Haftaros always have some connection to something in the parsha, but few are as explicitly related to what was read from the Torah as the haftarah of parshas Naso, which haftarah , like part of the parsha itself, deals with a nazir.

That nazir, of course, was Shimshon, whose mother, Tzalphonis, was visited by an angel predicting his birth and establishing that he was to be a protector of his people – and a nazir, from birth and beyond. She, too, she was instructed, was to refrain from ingesting anything forbidden to a nazir.

When she related the details of the visitation to her husband Manoach, he beseeches Hashem to offer instructions for raising the child they will be having.

But, wonders Rav Shimon Schwab, the laws of nazir were well known and established. What was Manoach asking for?

What’s more, when his prayer was answered and the angel appeared again, the heavenly visitor seems to add nothing to his previous instructions. “The woman,” he says, “must abstain from all the things against which I warned her… She must observe all that I commanded her.”

Rav Schwab suggests something novel. He sees Manoach’s request as having been about the challenge of a non-nazir like himself raising a nazir. It was a request, so to speak, for chinuch advice.

And, Rav Schwab,  points out, the Hebrew word for “she must observe,” tishmor, can also mean, when spoken directly to a man, “you must observe,”  indicating that not only should Manoach’s wife heed the laws of nezirus, but so should he. The only way to successfully  raise a nazir, in other words, is to be a nazir. 

Thus, asserts Rav Schwab, the chinuch lesson delivered by the angel was one that is a lesson to all Jews for all generations: If we don’t ourselves model what we want our children to become, we cannot expect them to develop as we wish. What children see in their parents is the single most important part of their upbringing. 

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran