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Torah Portion -
Nasso
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Written by d fine
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As the Torah mentions (6:11), a Nazir must bring a sin offering. Why is that? Rashi (6:11) cites the Tanna Rebbi Eliezer HaKappar, who explains that the Nazir has sinned in wrongly withholding wine from himself. Yet the Torah (6:5) attests that such a person is holy for this act of becoming a Nazir - so is he holy or a sinner? The Kli Yakar resolves this contradiction by noting that the Torah only says that the Nazir has sinned in a case where he desecrated his Nezirus by coming into contact with a corpse. Since this has the effect of cancelling his previous days of Nezirus and requiring the Nazir to start his days of Nezirus all over again, the previous days of refraining from wine have been shown to be in vain. This is why he is branded a sinner, for it turns out that he refrained from wine for no reason. But a regular Nazir who manages to see out his term of Nezirus successfully is not sinner.
For more info on this interesting subject as to whether a Nazir is regarded as a saint or a sinner, see Ramban 6:14, Tosafos Bava Kama 91b ‘ela,’ and the Rambam hilchos De’os 3:1, hilchos Nezirus 10:14, and hilchos Nedarim 13:23-24).
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