Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Nazir 7a - Day and NIght Together

The gemara says that when one says "i should be a nazir like the hair of my head", he is an nazir forever but takes a haircut once every 30 days. Why is this any different than one who says "i should be a nazir from here until the end of the world", we should interpret his words that every parsa or toll station is a new nezirus and also say that he takes a haircut once every 30 days (rather than saying it is one long nezirus of 500 years unless he is machzik b'derech)? Rava answers that when he accepts nezirus like the hairs of his head we assume that each hair represents another nezirus so he will have an unlimited amount of consecutive neziurs, but that is because each hair is independent. But the entire earth is one unit, therefore we view it as one long nezirus (unless he was already machzik b'derech). The gemara then asks that days are also separate units like hair, so we should say that when he accepts a long nezirus, each day is an independent acceptance just as each hair is an independent acceptance? The gemara answers: "day and night are not separated from one another", meaning they are not independent units. Tosafos seems to understand that since the days are not separated by nights, rather the day and night are considered one unit of "day", they are "touching one another" and not independent units. This explanation seems difficult because the fact that every day follows the previous one immediately should not negate the independence of each day.
The Mahartz chiyus explains that day and not being separated into different units means that there are always places on earth where it is day and other places where it is night. Day and night overlap in the sense that in half the earth it is day and the other half it is night. Therefore they are not considered independent units.

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