Ascetics in Talmud
Among the Rabbis some are mentioned as great and consistent fasters. Rabbi Zeira especially is remembered for his fondness of this form of piety. Yet to make of him an ascetic would transcend the bounds of truth. He fasted that he might forget his Babylonian method of teaching before emigrating to Palestine (B. M. 85a). The story continues that he abstained from drink and food for the period of one hundred days, in order that hell-fire might later have no power over him. Simon ben YoḦai is depicted as an ascetic in the traditions preserved in rabbinical literature. But exposed to persecutions under the Hadrian régime, and often in danger of his life, his whole mind was of an exceptionally somber turn for a Jewish teacher. Moreover, his ascetic practices were not inspired by a consciousness of the futility of this life and its sinfulness, but by the anxiety to fulfill to the letter the Law, to "ponder on the Torah day and night". He begrudged the hours necessary for the care of the body as so many precious moments stolen from the study of the holy Law. He envied the generation of the desert who had been fed on heavenly manna, and were thus absolved from the care for their daily bread; an echo of this sentiment may be detected in the petition of Jesus for daily bread (on Simon b. YoḦai, see W. Bacher, Ag. Tan. ii. 70-149).
Still, with all these seeming leanings to ascetic conduct, these rabbis did not encourage individual fasting. The community in distress did indeed proclaim a public fast, and it was the duty of the loyal member to participate. For he who would not share in the distress would have no part in the consolation of the people (Ta'an. 11a). The habitual faster was called a sinner (ib.). This judgment was enforced by an appeal to the Biblical text in connection with the Nazir's (Nazarite's) expiatory sacrifice (Num. vi. 11). Rabbi Zeira would not permit his disciples to indulge in extraordinary practices of self-restraint, if they presumed thereby to reflect on the piety of others saner than they. The title applied to such an adept at saintly practices is characteristically deprecatory for his attitude of mind: his conduct is declared to smack of conceit, if not of hypocrisy (Yer. Ber. ii. 5d).
The attempt has been made to explain the Biblical Nazarites as forerunners of monastic orders addicted to the practice of ascetic discipline. Pentateuchal legislation concerning them shows them to have been merely tolerated. Modern criticism explains their peculiarities as arising from motives other than those that determine the conduct of ascetics. The Biblical Nazirs, forerunners of the Nebi'im (Prophets), were Protestants against the adoption of the customs and the religious rites of the Canaanites. In their dress and mode of life they emphasized their loyalty to YHVH, enthroned on the desert mountain. Wine and the crown of hair were sacred to the gods of the land. Their very appearance emphasized their rejection of the new deities. And in later days the number of those that took the Nazarite vow was exceedingly small. One is inclined to the opinion that no case occurred in which the Pentateuchal provisions became effective.
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