NUM42 The Torah does not make a direct evaluation of the Nazarite. On the one hand, it calls him "holy to God" [this verse]. On the other, it rules that when the period comes to an end the Nazarite has to bring a sin offering (Numbers 6:13-14), as if he has done something wrong. This led to a fundamental disagreement between the rabbis in Mishnaic, Talmudic, and Medieval times. According to R. Elazar, and later to the Ramban [Nachmanides], the Nazarite is worthy of praise. He has voluntarily chosen a higher level of holiness. The prophet Amos (2:11) says, "I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and your young men for Nazarites," suggesting that the Nazarite, like the prophet, is a person especially close to God. The reason he had to bring a sin offering was that he was now returning to ordinary life. The sin lay in ceasing to be a Nazarite. R. Eliezer HaKappar and Shmuel held the opposite opinion. The sin lay in becoming a Nazarite in the first place, thereby denying himself some of the pleasures of the world God created and declared good. R. Eliezer added: "From this we may infer that if one who denies himself the enjoyment of wine is called a sinner, all the more so one who denies himself the enjoyment of other pleasures of life" (Taanit 11a; Nedarim 10a). Clearly the argument is not merely textual. It is substantive. It is about asceticism, the life of self-denial. ... one of Rambam's [Maimonides] most original insights [is] that there are two quite different ways of living the moral life. He calls them respectively the way of the Saint (hasid) and the sage (hakham). The sage follows the "golden mean," the "middle way." The moral life is a matter of moderation and balance, charting a course between too much and too little. Courage, for example, lies midway between cowardice and recklessness. Generosity lies between profligacy and miserliness. ... The saint, by contrast, does not follow the middle way. He or she tends to extremes, fasting rather than simply eating in moderation, embracing poverty rather than acquiring modest wealth, and so on. ... The Nazarite has chosen, at least for a period, to adopt a life of extreme self-denial. He is a saint, a hasid. He has adopted the path of personal perfection. That is noble, commendable, and exemplary. But it is not the way of the sage -- and you need sages if you seek to perfect society. The sage is not an extremist, because he or she realizes that there are other people at stake. There are the members of one's own family and the others within one's own community. There is a country to defend and an economy to sustain. The sage knows he or she cannot leave all these commitments behind to pursue a life of solitary virtue. For we are call upon by God to live in the world, not escape from it; to exist in society, not seclusion; to strive to create a balance among the conflicting pressures on us, not to focus on some while neglecting the others. Hence, while from a personal perspective the Nazarite is a saint, from a societal perspective he is, at least figuratively, a "sinner" who has to bring an atonement offering. ... Rambam ... had to carry a double burden as a world-renowned physician and an internationally sought halakhist and sage. He worked to exhaustion.… Rambam was a sage who longed to be a saint – but knew he could not be, if he was to honor his responsibilities to his people. That seems to me a profound judgment, and one still relevant to Jewish life today.