Dear members and friends, 

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” (Ps. 116:15)

It’s been a week on an emotional rollercoaster. While we were celebrating the holiday of Shavuot — the time when we reaffirm the Ten Commandments in the synagogue, commemorating the highest point in humanity’s spiritual mountain of Sinai; while we were receiving the most fundamental law of the land for conducting a civil society, someone was making a point to desecrate the name of God. While we were announcing: “Thou shall not murder,” someone massacred 49 people, bringing us from the highest to the lowest — an act by a terrorized soul, a man who couldn’t make peace between his apparent homosexuality and his intolerant religious environment. How dark was his world to bring him to do such a thing?

It was impossible to avoid the symbolism, having just finished counting the 49 days of the Omer, the seven weeks from Passover to Shavuot. We take 49 steps from the great darkness of Egypt to the great light of the Torah in Sinai, a darkness we are commanded never to return to. Immediately upon leaving Egypt, Moses tells the Israelites: “…the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again.” (Ex. 14:13) And again before his death, Moses cautions them: “…the Lord has warned you, you must not go back that way again.” (Deut. 17:16) Yet, there is always something or someone who tries to pull us back.

The Nazarite and the Priest

The Shabbat following the shooting, we read Parashat Naso, which discusses the Nazir and the Kohen — the Nazirite and the Priest. The Nazirite and the Priest are closely connected in the Torah. They are similar in some ways but different in others; essentially, they represent two different ways to deal with the complexities of life. The Torah tells us: “If anyone, man or woman, explicitly utters a Nazirite’s vow, to set himself apart for the Lord, he shall abstain from wine and any other intoxicant… Throughout the term of his vow as Nazirite, no razor shall touch his head… Throughout the term that he has set apart for the Lord, he shall not go in where there is a dead person…”

Much like the Nazirite, the Priest has to abstain from wine and touching a corpse; however, as opposed to the Nazirite, the Priest must always be groomed. The difference in the hair reflects their respective positions, one within the community and one to himself. While the Priest is constantly active in serving the community, the Nazarite is separated from the community, contemplating and introspecting. The Talmud, which dedicates a whole tractate to the study of Nazir, opens by explaining that a person who sees a sotah, a woman suspected of having an extramarital affair, should immediately take the Nazirite’s vow, abstaining from wine because excessive wine drinking surely caused the licentiousness.

Maimonides, in his Laws of Repentance, (Hilchot Teshuvah), explains that a person who sinned is obligated to cure himself by going to the opposite extreme, with the hope that this temporary extremism will bring him ultimately to the ideal middle path. Becoming a Nazirite is definitely extreme. As clergy and as communities, we are responsible to make sure to balance the Nazirite with the Priest. At Mount Sinai, the Israelites announced to God: “Na’aseh VeNishma”—we will do and we will listen! We will do like the Priest, and we will listen like the Nazirite. Upon witnessing such brokenness, we are obligated to become Nazirites for a minute — pause to contemplate, remember, hold vigils, and try to understand why. But we have to remember that “doing” comes first. Right after the vigils and moments of silence, we must return to being Priests, involved in the community and committed to action, committed constantly to climb the 49 steps from the darkness of Egypt to the light of Sinai. 49 steps with 49 names.

—Rabbi Gadi Capela