You’d think that a ‘holy man’ wouldn’t be so controversial. And yet… The Talmud (Taanit11a), offers different opinions on whether a Nazir, who chooses to abstain from that which is permissible, is doing something inappropriate.
Following one approach in Nazir (3a), Kli Yakar suggests an interesting compromise position: The objection to nezirut is only operative when it is not carried to term, due to pre-mature contact with the dead. In such a case, writes Kli Yakar, the days that the nazir took on the prohibitions of nezirut had no halachic value. And in that case, his abstinence was essentially meaningless.
We learn from Kli Yakar that once meaningless, abstinence is not only neutral, it is actually destructive. We would expect, however, that the same be true of the reverse – if the problem is something being meaninglessness, then meaningless indulgence should also be destructive. Yet the Torah does not require atonement for it – why not?
Perhaps the answer is that indulgence of wine, etc. can never be totally meaningless. For enjoyment of God’s world always comes with some innate meaning – something which is lacking in the case of abstinence. In his ‘For the Perplexed of the Generation,’ Rav Kook points out that negation is, by its very nature, lacking any intrinsic meaning. That is because negation is not about any positive value. Instead, it is about staying away from something potentially destructive. Positive action, on the other hand, generally involves at least an admixture of added value.
With the enjoyment of the good tastes or smells, etc., one necessarily appreciates what is given to us by God. And with this appreciation, one automatically praises God, even if that is not his intention. Those who cook know this – if diners enjoy their food, it is a tribute to the cook, even if those diners don’t know who cooked it. All the more so is this true with God, who has greater involvement with what we enjoy than could be the case with any human being.
There is another insight that can be drawn from the comments of Kli Yakar as well. Ifnezirut is terminated early, it is as if nothing meaningful occurred at all. This deserves our reflection, as it is not immediately intuitive. Generally, processes are gradual – if the entire process is meaningful, part of it should be meaningful as well. Yet sometimes there are thresholds – and if the threshold is not passed, the entire process remains sterile. Going back to the kitchen, if a potato is taken out of the oven too early, it is no more edible than if it were raw – except now, it is also hot, and painful to hold.
It is true that starting a meaningful trajectory is often worth doing, even if we don’t know whether we will take it all the way to the end. But this is not always the case. In a finite life, it is important not to waste precious time on projects we know we are unlikely to finish and which, by being half-baked, will bring no new meaning. Like the potato in the analogy, we will have only wasted precious resources (of time and energy) yet produced nothing that can nourish us.
