This is the law of

wife. (Bamidbar 5: 29-30)

This

is the law of jealousies [in the plural]: Justified jealousy and

unjustified jealousy, which is explained by the phrases, when a woman

goes astray to someone other than her husband and is defiled – that

is justified jealousy; or if a spirit of jealousy

comes over a man, and he is jealous of his wife – then it has no

proper basis. and he is jealous of his wife – he warned

her not to go to any concealed place. and

the priest shall do to her all of this law – he should not worry about

erasing the scroll.

(Seforno Bamidbar 5:29-10)

Our Rabbis taught: And the man

shall be free from iniquity (Bamidbar 5) – at the time when the man is free from

iniquity, the water proves his wife; but when the man is not free from

iniquity, the water does not prove his wife. Why, then, [was it necessary for

the Mishnah to add]: As it is said: I will not

punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, etc. (Hosea 4)? Should you say that his own iniquity

daughters does not, come and hear: I will not punish your daughters when

adultery. And should you say that his sin with a married woman [prevents

the water from proving his wife] but not if it was with an unmarried woman,

come and hear: for they themselves go aside with whores and with the harlots

etc. What means And the people that do not

understand shall be overthrown? R. Eleazar said:

The prophet spoke to Israel: If you are scrupulous with yourselves, the water

will prove your wives; otherwise the water will not prove your wives.

(Sotah 47b, Soncino

translation)

Jealousy and Tikkun

Basmat Hazan

R. Meir used to deliver discourses on Sabbath evenings. There

was a woman there in the habit of listening to him. Once the discourse lasted a

long time, and she waited until the exposition was concluded. She went home and

found that the candle had gone out. Her husband asked her: "Where have you been?’ She answered: ‘I was sitting listening

to the voice of the preacher." Said he to her: "I

swear I will not let you enter here until you go and spit in the face of the

preacher." She stayed away one week, a second, and a third. Said her neighbors to her: "Are you still angry one with the

other? Let us come with you to the discourse." As soon as R. Meir saw them, he saw by means of the Holy Spirit [what had

happened], and said: "Is there a woman among you clever at whispering a

charm over an eye?" The woman's neighbors said to her: "If you go and

spit in his eye you will release your husband [from his vow]." When she

sat down before him she became afraid of him, and said to him: "Rabbi, I

am not expert at whispering an invocation over an eye." Said

he to her: "For all that, spit in my face seven times, and I will be

cured." She did so, and he said to her: "Go tell your husband:

You told me to do it once, and I spat seven times." Said

his disciples to him: "Should people thus abuse the Torah? Could

you not have told one of us to whisper an invocation for you?" Said he to them: "Is it not good enough for R. Meir to be like unto his Creator?"–for R.

Ishmael has taught: Great is peace, since even of the Great Name, written

though it be in sanctity, the Holy One, blessed be He, has said: "Let it

be blotted out in water for the purpose of making peace between husband and

wife." (Vayikra Rabbah 9:9, Soncino translation)

Here R. Meir refers to the following passage, which contains one of

the Torah's more puzzling topics – the law of Sota:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: Should any

man's wife go astray and deal treacherously with him, and a man lie with her carnally, but it was hidden from her

husband's eyes, but she was secluded [with the suspected adulterer] and there

was no witness against her, and she was not seized. But a spirit of jealousy had come upon him and he became

jealous of his wife, and she was defiled, or, a spirit of jealousy had come

upon him and he was jealous of his wife, and she was not defiled. Then the man shall bring his wife to

the priest and bring her offering for her, one tenth of an ephah

of barley flour. He shall neither pour oil over it nor put frankincense on it,

for it is a meal offering of jealousies, a meal offering of remembrance,

recalling iniquity. The priest

shall bring her near and present her before the Lord. The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and

some earth from the Tabernacle floor, the priest shall take and put it into the

water. Then the priest

shall stand the woman up before the Lord and expose the [hair on the] head of

the woman; he shall place into her hands the remembrance meal offering, which

is a meal offering of jealousies, while the bitter curse bearing waters are in

the priest's hand. The priest

shall then place her under oath, and say to the woman, "If no man has lain

with you and you have not gone astray to become defiled [to another] in place

of your husband, then [you will] be absolved through these bitter waters which

cause the curse. But as

for you, if you have gone astray [to another] instead of your husband and have

become defiled, and another man besides your husband has lain with you…" The priest shall now adjure the woman

with the oath of the curse, and the priest shall say to the woman, "May

the Lord make you for a curse and an oath among your people, when the Lord

causes your thigh to rupture and your belly to swell. For these curse bearing waters shall enter your innards,

causing the belly to swell and the thigh to rupture," and the woman shall

say, "Amen, amen." Then the priest shall write these curses on a scroll and

erase it in the bitter water. He shall then give the bitter, curse bearing waters to the

woman to drink, and the curse bearing waters shall enter her to become bitter. The priest shall take the meal

offering of jealousies from the woman's hand, wave the meal offering before the

Lord, and bring it to the altar. The priest shall scoop out from the meal offering its

reminder and burn it upon the altar, and then he shall give the woman the water

to drink. He shall make

her drink the water, and it shall be that, if she had been defiled and was

unfaithful to her husband, the curse bearing waters shall enter her to become

bitter, and her belly will swell, and her thigh will rupture. The woman will be

a curse among her people. But if the woman had not become defiled and she is clean, she

shall be exempted and bear seed. This is the law of jealousies when a woman goes astray to

someone other than her husband and is defiled, the man shall be absolved of iniquity, and the woman shall

bear her iniquity. (Bamidbar

5)

This passage

raises many questions in the mind of today's reader. I will mention four of

them:

1) How can the

Torah, whose laws usually relate to precise fact, base an entire ritual system

on a feeling?

2) Why the

outrageous inequality forming the basis of this ceremony, in which the women is

"offered-up" [The priest shall bring her

near – vehikriv ota      hakohen – can also be read: and the priest shall offer

her up like a sacrifice] on the altar of her husband's feelings?

3) How can

there be a ceremony based almost entirely on a miraculous divine intervention?

4) Why does

God's explicit and holy Name play a role in such an early and illogical

ceremony?

We may be

better suited to understand the Sota ceremony if we

adopt R. Meir's approach. R. Meir

takes it as a given that husbands are jealous regarding their wives. This

jealousy often results in harsh and problematic violence (even in our own day).

When individuals and couples have to contend with jealousy behind closed doors

and in the privacy of the bedroom they court tragedy; there is a danger of

injury. Following Scripture's lead, R. Meir offers an

alternative in which the conflict is removed from the private twilight zone

which invites danger to the public sphere – to Jerusalem – a place where other

people can offer support and help solve the problem. It is a place where the

priest becomes a party to the issue, a place where the suffocation of secrecy

can be relieved.

R. Meir does not think the ceremony involves humiliation;

rather, it offers a positive and fruitful opportunity for the problem to be

addressed. The ceremony allows the marital situation to take a new direction

and escape the dead-end in which it is trapped. That new direction is one of

dialogue and perhaps even peaceful resolution. Rational dialogue can thrive – and

perhaps it can only thrive – when there is recognition of the irrational elements

that lie at the heart of the delicate fabric of all marital relationships. R. Meir understands this. He is prepared to expose himself to

what others might count as humiliation – having one of his female students spit

in his eye seven times – in order to help her and her husband escape a trap of

jealousy and stormy emotions. That which the jealous husband sees as spittle

expressing his anger and jealousy, R. Meir

sees as healing and kindness, and as an instance of walking in the path

of God, Who is willing to have His Name erased in water in order to produce

peace between husband and wife. Perhaps this suggests that we should read and

explicate the text describing the ceremony along similar lines?

Basmat Hazan is a director and writer. She teaches Jewish texts

and theatre (separately and together).

They shall carry it on

their shoulders – Man and State

The relationship between the

political and social organization (the state) and the individual in the state

is the greatest and most encompassing and deep relationship vis-à-vis

the significant elements of human existence; it is as also possible to speak of

the relationship between state and society.

The state, social organization,

and everything connected with them – from the struggle for positions of power

to politics in its broader sense as discussed by political thinkers from

ancient times until the present – the significance of this entire great

subject, with all its complications and complexity, is

entirely instrumental.

The state is nothing but a tool

and means for the accomplishment of valuable goals involving the fulfillment of

basic human needs such as justice, education, health, culture, worship of God,

etc. No instrumental mechanism can achieve these goals. The state is important

only in that it allows the individual who is obliged to realize values to

realize them. The state itself should never be required or expected to realize

values.

Similarly, regarding the holy

service of the Tabernacle we read, They

shall carry it on their shoulders. Man bears his obligations upon his

shoulders in two senses, and he must make great efforts to fulfill them. The

vessels and devices such as the "wagons" and the "cattle"

only carry the strips of cloth, screens, panels, stakes, sockets, bars,

columns, and so forth which are in no way part of the holy service. These

merely create the framework upon which the holy service depends. That service

can only take place when there are human beings who are prepared to trouble themselves

to freely take upon themselves the serious normative proviso of They

shall carry it on their shoulders.

All over the world people

misunderstand the relationship between the instrumental and the valuable. Blindness

to this relationship is beginning to take hold upon us as well. It is moving us

towards a nationalistic-fascistic mood in the social, political, and national

realms, in which collective existence becomes an end in itself.

This matter finds symbolic

expression in the Tabernacle service: the Tabernacle's holiness is symbolically

represented by the vessels kept in the Tabernacle, such as the Ark, the table,

the menorah, and the two altars. These items were not moved in wagons or even

carried by draft-animals, rather They shall carry

it on their shoulders.

That is the metaphor – what does

it represent? It says that instruments such as political sovereignty, sovereign

power, social mechanisms, etc. are incapable of realizing the values of human

existence. These values can only be accomplished by man himself; they are not

problems relating to the form of social existence, rather they are the problems

of man in society.

(Y. Leibowitz, Sheva

Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat HaShavua pp. 633-634)

And grant you peace:

Peace in your entering, peace in your exiting; peace with all men.

(Sifri Nasso, 42)

The last word in the priestly

blessing is shalom – peace. There is not enough space to say even a bit

about the significance and value of peace, peace upon which every blessing is

dependent…

It would seem that peace means

preventing the opposite of peace, that is to say: the prevention of war. And so

we read in the midrash from Yalkut Shimoni:

"Great is peace, for peace is needed even in the hour of war, for it is

said: If you draw near a town to do battle against it and you shall call to

it to make peace (Devarim

20:10)." Shalom's deeper meaning,

however, is derived from the word shlemut – perfection/wholeness.

From this we can understand that shalom is the supreme virtue in connection with

man's status, condition, and perhaps even in connection with his essence. This

understanding may help us understand the Sages' dictum: "Great is peace

for even the dead need peace, for it is said – and you [Abraham] will

join your ancestors in peace (Bereishit 15:15)." People think that peace

means the cessation of a quarrel or of a war, but, as has been said above,

peace is more than the prevention of war; it is the most significant thing, it

is in fact the personification of God's power in the world.

(Y. Leibowitz, Sheva

Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat HaShavua pp. 639, 641)

Any sin committed by humans

– Refers to Stealing from the Stranger

And God said to Moses, as

sin committed by humans (Bamidbar 5:6). Why was this parasha

written? Because it is written: A person – when one sins, breaking-faith

proven guilty (Vayikra

5:21-24) but regarding stealing from the stranger we do not find

the Torah commanding "Speak to the Children of Israel: A man or woman who

does any sin committed by humans" – therefore the Torah comes to teach us

that one who steals from the stranger, and swears to him (falsely), must

pay the principle and a fifth to the priests and an asham

offering for the altar.

(Sifri Nasso, Piska 2)

"The Scroll of Ruth"

and "Parashat Nasso"

The Scroll of Ruth is "the parasha of the gerim

[conversion]"- not only conceptually, but also halakhically;

the laws of conversion are derived from the story of Ruth the Moabite. This is

the reason that the Ruth scroll is read in Jewish congregations on Shavuot, the

occasion of the giving of the Torah, when those righteous converts who accepted

upon themselves the Torah and its commandments, became part of the Israelite

community.

Connections may be found between

the Scroll of Ruth and the reading of Nasso on the

Shabbat following Shavuot.

Among the many subjects included

in sidrat 'Nasso' we find

the short chapter dealing with asham g'zelot' [the

guilt offering for wrongdoing against persons and then swearing falsely]. There

it says: And if the man has no redeemer [=kinsman] to make

restitution of guilt payment to him… (Bamidbar 5:8)

In this case, the Torah orders

the sinning thief who is repenting to transfer the asham

(i.e., the fifth added on the principle value of the stolen object) to the

priest. The question is asked, how it is possible that a Jew should have no

redeemer! Even if we were to say that he has no close relatives, there must be

in his tribe kinsmen and redeemers… from all the above we must conclude that

the phrase has no redeemer refers to none other than the convert, who,

upon conversion, severs all ties with his biological family, and now he is a Jew

without a redeemer. This parasha has generated much

thought and also halakhah on the subject of gerim and conversion, and the subject of conversion

leads to the subject of the righteous of all nations and races, those referred

to [in Hallel] as Yir'ei

Hashem – "Those who fear God."

(Y. Leibowitz: Sihot

al Haggei Yisrael UMoadav, pp. 105-106)

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