Meet a Nazarite from Judea

ari bramwood's here with my dear friend liad brody and it's my favorite segment called better know a jew and for those that have tuned into this segment before they know why it's because i've always been like a show and tell type of guy and the best kept secret of judea is the jews of judea and you are one of those incredible diamonds you're a diamond of a jew every time i'm around you i feel closer to hashem i leave inspired and and i thought that this was a perfect week to introduce you to our friends and brothers in the fellowship i was just telling you about the fellowship uh you know hundreds of people and 40 countries around the world that are just so thirsty to connect with israel the torah of israel the nation of israel the god of israel and and that's what it's about so i wanted to introduce them to you and i was thinking of course there was another torah portion i thought that you would tie in very well too but this one is beautiful as well because this the minute i started reading through it and it was about vows and annulling vows and just in general the power of a vow of a neder in hebrew i i thought to invite you now why would i invite you to uh well first of all i got to say it's a privilege to be here thank you and uh i feel the same way anytime i'm around you i feel closer to hashem so uh we're very blessed um i know the other portion you're talking about is probably parshas nasso and most of the time i get a text message like oh it's your parsha and the reason is because i was a nazirite a nazir in hebrew for over seven years concluded recently on life by omer and uh so yeah even to this day even though i'm no longer in that status people still know me as a nazir just because of that most people have only ever known me as that my wife i've known you for years and only recently correct have you uh returned it to the fold of yeah whatever that means humanity yeah right trying to become a human again so what was that like why did you take on that vow well what was that like give us your thought process just briefly you were born in south africa correct born in south africa lived there until i was about 11. spent the next about 11 years in california and then i went off spent a year in asia it was a wild time and it was actually in asia and that i i became an azerite it was right after pesach time on uh the conclusion of pesach is the it's known as the pesach and it concludes with seventh day of passover passover right and uh there's a little bit of a celebration a feast at the conclusion some call it my munna others call it the mashiach the feast of messiah and um it was actually on that day that i ended up taking on the vow um i think one of the simple reasons i took it on is like you and i think this is why we connect so much is we're a bit extremist in a certain sense i mean if you look at where ari is right now where we are right now you understand there's a there's a positive we just sort of purchased that to be zealous for hashem to be zealous for holiness there's nothing wrong with that and i think that's why me and you connect in our friend circle we connect and um i've always manifested itself in different ways right absolutely absolutely and um i i i strongly felt that it's an injustice it's a sadness in the world that the creator of the world where there is nothing outside of him doesn't have a home in his own world and how can i allow myself to be comfortable to be too comfortable so long as he doesn't have a home i don't want to be so well isn't that what we're trying to do with our our prayers and our national aspiration for the beitan mikdash for the temple to create a dwelling place a home for god in the world isn't that what were what our aspiration should be why did you decide to make it on such a personal biblical nazarite out of the box way i mean most people don't know any other nazarites i i didn't other than you right i think an add-in element is you can't really maybe give a good reason behind these things i know i'm married to a woman who's a convert although it's a story for another time that she does have family lineage that connected to judaism so when you ask most converts at least when i've asked them why they did it it's it's something deep and innate inside of them that they can't really describe they just know that this is who they are and they could give reasons but the reasons are never good enough i can't tell you necessarily i can give you reasons but even to myself the reasons aren't good enough the most deep and innate reason is i just felt this is what i need to do this is one of the what we would call with regard to kabbalah this is a rectification that we as a cloud as a general all-encompassing soul of israel need and sometimes a certain individual might do so for the the collective and i even after now i've concluded i've had rabbis come up to me and say thank you in a sense for your service like we would say to a soldier because they understand that the torah is eternal that means that the portions of the torah that describe the nazirite and speak about the commandments relating to the nazirite they haven't gone out of effect just because we don't have a temple anymore there's still a belief and there's still an idea of it and this is something that i can't describe i just knew this is something i needed to do so what did that entail right you you took on this nazarite and you took it on indefinitely this was the value took indefinitely or i remember there being something else there correct i there was something else i originally took it on uh with the the mindset that i would be concluding it when messiah came because when messiah came there would be a temple and when there was going to be a temple and i still that was your stated intention that was my intention correct when messiah you understood when this happened the gravity of the vow probably not to be honest but i mean i was still gung-ho about it i was all in and then as as years went by um there was an opportunity you were at my wedding um you actually were the pillar at my wedding holding down and it was a windy day you had to hold the real yeah that's why i picked you because i know you're you're a strong guy you can handle it but um right before we got married many of the rabbis of my wife and of myself what they said we've got about 10 rabbis here like we can organize a bastion which would be a a court a religious holy court that anything that is cemented here below is cemented up above in the heavens and we can find a way to get you out of this to another vow and i'd spoken to my wife before she would be my future wife at the time and i said to her listen this isn't about me anymore this decision no longer just affects me it affects you the moment we're united we become one now i'll tell you that i believe in the words of that sadikim i believe in the words of rav cook i believe in the words of rebbi nachman the rabbi of lubavitch all these great great men that have said very clearly that we're in if not that the beginning of messiah we're straight up in the times of messiah already and therefore i i don't a lot of times i meet people and they say to me oh so you're going to be a nazarite forever until you die and i say god forbid what are you talking about i don't know where you where your mind is even coming no this is until like tomorrow that's the way i see it because the temple is right here any second now i'm going to see it and i'm going to conclude it then so i understand if if this is a heavy thing i said to my wife to take on and we can find a way out of it and and it'll work out it's no problem but if you if you like me or as a you know an extremist and you believe in the words of the tsarikim the righteous that say that we're in that time then it's not forever and you know i you know how did she respond to that she said percent i i'm with you i agree we're going to see and she had you had been dating for a while so she knew what that entailed now tell our our viewers out there our listeners what does that entail to actually be in nazareth we've heard of samson correct we've heard of uh but to actually do it i remember you describing it once it was like a whole back world that you never pictured to be the story it's it's even interesting to see you so clean cut and under control and sharp looking because it wasn't like that for a while so i i was an untamed beast if you will um so there's 10 commandments according to the rambam immonitis that are associated with the nazarite the truth is i can break them down into three categories and the ten commandments as we'll see are all fitting into those three categories first the nazarite is not allowed to cut his hair that means i can brush my hair because as a jew with curly hair chances are you're going to pull out a hair i can't i have to be careful if i pulled out a single hair i would be doing a sin against god and against the torah of god so that that's one category not letting your hair grow that's a commandment and not cutting your hair that's a commandment as well the next category is with regards to the fruit of the vine what we would call grape vine and that means that i cannot partake of anything associated with the grapevine not even the leaves not even a raisin not even balsamic vinaigrette that's made out of the same products which has been a difficulty throughout the years because a lot of times we know meat is made with wine or his salad dressing is with vinaigrette so thank god my wife has always been on top of it and she saved saved me many times because unknowingly you know something was in there so that's another whole category so it breaks up in many ways the grape the raisin the leaf all these different things so that's category two category three is i cannot i could not i should say allow myself to take on the impurity that comes with contact with death so it's even more severe than the cohen than the priest even more in a sense than the high priest is for the nazarite the nazarite is called in the words of the torah kadosh holy to god and so is the priest it's called holy to god but it's even more so because a priest is allowed to get impurity by contact by going to for example bury a close relative a nazarite even for a close relative even for a close relative even if god forbid my parents god forbid my brothers god forbid my wife were to pass away i would not be allowed to become impure whereas a priest would be able to but did you did you feel a closeness because of these constraints did you feel a closeness to god did it amplify a level of spirituality it's a great question on the one hand a closeness to god and on the other hand a foreigner from people i i felt and some in some sense i still feel it through me a bit of an alienness a little bit of of it being an outsider um because when it comes to a catastrophe god forbid when someone dies god forbid it's natural human instinct to feel like there's something wrong here to feel pain on the human level and being as i was by law having to set a boundary and be separate from that human element of the morning process and everything i would i've always been strongly in hashem's corner as opposed to maybe in the human corner of no this is pain this is hard where is the goodness in this and i you know so that that i i found really uh was a product you've always been there or this was amplified by the nazarite valve that you took correct amplified by the nazareth and i found that since i've concluded my vow it's interesting to see interpersonal relationships how they've changed there have been people that for years kept the distance from me for whatever reason for obviously the way i looked was you could describe how you look differently i remember you used to wear this very sort of rastafarian head net that looked very packed it was packed and uh could you describe what was going on under there i could um so i mean when i first started my vow before i was married i would i would wear uh you didn't have a kippah a a yamakura head covering that necessarily covered the amount of my head that i would like because the amount of hair i had was just so immense so i wore a beanie as my kippah essentially as my head covering and i before god got married i allowed myself to let my hair out at least to the sides once i got married i changed that and i started covering all the time my entire hair and being that i have curly hair when you put it up in in that configuration it was inevitable that you would get dreadlocks in your hair so it turned into a giant dreadlock if you will my entire head and um eventually typical beanies wouldn't do the job so the i had to turn to my brothers and sisters in jamaica because they were the closest to deal you know they had a situation that they that was similar that they could deal with it so i had bigger and bigger beanies that would uh cover the whole head and it was really um it weighed a few pounds easily and it was large i i guess you you might be able to describe it even better uh you know i i don't know okay and so your family what did they think i met your dad he's like a pretty normal type of guy right i mean they still think i'm crazy um but i mean it's funny because recently we did a little exercise where we went through on the table and we said you know describe everyone in just one word and the the word that you know that seemed to keep coming up were words that were you know pious words along that nature words about someone who just um is devout and and taking things to another level when it comes to his obligations as a jew right um are there other nazirites in israel there are other nazarites and there have been historically even in recent times very well known as rights um i've met you know people religious people that are learning people that are like as soon as you know they find out i'm a nazarite or see they're like oh there's no such thing and and it's it's quite absurd and it's quite a surprise to me every time i hear that because we know that uh for example in recent times the main student of rav cook was known as rav nazir he was the nazarite rabbi and he was even more extreme than i was in the sense that he took on vows uh beyond what just the nazarite vowel was he vowed never to speak in a language other than hebrew never to leave the land of israel never many many vows on top of that um there's those that um say and and it seems to be a well-known uh accepted fact that the rocket trover go on uh the genius of robert over who according to many opinions gave smith rabbinical ordination to the lubavitch that he himself was also nazarite and if you look at pictures you see you know his immense hair so in recent times we've had really really big individuals that were nazarites and even to this day there are uh you know i personally didn't like getting too much attention so it's not like i would parade around and announce it on the contrary actually it was between me and god and i imagine a lot of table conversations it just became about it's like we have that mutual friend on akiva he's a raw food vegan every table conversation becomes the fact he's a raw food vegan i imagine all the more so for you it uh maybe against your will absolutely absolutely it became my identity in a big sense um who i who i was which is when i concluded my vow it really in a sense felt like a death of of an individual because it was something that for seven plus years was one with me and so could you tell us about that how did you conclude that what what inspired the conclusion what changed things okay so over the years um a lot of times when i've met religious individuals and and you know they found out that i i was a nazirite one of the typical reactions i got is oh so you're a sinner which is very you know a low low way of looking at things but the truth is that it's correct according to the torah to conclude the nazirite vow you would have to bring a sin offering and it's debated amongst the sages why do they have to bring a sin offering um one of the understandings is that you've cut yourself off from the world a world which god like you said wants us to be a part of wants to elevate and by making extra limitations on yourself you're you've kind of gone away from god's will in a way and at the same time there's ramban who says actually the reason that nazarite needs to bring a sin offering is because he was on a high level of spirituality and he allowed himself to conclude that vow and therefore come to a lower level of spirituality that was the sin so i i had people that were always against it always felt that most people if not 99.9 we said that there was a few big big holy individuals that were now's right but the majority of us shouldn't even think about valve's vows are very serious and and i do need to put that disclaimer out there that like even if you think this is cool don't you know be very careful people are the sages say any rabbi you really go to today will say just don't make the vow correct just don't make it the the gravity we don't even understand the gravity well enough nowadays to know the power of the vow so don't even go there absolutely it's a very typical thing especially in israel but amongst most jews to say oh i'll see you tomorrow believe nader like without the force of a vow because we know just how strong even if you don't make a vow just the power of words without that is close enough that you want to say without any vow just in case there's any confusion here absolutely so um after i yours went by and i'm pretty secure in my own shoes i i i'm not really uh following the pack type individual but once i i got a little bit okay many rabbis are coming up to me they're against this they're against this i figured you know what let's just go to one of the top of the top and and let's hear what the top rabbi says i it's the first time i consulted a a a diane or a posek a rabbinical authority on jewish law and so i decided if i'm going to go i'd better go to the top of the top and i went to one of the most well-known most respected rabbis in israel uh rav kanyevski wrote harim konyewski and benebrock and it's kind of crazy the first time i ever went to him wasn't related to the vow i uh like i said i was pretty secure in who i was even with all the heat i got outside and i remember i came there for a blessing actually and i got i got brought into the room and he was sitting at the head of the table with his head down facing the opposite corner of of the room so he hadn't seen me i came in the other side he i saw the whole time my eyes were fixed on he hadn't seen me yet he hadn't heard of me yet he knew nothing about me and his attendant told me to come and stand to the side and again i'm standing there i'm watching him he hasn't seen me hasn't heard from me so the attendant goes in his ear and he says hey you know there's this jew here and he wants a blessing for this and this and this and i was floored by the response rav kanyevsky i heard him say and then what does this jew do kidus when we bless and we sanctify the sabbath going into the sabbath and allah making the distinction between the sabbath and the the whole the weekday and that's both of them are done on wine or grape juice correct so it would be a stupid question if you know that you got a jew there because 99.9 of jews probably do it on wine or grape juice it's only not a stupid question if somehow this is the .001 percent that doesn't do it that way and he didn't know that you were a nazi i did not know i was in nazarite he hadn't looked at me yet and after saying that he turned and looked at me and just let big smile out and i was like i was stunned i was absolutely stunned so i responded to him you know that i do it i do it on different types of wine so pomegranate wine port right sometimes beer whatever i found ways around it for a while i did i used to do kiddush on whiskey and made my table way more tolerable no i'm just kidding i think once you came to me for shabbos i probably did it on a whiskey or something like that yeah so um that was the first time i went to the second time i went to him um was uh specifically for the vow and um he responded and he said to me no it's all good you can continue with your vow. he said but be careful be careful about going outside the land of israel because there is a concept in that's discussed in jewish law in the gemara in talmud about the way that uh non-jews aren't as particular about the burial of the dead where they bury the dead and therefore there's an overall doubt as to whether you could be stepping on areas that might have deceased individuals below corpses below and so that was his his instruction in me okay after that anytime a rabbi or someone came and they gave me a hard time i said listen i've spoken to rob kanyevsky and you saw their face immediately okay what do i know which was nice it was nice to get that freedom okay let's fast forward about six months ago i told you that before me and my wife got married many rabbis obviously were against it and they said this is the time to annul it there's a special way nowadays that we wouldn't know it i don't know that we touched on this but the way that the vow concludes according to the the tour of the bible is that you would go to the temple you would bring your sin offering you would then cut your hair you would have and you would be able to have wine and you would be done but it was a very particular procedure now that we don't have a temple yet we know it's going to be here any second but now that we don't have one yet how does one conclude a vow the truth is that according to the rambam which we mentioned before he's in a limbo state he's stuck in this place now with any vow regardless of the type of vow there's always the possibility which we've kind of touched on to go to a based in authority and jewish law a certain collection a group that are able to find a way a loophole if you will in which uh you learn something new that had you known originally at the time when you took on the vowel would maybe inundated the and maybe made you not take on the bow so there are ways where you can get out of out and that's so this is one of the rabbis that was a rabbi of my my wife and he's a rosh yeshiva here in jerusalem a very respected individual he followed up with us about six months ago and he said listen i i still think that this vow isn't isn't so good and i think you should go and consult rob kanyevsky again now we're in corona times and corona times it's very hard especially the man's in his uh 90s already almost mid 90s so you can imagine that you have to be very careful so i don't think it was feasible to to go and see him i tried to reach out to his attendant to to have an audience with him but it wasn't happening and eventually i just said fine will you ask the question for me and i asked him very simply do you still hold that this bow is good for me that i should proceed with the vow and months go by and i'm waiting and i'm waiting and i'm waiting and i'm sending the message again and he's seeing it he's like i'll ask him today again i'll ask him and i'm not getting a response and i'm like what's going on here and it really all of a sudden something shifted in my own heart and i started wondering like maybe you know this is seven years in the game like maybe i've done my service to hashem seven has this connotation in couple of completion yeah and maybe at the time maybe there is something to this maybe that this big rabbi is feeling very strongly that this is coming from god himself that it's in the heart of this rabbi and i started doing what we call hitler do trying to talk to god in my in my own way to try and get clarity now it was the week before lag bo omer um maybe you want to tell a bit about what like boromir is or something no it's okay okay let's say talk about that on another show so it was the week before like my brother had just gotten engaged and this was his uh his last shabbos as a single man you could say and we lost and it was his last shabbos as a single man and uh we had a lot of guests to come over to wish congratulations uh maslato and all of a sudden my wife looks at me and again it's right at this time where i'm trying to get clarity what does hashem want from me i need an answer i need something and my wife looks at me and she says lyad there's something wrong with your forehead and i go and look in the mirror and right where my hairline is you could see that it's starting to protrude like a horn is growing it seems literally out of my forehead right by the hairline and it's causing that the whole forehead is now swollen and i completely look disfigured in a way and and and the people that are there are really concerned and they're saying you know you're probably going to need a surgery that looks bad right after shabbos ends you should you should take care of that you should and it's just getting worse and worse and worse and at first i'm like wow i must have done something wrong god's obviously punishing me i i i need to do a response i need to look into my conduct see if there's something off and then suddenly it dawns on me no this is you've asked for clarity hashem's giving you clarity why well we went over one of the laws that uh the commandments that a naziri can overstep is even cutting a single hair even if another jew were to cut my hair with the case of delilah and samson we saw this but that would be a huge sit on that juice part so in order to do the surgery that everyone was saying i was going to need to do they would have had to shave or cut part of my hair because it was so close to the hairline and inevitably it became a huge jewish law issue and so i said this maybe hashem the creator giving me my answer it's a blessing in disguise saying as if to the way i took it that you've done your service and i want you to know we're thankful for that but the time is up this isn't any more what is needed of you for for the gen for the people as a whole slow you know i i worried about it and i wasn't sure about it and so i i held off and days went by and i went to consult a doctor and the doctor said absolutely you're going to need a surgery i said okay so be it but either way the surgery was for a while and i wasn't going to act too quickly now a week later it's the my brother's it's about being my brother's wedding it's a few hours before and finally i get a response out of the blue months later from ravkanievsky and he says it is no longer good for you to continue to be an azerite find the nearest rabbinical court and see if they can find a way to annul it according to jewish law well i'm getting goosebumps i mean it's so rare to have that type of divine communication so coordinated i mean go ahead so what was that like i mean it was a confirmation so not only that when i first took on my vow i was actually in vietnam and this is a side story but i mean i met my wife in vietnam only many years later when we get married i had no idea she was my wife at the time she knew right away that i was her her soul mate but my wife in numerology her name is dina which is in numerology yain wine so that was always like spooky because right it actually happened to be right after i met her i took on the vow without knowing and so there's something there but the rabbi at the time who was in vietnam he's still there he he always joked that you know what lyad over here didn't grow up religious so he didn't have the privilege after the third year of his life to have a special haircut that's part of the jewish tradition so one day on lag by omar is usually the time they'd like to do this one day he'll have his hair cut on lagbo omir and he'll kind of so all of a sudden that i got this response right i'd like bomber it reminded me of what this rabbi said too which i was like also like wow that's crazy and immediately i look up and who's there is the the rabbi who's going to conduct the wedding is the chief rabbi of netanyahu so i go up to him and i show him the response from rob kanyevsky and he's also like flabbergasted and he's just like absolutely we'll talk about we're going to do this tomorrow and the next day he takes me to his rabbi and all of a sudden i'm sitting with a table of top rabbis and they're grilling me they're grilling me to find a way uh to to to get me out of an annulment of the vow and inevitably they are able to do that and i'm able to get free story gets even more interesting because now i eventually go to uh get the surgery on this area and out of nowhere they say it's unnecessary just disappeared of course come on that's pretty crazy right so i feel very honored and blessed that i was able to serve this create the creator and the jewish people in this way and it's a humbling thing and at the same time you know i i i recognized you