Regarding yesterday’s remark that bald monkeys aren’t “Nazirites” (נזירים)! — secular Hebrew to the contrary notwithstanding.
Rabbi Avi Grossman writes in:
Adderebba.
Not only is it clear that the Hebrew nazir is one who abstains from wine and grape juice (״מיין ושכר יזיר״) nothing like the Christian concept of an ascetic monk, our nazirim did not take on the ridiculous, unnatural, and perverse practice of celibacy, and more importantly, just like the word for abstention, yazzir, is of the root nun-zayin-reish in the hif’il conjugation, the simple segolate-noun form of the word, neizer, a type of crown, is specifically referring to the nazirite’s long hair. Intentionally removing all of the hair of one’s head is the opposite of being a nazirite.
(Avoiding contact with the dead is not referred to with the same term, and is instead referred to as it is with regard to priests – avoidance of ritual contamination. See also my earlier essay about how nazirisim is basically a means of opening the priesthood and its attendant higher sanctity to those who are disqualified from the actual priesthood.)