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Archive for the ‘Halacha’ Category

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A Nazir’s Hair: The Positive Side

Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Thursday, 10 May 2012 05:30

As I mentioned two weeks ago, the presentation of nazir in the Torah seems to focus on the prohibitions on grape-related products and on becoming ritually impure by contact with a person who has passed away. More verses are devoted to those two than to growing hair, and the balance of presentation could logically lead to a focus on wine as central to the status of being a nazir (while the Torah spends more time on the ritual impurity aspect, that seems less nazir specific, since every priest is required to avoid that impurity, as does any Jew who wants to enter the Temple in the next week).

The focus on wine could explain the common view of nezirut as being a matter of training oneself to be less focused on the physical world. For example, Sefer haChinuch (Mitsvah 374) sees the nazir as a person dedicated to giving his or her body only its minimal sustenance. He roots this in the notion of the human being as an intellect (or soul) that God housed in a physical body. We would all, properly, give that body only its essential needs and focus on the soul, whereas most of us overindulge the physical; the nazir is kadosh because he or she dedicates him or herself to giving the minimum to the physical.

Similarly, Sforno sees the haircutting prohibition as teaching the nazir to disregard all thoughts of beauty and/or haircare, and R. Moshe Alshich, the 16^th century Tanach commentator, sees the hair-growing as a way to avoid arrogance or conceit. He is so sure of this reading that he posits that the nazir is actually supposed to avoid all forms of self-decoration, that hair is simply an instance of a broader desire of the Torah’s. (As we will see next week, the Gemara assumes that women nezirot wore makeup; perhaps R. Alshich would have said they were following the letter but not the spirit of the law).

The Evidence for a Positive Side to Nezirut

Where those views seem to miss part of the role of hair in nezirut is that it also has a positive value. First, as we’ll discuss next week, the hair of a nazir is offered up to God, as a sort of sacrifice or offering. In addition, halachah understands the word kadosh (Bamidbar 6;7) to refer to the hair the nazir grows (see Rashi there, for example). That has ramifications; the nazir cannot benefit from that hair (since it is kadosh, meaning it belongs to God, not humans), such as by using it to betroth a woman. We today use a plain ring for that ceremony, but in the Gemara’s time men entered the first stage of marriage with all sorts of gifts. A nazir’s hair (which had value for wigmaking, for example) cannot be used, since it does not belong to the man, it is kadosh.

My sense that kedushah refers to something positive is bolstered by the fact that the Torah legislates an aseh and a lo ta’aseh, a commandment and a prohibition. When the nazir refrains from wine, the only positive commandment he or she is fulfilling is the requirement to fulfill your vows. In contrast, growing his or her hair garners the nazir credit for observing a separate positive commandment, growing the wildness of his or her hair.

This becomes significant in the discussion of the halachic principle of aseh docheh lo ta’aseh, that obligations can in some cases push aside prohibitions (so, for example, the obligation to wear tsitsit pushes aside the prohibition of shatnez). Usually, an obligation cannot push aside a rule that includes an obligation and a prohibition. That should have meant that a nazir metsora, a nazir stricken with what we loosely (and incorrectly) call leprosy, should not have been able to shave his or her head when healed, since the obligation for a nazir to grow his or her hair has both an obligation and a prohibition.

Several answers have been given to that question, and would take us too far afield to discuss. What it does reinforce is that the hair element of nezirut seems, by Torah law, to have a positive element. I should pause here to note that my reading of positive commandments as indicative of positive value (as opposed to the “merely” protective value of prohibitions, keeping us from acting negatively) may be my own. I say may be because I haven’t seen it explicitly anywhere else, although it seems to me that it would explain why the Rambam always counts them as two separate mitsvot (Ramban disagrees, see his comments on the 6^th of the introductory principles to the Sefer haMitsvot).

Striving for a Certain Growth of Hair

Another support for the idea that there is something more than avoiding haircuts at work is that we seem to be building towards something—as one of the attendees at the shiur, Jeffrey Kronisch, put it. We can demonstrate this with three halachot. First, the Gemara assumes that a stam nezirut, a nezirut in which the person taking the oath did not specify a length of time, lasts for thirty days.

How we derive that number, though, is less than fully clear. Leaving aside the several derivations that do not help my point, I turn to another halachah related to the thirty day period that seems to push the conversation in a direction more focused on the need to achieve a certain kind of hair growth. The Yerushalmi in Nazir 6;3 notes that if a nazir shaves his head before the end of his time as a nazir, that knocks thirty days off the time he’s observed. For the example that Rambam gives in his Laws of Nazir 6;2, if a person promised to be a nazir for 100 days, and then shaved his head after twenty days, he must wait a full thirty days until he can start counting again. That suggests that cultivating at least a 30 day growth of hair is important to being a nazir, not just avoiding haircuts.

It is also, I note, only the positive commandment to grow hair that rules out what we generally call haircuts. While shaving off even one hair is a flogging-worthy act for a nazir, that is only if the hair is cut to a length less than being able to bend one hair and have it reach the root of the other. For most modern haircuts, that would not be a problem. Meaning that, as far as that prohibition is concerned, most nezirim could have their regular hair style. It is only because the Torah also says to grow a nazir’s hair that we know he or she cannot cut it at all.

R. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Suggestion

R. Hirsch’s idea of the nazir’s hair takes account of all this. He thinks hair symbolizes shutting oneself off from society (which is why, he suggests, a metsora shaves all his or her hair when the tsara’at is gone—to re-enter society). If so, the nazir is someone who is withdrawing from society for a time, to teach him or herself lessons about the proper way to act and behave (and when the time comes to return to society, with the conclusion of the nezirut, will shave that hair).

The suggestion sees the growing of the hair as a positive, constructive aspect of nezirut, as I’ve tried to argue here. Where I have doubts is that it is deeply dependent on R. Hirsch’s assertion of the symbolism of hair. As I find on other occasions, R. Hirsch’s idea is clever and creative, but I am not convinced that he has enough evidence that hair symbolizes removing oneself from society.

Next week, God willing, we’ll review the ceremony for burning this hair once the nezirut is done, and I hope that will let us draw some conclusion about hair’s role in a nazir’s life, the second piece in our search for a general experience of hair in halachah. Shabbat Shalom.

Tags: Hair, Nazir, Rabbi Gidon Rothstein | Posted under Halacha, Questions and Answers |

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Last Updated on Thursday, 10 May 2012 03:51

What Does Hair Mean to a Kohen?

Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Thursday, 3 May 2012 03:00

I’ve spent two introductory shiurim coming at the topic of hair, but the truth is that the Torah commandment that brought the topic to my attention relates specifically to the kohanim, the priests. In the aftermath of the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, Aharon’s sons, Moshe commands them not to let their hair grow nor to rend their garments. As we discussed two weeks ago, that might seem to imply a Torah obligation for others to perform those acts upon losing a close relative, but that is not the focus that Hazal gave to this verse. Rather, Hazal saw it as one of the sources for the prohibition for a priest to let his hair grow wild.

For example, Sefer haChinuch 149 counts a commandment “that priests shall not enter the Temple with their hair overgrown,” and cites this verse, Vayikra 10;6 as the source. Perhaps because of that, Sefer haChinuch assumes that the problem with overgrown hair is that it is disrespectful to the Temple, in that it looks like the priest is in mourning, and it would be inappropriate to enter the King of King’s environs with such a look, just as Mordechai could not enter Ahashverosh’s court in sackcloth.

The Evidence of the Gemara

That reading, while understandable, is slightly difficult once we turn to the Talmudic discussion, Sanhedrin 22b. First, the Talmud doesn’t focus so much on our verse as on Yehezkel 44; 20, which says that priests, in general, will not let their hair grow wild. Later in the discussion, the Talmud seems clear that until the time of Yehezkel, this rule was a tradition, an Halacha le-Moshe mi-Sinai, and Yehezkel incorporated it in Scripture. It would seem, then, that this Gemara did not understand the verse in Parashat Shemini as establishing a general rule.

Leaving the technicalities—e.g., why Elazar and Itamar at that time weren’t ordinary priests, or how the Gemara can assume that a death penalty crime such as serving in the Temple with overgrown hair could have been left unstated in Scripture—but two other aspects of the Talmudic discussion throw a further wrench in seeing this prohibition as Sefer haChinuch does, as a problem in looking like a mourner.

First, Gemara’s standard for overgrown hair is its having been left uncut for thirty days. It derives that number from noting the use of the word pera both here and in the context of a nazir, who is obligated to grow a pera. Just like the minimal growth for a nazir is thirty days, a priest would not be considered as having run afoul of the pera issue until he had let his hair grow for thirty days.

That derivation suggests that whatever’s wrong about a kohen growing his hair is the same thing as whatever’s right about a nazir growing his hair, and we’ll have to wait until next week for that discussion. But what it doesn’t say is that a kohen can’t grow his hair because he looks like he’s in mourning (true, the Talmud derives the notion of thirty days of mourning from a nazir as well, but that again puts nazir at the center, not mourning). More than that, the Talmudic discussion gives us two more reasons to think there’s more going on with a kohen’s hair than avoiding the mourning look.

Mowing the Kohen’s Hair

First, the verse in Yehezkel actually refers to a positive a standard of hair growth as well. The verse says the priests will not let their hair grow wild, but adds that kasom yichsemu et rosheihem, which is defined as cutting their hair so short that the top of one hair will just be able to be bent over and reach the root of the hair next to it. And while Yehezkel seems to hope for that for all priests (Yad Ramah thinks that will be the standard in the time of the 3^rd Temple), the Gemara notes that it was already the standard for the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, in the time of the 2^nd Temple. Something about that shortness of hair seems to be a positive, which at least raises the possibility that the problem with overgrown hair is that it has gotten too far from that goal and ideal (in which case, it only coincidentally relates to mourning).

The second piece of that Gemara that sheds light on our discussion is that it pairs the rule about a regular priest with the practice of kings and High Priests in terms of hair cutting. The king, we are told, would have his hair cut every day, to fulfill the verse in Yeshayahu 33;17, which tells us to see a king in his full beauty. What the Gemara doesn’t explain is why daily haircutting will insure that. Rambam, Laws of Kings 2;8, connects this rule to the obligation on the king to wear fine clothing all the time, implying that a person with a daily haircut is always looking his best, but doesn’t explain why. Meiri, in Beit haBehirah to Sanhedrin 22b, says the king has to be sure to avoid having anything look wrong about him, since that will lessen people’s awe of him; he seems to assume the need for a daily haircut is to be sure that no hair is out of place, literally. The problem with that idea is that the verse speaks of seeing the king in his greatest beauty, not avoiding seeing him negatively.

The Beauty of Uniformity

I wonder whether the beauty here is that the king looks exactly the same all the time, rather than that this avoids any disarray in his look (really: how much could hair grow, if the king skipped a day? Did the High Priest, who went a week between haircuts, really look so much worse?). The idea of uniformity as a type of beauty seems to me also to resonate in Rambam’s reading of the standard of kasom yichsemu. Ravad argues that it was a way to keep hair off of the priest’s forehead; for him, the goal of the priests’ haircut would be to keep their faces free of hair (for him, maybe, the implication is that all hair is a problem, an annoyance, and the more able we are to keep it unobtrusive the better; on the other hand, we cannot simply shave it all off, because God put it there for a reason. Ravad does not give us enough evidence to say more, but I do note that he is known to have been opposed to indulging our physical sides almost at all, at least in terms of sexuality. If so, this might fit with that). But Rambam says that the goal is to have it look like it all grew at the same time—meaning, uniformly.

That leaves us with the possibility that the reason for the king to get a haircut every day is for him to look unchanging, always the same, similar to the goal for priests to be that they look like their hair grew uniformly, and there was no variation within it. (This, by the way, fits nicely with Rambam’s view of perfection as being unchanging—once you reach perfection, that’s it; if so, the more unchanging and uniform we could get our physical bodies, the closer to perfection. Or, perhaps, the closer to God, which would fit priests’ role as representatives of God.).

Growing hair might be a problem, then, because of how far it strays from the ideal. Rambam, Laws of Entering the Temple 1;17, says no Jew can enter looking unkempt, but adds that extremely long hair can be beautiful on some Jews (such as Avshalom, as we saw last week). If so, the existence of a firm 30 day standard for priests does imply that their standard is not solely about looking unkempt.

Rambam also holds the rule only applies when priests actually enter a part of the Temple where they could serve. Ravad thinks that any priest alive when the Temple was standing would have to keep his hair cut every thirty days; for Ravad, the ability to serve makes overgrowing hair a problem, which might fit with his view of hair, above, as being a kind of negative aspect of the priest’s body.

For Rambam, though, hair only arises in the context of being present in the Temple. (Ramban thinks the full violation is only if the priest actually serves. R. Hayyim Soloveitchik z”l thought Ravad might have accepted that entry into the Temple building itself would be a violation, even without serving). For Rambam, the issue of overgrowing one’s hair has to do less with the relationship to the Temple grounds than with the relationship to God implied in serving in the Temple while looking less than appropriate—with appropriate, at least for the Rambam, being looking as uniform and unchanging as possible.

In our first real foray into hair, then, we find at least three models. Sefer haChinuch sees hair as a problem only because it looks like mourning. For him, all we can say about hair is that it’s something to be tended regularly, to avoid looking bad. Ravad seems to think of hair as something that gets in the way, and that it’s inherent to a priest’s status—in the time of the Temple—that he keep his hair out of the way. Finally, and with the most far-reaching implications for a discussion of hair, Rambam seems to think that the goal of priests’ hair (assuming he agrees that the verse in Yehezkel is not just for the High Priest, but would be the goal of ordinary priests, too) is to present as uniform and unchanging a picture as possible (as does the king). Three models of hair so far; next week, when we begin discussing the nazir, we’ll enrich and complicate our model of hair, considerably.

Tags: Beauty, Cohen, Gemara, Hair, Haircuts, Rabbi Dr. Gidon Rothstein | Posted under Halacha |

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Last Updated on Tuesday, 1 May 2012 03:26

Three Famous Nezirim From Scripture and What They Say About Hair

Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Sunday, 29 April 2012 03:00

As I noted last week, I have decided to look into the halachic ramifications of hair for the 5 essays I’ll have a chance to share with you until Shavuot (we are now in the 3^rd week of the Omer, and I’ll post one for each of weeks 3-7). I had the idea from Hashem’s command to Aharon and his sons not to let their hair grow wild in the aftermath of the death of Nadav and Avihu, and the ramifications of that command for all later kohanim is the topic for next week. This week, when I again did not give a shiur in the RJC (Mazal Tov to Bar-Mitsvah Dovie Marcus!), I will take up the halachic implications of Hazal’s identification of three figures from Tanach as having been nezirim.

Shimshon: A Shimshon Nazir, not a Forever Nazir

The first, and perhaps most famous, nazir in Tanach is Shimshon. Before he is born, an angel appears to Shimshon’s mother, to tell her that she is about to become pregnant, and needs to already refrain from wine and other intoxicants and from eating anything impure (this is a problematic command, because a nazir doesn’t have extra eating restrictions, other than those related to wine and grapes), and from cutting his hair, because the baby will be a nazir from birth. When she tells her husband, he prays for a return visit, and the angel stresses wine and eating prohibitions, as before.

Radak and Ralbag note that in the context of Shimshon’s later life, the command seems to be an attempt to help Shimshon control his appetites, since his tendency to physical indulgence indeed ended up being his downfall. In that reading, though, the hair aspect seems almost incidental. His main focus, it might seem, is avoiding intoxication.

In Mishnah Nazir 1;2, the hair aspect becomes more prominent. The Mishnah is in the process of enumerating ways in which one can declare nezirut; one such is to say “I declare myself like Shimshon” or any similar moniker (the husband of Delilah, the one who brought down the gates of Azah, etc.). Such a person becomes a “nezir Shimshon,” which lasts forever, but differs from another nezirut that lasts forever, a nazir olam.

First, a nezir Shimshon can never cut his hair; someone who declares him or herself a nazir forever (we’ll see two famous examples in a moment) is allowed to periodically cut his or her hair, but a nazir in the mold of Shimshon can never do so. In addition, since Shimshon didn’t take the vow himself—it was imposed upon him by the angel—a nazir in that mold cannot ever get out of his vow, even by the usual methods of demonstrating that it was taken erroneously or without full knowledge.

On the other hand, the consensus of tradition (as codified by Rambam in Laws of Nazir 3;13) was that Shimshon was allowed to come into contact with corpses, meaning his was a nezirut that focused on wine and hair issues exclusively. Radak and Ralbag’s view of his nezirut tells us why—if the point was to teach him physical restraint, to counterbalance the extraordinary physical gifts he was given, we could see that the issue of corpse impurity wouldn’t have been as significant, and God might therefore have dispensed with those in his case.

Shmuel: A Nazir Forever

The first example of the other kind of “forever” nezirut is Shmuel, and he, too, would seem to have had his vow imposed upon him. In the first chapter of the book of Shmuel, Shmuel’s then-childless mother pours her heart out to God, finishing with a vow that if God gives her a child, she will donate that child to God all the days of his life, “ u-morah lo ya’aleh al rosho, and a mora will not go on his head.”

The meaning of morah in that verse is crucial to Shmuel’s life story, and to several halachic issues, and is a matter of debate in Mishnah Nazir 9;5. R. Nehorai holds that morah refers to a razor, and was a vow that he would not cut his hair, whereas R. Yose holds that she meant mora in terms of fear, that she was promising that her son would not fear other human beings and would serve God fearlessly.

R. Nehorai’s response in the Mishnah is both striking and seems to have taken the day. He notes that later in the book, Shmuel is afraid to go anoint David the king, since Shaul will hear and kill him. For R. Nehorai, that proves that Shmuel did fear human beings, and could not have been the intent of his mother’s vow. Rambam rules that way as well, with the most immediate halachic ramification that if one says “Behold, I am like Shmuel (or, ‘like Channah’s son’) that person is a nazir olam.

Note that here, too, Shmuel would seem to have been inserted into his nezirut by someone else. We might therefore have assumed that Shmuel was like Shimshon, allowed to come into contact with corpses but with no way out of his nezirut. As Radbaz notes in his commentary to the Mishneh Torah, though, halachah does not accept that assumption (he suggests it was the difference between having a parent make the oath for him, as in Shmuel’s case, or an angel, as in Shimshon’s), and instead sees Shmuel as a classic nezir olam, who had to obey all the laws of nezirut, but could, theoretically, have sought rabbinic help in discovering that his vow need not be binding on him.

Meshech Chochmah to Vayikra 4 notes one problem, that Channah says a razor will never go on his head, when halachah rules that a nazir olam, a forever nazir can, in fact, cut his hair (probably yearly, as we will see in a minute, although one Rashi seems to suggest that it was even monthly). Meshech Chochmah suggests that in Shmuel’s time, there was no venue for him to offer the requisite sacrifices that had to accompany a nazir olam’s cutting his hair, so that in fact he never did cut his hair, but theoretically could have.

I have not seen any sources that explain why Shmuel’s mother would have made him a nazir forever, perhaps because they thought the answer was obvious. Part of dedicating a child to God, I think we are meant to understand, was limiting his partaking of the physical world. He wouldn’t drink wine, wouldn’t come into contact with death (one of the most worldly of experiences), and wouldn’t attend to his personal grooming. In that sense, perhaps, we can see that R. Nehorai and R. Yose weren’t so far apart in their reading of the word “morah.” They agreed that Channah meant to assert that Shmuel’s head would be in a different place than ordinary humans; where they differed was the strategy they understood her to be putting into place to assure that outcome.

The Paradigm of the Nazir Olam: Avshalom

Shmuel’s case leaves us little specific halachic content, because it seems to have gone uneventfully. The source of the ruling that such nezirim can cut their hair annually, is Avshalom. In II Shmuel 14;26, the navi pauses to note how full his hair was, such that when he cut it yearly, he would leave behind a remarkable heft of hair. A few verses later (15;7), Avshalom asks his father, King David, to go to Hevron to fulfill his vow that he made when he was in exile in Geshur.

Hazal understand this to have been a reference to the sacrifices a nazir brings when he cuts his hair, and assert from here that “forever” nezirim can shave annually, and bring sacrifices along with that shaving, and then start over again. I note that Radak assumes this is a tradition, not a derivation, since the verses don’t say that at all, as does Tosafot Yom Tov in the first chapter of Nazir. Whatever the source, this tradition about Avshalom has halachic teeth.

I find the picture of Avshalom as a nazir, as having taken a vow of nezirut when he was in exile for having killed his brother Amnon, remarkable. The Avshalom we meet in Scripture seems, to me, to be remarkably premeditated. He does not respond when Amnon rapes his sister, biding his time until he can kill him. Then, when he does, he flees to Geshur until Yoav, his next door neighbor, convinces the king to allow him back. That is not good enough for him, however, and he forces Yoav to convince the king to fully rehabilitate him—and then he foments rebellion, spending time deliberately and consciously cultivating the masses of the nation, drawing them to his side as opposed to David’s!

When the rebellion fails, Avshalom’s personal downfall comes when his hair gets caught in a tree, and he is hanging there, unable to get down (and Yoav kills him, against David’s wishes). I suspect we usually assume he couldn’t cut himself down, maybe because of the angle or whatever, but the tradition that he was a nazir might suggest that he wouldn’t cut himself down, because it would violate his vow.

Even if you leave that last piece out, it shows us a picture of Avshalom’s complexities in a way I find both familiar and endlessly stimulating. We might think his vow of nezirut was cynical, except that he was in Geshur, and we have no reason to think his father knew of it (indeed, when he wants to go to Hevron, he seems to be first telling his father that he had vowed to be a nazir). It seems to me more to paint a picture of Avshalom as a hot-headed individual (but not impulsive—he waited years to kill Amnon), realizing that his temper had gotten him in trouble, deciding that he needed more self-control, and turning to nezirut to do it.

It didn’t work . Instead, his yearly head-shaving was an occasion of pride instead of humility, and his nezirut did not keep him from rebellion, death, and ignominy. It suggests that, in his case, nezirut was a failed attempt to fend off the negative sides of his personality.

Where Did Wine-Drinking Go?

Note that in both cases of “forever” nezirim, Shmuel and Avshalom, the role of refraining from wine-drinking is minimiezed. While halachah assumes they had those restrictions as well, they do not play a significant role in their stories, whereas the Torah’s presentation focuses much more on the wine aspects. I wonder whether a temporary nezirut will focus more on wine, because the hair doesn’t really become a significant issue until several months have passed. For those who are in the lifestyle their whole lives, though, wine recedes with time (as it does for successful alcoholics, those who manage to stay away from drink), but the hair keeps growing back, always there to be shaved again, a reminder of the goals of the nezirut.

That would mean that our three Scriptural nezirim show us how this kind of vow shapes a person in the long term as well as the short term, and is meant to train that person to resist the physical world, to focus wholly on God. Given these 3 examples, we’d have to say (as Clint Eastwood does in Heartbreak Ridge, a movie not worth seeing, but that did give me this line) that we were “one, one, and one,” having had one success, Shmuel, one failure, Avshalom, and one in-between, Shimshon.

Next week, God willing, we’ll start our formal discussion of hair in halachah, looking at the prohibition on a priest to grow his hair wild. Shabbat Shalom.

Tags: Hair, Nazir, Rabbi Gidon Rothstein | Posted under Halacha, Tanach | Comments

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Last Updated on Sunday, 29 April 2012 10:20

A Mourner’s Obligation to Ignore His or Her Hair

Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
Thursday, 19 April 2012 03:30

I am not giving my customary shiur at the RJC this coming Shabbat. As I have noted on other occasions, one current in Jewish writing suggests that a thought that has not yet been hashed out orally is not worth disseminating—the prime example is Maharsha’s refusal to comment on those sections of the Talmud where he was absent from his yeshiva. Nonetheless, I have decided to share ideas this week and next in the hopes that by writing it out I will improve my own understanding, and that your questions and responses will enlighten me as well.

In this coming week’s parsha (this past week for those fortunate enough to be in Israel), Aharon haKohen and his sons are restricted in their reactions to the deaths of Nadav and Avihu. Moshe Rabbenu tells them not to let their hair grow wild, nor to rend their garments, nor to leave the opening of Ohel Moed, the Tent of Meeting. In the weeks leading up to Shavuot, I thought to take up the topic of hair in halachah, deliberately not addressing the best-known example, women’s covering their hair. Perhaps by investigating other contexts of hair a little more fully, we can understand the significance of the commandments surrounding hair (a first step is to try to think of the contexts in which hair comes up, and then see how your list stacks up with mine).

For this week, I thought I’d take up the case of mourning, which is not even necessarily a Torah commandment.

Mourning—A Biblical Obligation?

As Rashi records, Hazal seem to have inferred from Moshe’s words that these practices are obligatory on other mourners, under pain of death. In Moed Katan 24a, we read, “R. Tachlifa b. Abdimi said in the name of Shmuel, a mourner who did not let his hair grow wild nor rend his garments is liable for the death penalty.” He gets it from the fact that Moshe Rabbenu told Aharon and his sons not to do these things, and then said, “and you will not die,” implying that others who fail to act that way would die.

Rambam seems to read this similarly, since he codifies this prohibition for a mourner, citing this verse as the source. He notes that while the verse refers only to the hair on their heads, the prohibition includes all hair on the body as well (meaning: shaving or otherwise grooming oneself).

One problem that Ramban notes is that we halachically assume the warning about death had to do with the punishment a priest would incur if he did let his hair grow wild or rend his clothing (when serving in the Temple), whereas Rashi and Rambam’s reading would imply that they were being told they did not have to perform these practices. In addition, we generally assume that mourning is a Rabbinically instituted practice (and many more of those practices are actually matters of custom, arising long after the Talmud, such as the recitation of kaddish). The most stringent opinion that Ramban acknowledges is that of the Geonim, who held that the first day of mourning was an halachah le-Moshe mi-Sinai.

Rambam (Hilchot Evel 1;1), however, rules that the first day of mourning is a Torah obligation, derived from another conversation surrounding the deaths of Nadav and Avihu. In Vayikra 10; 16-20, Moshe Rabbenu discovers that the se’ir hatat, the sin-offering goat, had been burnt rather than eaten, and questions Aharon about it. Aharon responds that it did not seem appropriate to eat it on a day when such events—the deaths of his sons—had occurred. Moshe agreed with him, which Rambam took as ratifying a one-day obligation of mourning, when the person who passed away is buried on the same day as his or her passing. Rambam adds that the seven day practice is an halacha le-Moshe mi-Sinai.

In Rambam’s version, I note, the hair-related aspect of mourning has to do with not cutting it on that one day, when the Torah seems to refer to it as an act of letting the hair grow wild. Indeed, Moed Katan 19a speaks of a 30 day prohibition for a mourner, since a Nazir is obligated to grow his or her hair for at least 30 days to qualify as a pera, a wild growing of hair. That part of it, Rambam would seem to concede, was Rabbinic.

What Was God Requiring of Aharon and his Two Remaining Sons?

Ramban instead declares the whole discussion an asmachta, a case of the Rabbis’ speaking as if they were deriving a law from the Torah, but only to better ground a law that is actually Rabbinic. Asmachta is a very complicated topic, especially since it is not always clear when a Talmudic derivation is an asmachta and when not. This is a matter that Ramban disagreed about with Rambam in the latter’s Sefer haMitsvot as well, since Rambam seems to require some Talmudic evidence that a derivation is Rabbinic; otherwise, he assumes that it is de-oraita, such as here.

The technicalities have their own charm, and have sparked many discussions, but I want here to focus on our particular practice and the ramifications of seeing it as commanded by the Torah or by the Rabbis. In Rashi and Rambam’s reading, God was prohibiting Aharon and his sons from engaging in the ordinary mourning practices, such as letting their hair grow wild. For Rambam, who understood the Torah to set up an obligation that applied for only one day, that obligation has to be less about letting one’s hair grow wild (no hair gets wild in one day) than a prohibition about what the mourner could do to his or her hair on that day.

Ritva, as it happens, notices a general problem in using this verse as the source for a mourner’s obligation; Nadav and Avihu died on the 8^th of Nisan, meaning that Pesach was a week away, and a holiday stops a mourner’s obligation to grow his hair, which means that even a regular mourner who started that day wouldn’t get around to growing his hair for the minimum thirty days. In fact, though, Ritva thinks the whole obligation is Rabbinic, as had Ramban.

The Derivation of an Halachah Impacts Its Character

That means that the debate about the source also creates a difference of opinion as to the nature of the practice. For Rambam and those who agree that there is a Torah obligation, the Torah prohibited a day of self-grooming, which the Rabbis then extended to a full month, based on a similar phrasing to nazir. But the two can’t really be seen as similar, because the focus of the nazir’s obligation is wildness, whereas the focus of the mourner’s is refraining from self-grooming. The most we can say is that the two are examples of hair being a mode of how we present ourselves to the public.

For Ramban and those who agree with him, the Rabbis decided to adopt the nazir’s obligation to grow one’s hair wild for the mourner as well. They may or may not be for the same reason, but both are obligated to ignore their hair for long enough that it be appreciable.

It is only in that latter context, it seems to me, that the discussions we find about combing or shampooing hair during mourning get off the ground. Hagahot Maimoniyot, commenting on Rambam, mentions those who ruled that a mourner should neither comb nor scrub his hair (women are given a dispensation, so as not to look conspicuously disheveled), just as a nazir would have to. Hagahot Maimoniyot seems to reject that view, precisely because the derivation from nazir isn’t meant to be so complete.

What exactly they did or did not borrow, and what it was calculated to mean, depends on a fuller understanding of the rules of nazir, which I hope to get to in a couple of weeks’ time. For now, we have our opening introduction, showing us that there is both a meaning to removing one’s hair and to letting it grow, and that each of those actions or inactions have halachic significance in different contexts.