The reflecting mirror and the reflected picture in rabbinic texts vary. Both depend on whether the texts see themselves through the intertwined figures of the high priest and the Nazirite, the Queen of Sheba, or a lowly maidservant, or through riddles and tall tales. Their sense of self is reinforced and doubted simultaneously. It is this double, if contradictory, gesture that allows for vital, continuous, and effectively evolving cultural selves that are indeed polyphonic and hybrid, adapting to changing circumstances, be it Hellenistic culture, the rise of Christianity, or circulating noncanonical local traditions. Yet the historical dynamics that give rise to the variety of rabbinic shared identities cannot be fully appreciated (or take place) without an imagined self, and it is this introspective gaze that will be the focus of the following chapters.
CHAPTER 1
Simon the Just and the Nazirite: Reflections of (Im)Possible Selves
The story is about a young shepherd who, looking into a pond, sees his reflection and falls in love with himself. This familiar scene is part of a complex rabbinic narrative, to which we will return shortly. And what better place to begin probing the enigma of self-reflexivity than with the classical myth of the beautiful boy ensnared by his own reflection—the Narcissus of Greek legend? While the rabbinic corpus contains comparatively few parallels to Greek myths, the story of a rabbinic Narcissus stands out not only in its very inclusion in rabbinic works but in the number of times that it is cited.1 Its presence in both Palestinian (early as well as later) and Babylonian compilations attests to the emblematic quality and relevance that the story held for the entire rabbinic-canonic body of literature.
As Ovid, the Roman poet, tells it in his Metamorphoses, vanity causes the sixteen-year-old Narcissus (“just turn’d of boy, and on the verge of man”) to ignore all those who fall desperately in love with him. Instead, looking into a pool of water, he falls in love with his own image, not knowing that “it was himself he lov’d.” When he sees that the image in the water mimics him in every way, he cries out in despair: “It is my self I love, my self I see; the gay delusion is part of me.” His agonized words “I wish him absent whom I most desire” intimate his tragic fate as foretold by Teresias: “if e’er he knows himself he surely dies.”2
The psychological implications of the Greek tale have been made obvious, if only by the modern association of the story with a pathological condition (narcissism). By contrast, its epistemological-philosophical claims may be more obscure. But Shadi Bartsch insightfully situates Ovid’s narrative precisely in the cultural-intellectual practice of his day: Ovid’s version of the Narcissus tale “becomes one not only about love, vision and the self but also about philosophy: If it is erotic because the act of seeing leads to love, it is also philosophical because the gaze mirrored upon the self leads to self-knowledge…. Vision, Eros and self-knowledge might seem an unlikely trio in the discourse of modern philosophy, but for Ovid they were the essential elements in a tradition that he and other Roman authors would borrow, reflect on, and significantly alter.”3
Ovid’s narrative is thus situated within a long tradition in which self-knowledge, Eros, and vision are seen as key attributes of the philosopher, rendering it a reflective tale on the paradoxical nature of philosophy and its potential shortcomings. Clearly, the rabbis were not philosophers, nor was philosophy a pivotal rabbinic discourse. The salient rabbinic discourse was, in fact, midrash. I suggest that the rabbinic version of the Narcissus tale reflects on pivotal aspects of rabbinic cultural practices—specifically, midrash. For reasons that I hope will become clear, I see this tale as a meta-reflexive text in which the issue of (rabbinic) self-reflectivity is addressed. It encapsulates the three aspects of rabbinic self-reflexivity put forth in the Introduction to this volume: the reflected-upon midrashic self, the meta-poetic dimension of the text, and the interplay of possible selves. Self, projection, mirroring, sameness, and difference—all issues that form the core of the Narcissus character—are also implicated in the discursive and narratological aspects of the tale. The generative force of the character and that of the narrative as a whole are inextricably intertwined. If the fate of a rabbinic Narcissus is different from that of his Greek counterpart, it is in no small measure because of the discursive framework in which he is situated.
Simon the Just [Shimʿon haTsadiq] said: I have never eaten a guilt offering of a defiled Nazirite except for one. Once a Nazirite from the south came, and I saw that he had beautiful eyes and was good-looking and his locks neatly curled [qevutsotav sedurot lo taltalim].
I said to him: My son, why did you see fit to destroy this beautiful hair of yours?
He said to me: I was a shepherd for my father; I went to fill water from the spring and I looked at my reflection, and my evil inclination/desire [yetzer] made me rash [paḥaz] and sought to drive me from the world. I said to it: you wicked one, why do you take pride in a world that is not yours, etc. I swear that I will shave you for the sake of heaven.
Immediately I [Simon the Just] stood and kissed [the Nazirite] on his head. I said to him: My son, may there be many Nazirites such as you in Israel. Of you, scripture says: “When either a man or a woman shall perform the wonder of vowing a Nazirite vow to separate themselves unto God” [Num. 6:2].4
Biblical and Rabbinic Contexts
Simon the Just, a renowned high priest of the Second Temple period, recounts the story of a Nazirite who presents him with a guilt offering. Simon tells us that, in this case only, he made an exception to his rule by accepting the lad’s ritualistic gesture.5 This is clearly a culturally specific rabbinic version of the Narcissus myth, one that offers a way out of what the Greek myth presents as a doomed fate. Its resolution is contingent on culturally specific elements: it involves a high priest of the Second Temple period, and it relies on the biblical concept of Nazirite vows and on the rabbinic notion of the yetzer (evil inclination). Likewise, the culminating moment of the tale is a rabbinically marked discourse. In a narrative where sight, self-knowledge, and the telling of a story, as well as the intersection and action of different characters, are brought together in an intensified manner, this midrashic ending is no trivial matter and addresses the very notion of a rabbinic and textual self. With that, the issues of self and other, sameness and difference, associated with the crux of the Narcissus plot, permeate all aspects of the tale, rendering 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