to come back and pray that they are whole when they do.
In Judaism, community is paramount. So you would think that the Nazarite would be discouraged from his life side-trip. But if that was so, why would the Torah have the option to do it in the first place? Indeed, the Torah does not condemn the Nazarite for leaving. It regulates the departure and — this is the point — it mandates the return.
When the days of the Nazarite vow are complete, the Torah doesn’t say: “And then the Nazarite goes home.” It details an elaborate, expensive, time-consuming ritual of re-entry. Burnt offerings. Sin offerings. Peace offerings. The shaving of the dedicated hair at the door of the Tent of Meeting. Waved before the community. Placed upon the fire. In reality, his return is a public spectacle like a banner that loudly proclaims, “I am home.”
And that leads us to the question: Why so much ceremony for coming back?
I think the Torah is telling us that leaving is easy. Coming back is often hard.
When you disappear for a month — or a year, or two years — you carry with you the anxiety of return. Will there still be a place for me? Has too much time passed? Will people ask questions I can’t answer? Will they be angry? Will they even notice? In fact, the one who returns to Judaism is called a baal tshuva – the master of return. But I think the term is equally valid to include those who reenter this holy space of our synagogue after any extended length of time. And the ritual for returning to our community gives us the instruction that loudly proclaims, We see you. We receive you. Your return is a sacred event.
The Nazarite is supposed to make an assortment of offerings at the altar, the most public Jewish space. Keep in mind that these sacrifices are not punishment. They are not the price of admission. They are a ceremony of reintegration — a ritual that says: your crossing back over this threshold matters as much as anything we do here. You don’t have to sneak in through the back or sit away from the congregation. You are an integral part of us and together we are going to stand at the entrance and we are going to mark this happy moment.
There is a reason the Priestly Blessing follows immediately after the Nazarite laws in this parashah. The rabbis did not arrange Torah carelessly. We move from the laws of the one who withdrew back to the whole congregation receiving the most intimate blessing in the Hebrew Bible: May God’s face shine upon you. May God lift up God’s face to you and give you peace.
That blessing is for everyone standing there — including the one who just came back. Especially the one who just came back.
Our communities today are full of Nazarites who have not yet found their way to the threshold. Often they wonder if there is a ritual for them. Waiting to see if anyone will hold a ceremony for their return, or whether they will have to shuffle back in unnoticed and hope no one mentions the absence.
Our job — the job of every person in this room — is to be the community at the door of the Tent of Meeting especially in this time of transition to a new rabbi. Everyone needs to be made sacred as everyone belongs. To look at someone who has been away and say: your coming back is not awkward. It is holy. We have been waiting. And we are so glad you are here.
The Nazarite vow ends. The hair falls. The fire receives it.
And the person comes home.
Shabbat Shalom.
