Abstinence and Holiness, Embracing Self-Deprivation

The Babylonian Talmud is a product of late antique rabbinical discourse and debate. It is an immense, complex, multi-volume work divided by topics into tractates which are written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. Tractate Nazir deals with a person (male or female) who basically assumes three abstentions for a defined period of time: no wine or product of the grapevine, no cutting of bodily hair, and no contact with a human corpse. The practice itself is controversial within Judaism. Nonethele