Did you hear about the fellow who walked out of shul right in the middle of the rabbi’s sermon? The rabbi was furious and stopped him in his tracks.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“I’m going to have a haircut,” said the man.
“But why now?” asked the rabbi.
“I didn’t need one before,” the man replied.
In the Diaspora, this week’s reading is Naso. Curiously, at this time of year, Israel and the rest of the Jewish world are out of sync on the weekly parsha for a few weeks.
In Naso, we in the Diaspora find the laws of the Nazirite. A Nazirite is one who takes a vow not to drink wine or grape products for a specified amount of time. Haircutting is forbidden to him, as well as contact with dead bodies. In ancient times, various offerings would be brought to the Temple at the end of the Nazirite’s period of abstention.
There are millions of people today with long…