it a text that reflects on the very notion of rabbinic discourse formation.
The conceptual framework of the narrative and the underlying practice to which it relates are provided by the laws of Naziriteship. What was a guilt offering in the context of the Nazirite laws? How is it to be understood in the sequence of events of this tale? And why, as David Weiss Halivni—one of the story’s modern readers—put it, did “Simon the Just refuse to partake of guilt offerings brought by Nazirites, and why did he make an exception in the case of the shepherd?”6 Before addressing these questions, we must turn to the biblical source text and to later rabbinic discourse on the institution of the Nazirite (in the context of which the text is introduced).
Num. 6:1–21 defines a Nazirite (Heb., nazir) as a person who has taken a vow of abstention. Nazirites are forbidden to consume wine or any product of the vine and other intoxicating liquors (shekhar), and they are also forbidden to cut their hair or to come into contact with a corpse.7 The vow of abstention as stipulated in Numbers 6 is for a limited time (in contrast to a lifelong Nazirite) and is undertaken by the person himself (and not predetermined by God or by a parent).8 The text in Numbers also lays out the ceremony undertaken when the term is completed, involving an elaborate sacrifice and the shaving of the Nazirite’s hair. But before the text provides this climactic ending, it addresses possible disruptions of the normal process—namely, defilement by a corpse. It is at this point that the Nazirite is ordered to undergo seven days of purification, at the end of which he shaves his head, offers sacrifices—including a guilt sacrifice (asham)—and begins the term of his vow over again.
Read against the backdrop of the biblical model, the rabbinic tale is far from clear.9 But a reasonable inference from Simon’s reference to the boy’s hair, and the boy’s own condemnation of what he saw in his reflection, is that his beautiful hair was the trigger for the arousal of his yetzer and that it is at this point that the lad decides to become a Nazirite. According to this prevalent reading, he chooses to take the Nazirite vow because this would require him, at the end of his vow (or after becoming impure during its term), to shave his head. The symbolic act of cutting his hair, as prescribed by Nazirite ritual, would thus be a way of acknowledging the improper vanity that his hair caused. Even though his hair would subsequently grow back, leading him again to be prone to vanity, the symbolic-ritual act that he engaged in would caution him against vanity.
Rabbi Yonah and Rabbi Mane (fourth-century Palestinian rabbis) explain that most Nazirite vows were not undertaken in a clear state of mind and were subsequently regretted.10 After defilement, which requires bringing a guilt offering and prolonging the term of the vow, the Nazirite is even more likely to regret his original commitment. That, according to those two rabbis, renders the sacrifices unconsecrated. According to R. Yona and R. Mane, this is why Simon generally refuses to accept them.11 Halivni concludes from their position that Simon did not oppose asceticism in general (as exemplified by the Nazirite vow),12 nor did he oppose the institution of the Nazirite categorically (how could he possibly second-guess such a revered biblical practice?).13 Instead, Halivni posits, he objected to “the practice prevalent in his time, and even more common in subsequent times, of vowing to be a Nazirite for primarily nonreligious reasons, and in some cases for no other reason than to prove an argument.”14 Accordingly, we may imagine that Simon’s a priori suspicion toward his contemporary Nazirites grows when their term is unexpectedly extended—an extension signified by the very same guilt offering that he refuses to accept.
From Self-Reflectivity to Midrash: Resolving the Hermeneutical Dilemma
The story is unclear regarding the meaning of the Nazirite’s guilt offering. While the narrative leaves the question of the guilt offering and the context of the lad’s defilement obscure, the text offers clues regarding the circumstances that drove the lad to become a Nazirite in the first place.15 Some modern readers suggest that the lad was already a Nazirite at the time of his encounter with his reflection in the water.16 However, it seems more likely, as suggested above, that it was precisely that encounter that drove the lad to take the vows and renounce his head of curls for “the sake of heaven.”17 Viewing the self-reflective scene as the trigger to the boy’s decision to become a Nazirite (and as the instant at which he explicitly utters the vow) provides a richer basis for the narrative’s complexity and the relationship between the characters involved, as well as for understanding Simon’s acceptance of the offering. Simon thus accepts the guilt offering because of the pure intention encapsulated in the lad’s decision to become a Nazirite and because of the explicit negation of vanity that he conveys. The lad’s story, where pure intention and the conscious negation of vanity play a key—and an explicit—role, answers Simon’s implied general critique of a practice that, to his mind, is too often followed out of vanity. If it was his beautiful locks that alarmed the shepherd to begin with, then by allowing his hair to grow wild for the prescribed term, and even for its unexpected extension because of defilement, his act becomes a deliberate self-reflective act aimed at mastering his vanity. Moreover, it is the shepherd’s conscious recognition of the seductive power of his hair that enables Simon to see him as a kindred spirit: they both recognize the dangers of vanity, and both seem excited by an erotic head of curls.
As Simon emphasizes, he is about to recount an exceptional tale, one that alludes to the apprehension with which he regards the practice of Naziriteship—at least, certain of its manifestations.18 The dissonance between practice and prescribed rules suggests that the Torah is flawed as a signifying corpus: it fails to produce the kinds of human beings it envisions. The Nazirite, then, exists in the text but not in the world outside the text. But this creates incoherence between the sacred law and its core assumptions regarding human action. Simon offers a moment of congruence between these two disparate elements by progressing from the (literally) self-reflective scene in which the shepherd is moved to become a Nazirite to Simon’s (self-reflexive) midrash. By midrashically identifying the boy with the general rule stipulated in Numbers, and not the common practice that he sees around him, he resolves his semiotic-hermeneutic dilemma by finding in the young Nazirite a particular signified person to whom the signifier—that is, the Torah—corresponds.
Narratological Reflections of the (Im)Possible Self
The rabbinic tale, like the Greek versions of the myth, is concerned with primal issues of knowledge, self-knowledge, and their epistemological premise. It also, as psychological theories have claimed, points at the fragmented, ambivalent qualities of what might otherwise be mistaken to be an all too coherent notion of the self. The self, the story tells us, must invariably rely on representation, on an externally projected image, to form a notion of itself. Narcissus, caught in the imaginary illusion of an unfragmented, undivided self, fails to recognize the reflection in the water for what it is—a representation, a mode of signification, of himself. The representational aspects of the self, of subjectivity,19 imply an inherent estrangement of human experience, in which the self is never identical to itself (to its represented self). Hence identity is, by its very nature, fractured.20
The “Other Within”: From Human to Textual Representation
Unlike the Greek doomed hero, the Nazirite from the south is saved at the exact moment of reflection, of self-reflectivity. What exactly happened at that instant, according to the doubly mediated recounting of Simon the Just? Simon tells us that the shepherd told him that, having seen his reflection in the water, he was attacked from within. His yetzer—the rabbinic term for the evil inclination that resides within every man21—sought to overcome him and remove him from this world.22 The manifestation of the yetzer thus, paradoxically, signals both the character’s downfall and his ultimate redemption. The yetzer is a remarkable rabbinic innovation. It should be viewed in light of the shift in rabbinic thought, in its treatment of biblical writings, from external to internal conflict in seduction narratives, and in light of the tendency in rabbinic writings to expand
