AND

SOME OF THE DUST FROM THE FLOOR OF THE TABERNACLE AND PLACE IT IN THE WATER.

 (Bamidbar

5:17)

Sacred water – i.e., water that has become holy through

being in the laver, because it was made of the mirrors of the women who

assembled at the entrance of the appointed tent, and this woman deviated from

their ways. They used to have sex

with their husbands under the apple tree, but this one disgraced herself with another

man, and so she will be tried by that laver.

(Rashi on Bamidbar 5:17, based on Silbermann

translation)

When murderers became

numerous, the ceremony of the broken-necked heifer was abolished; when Eliezer ben Dina'i

arrived he was called Tehinah ben

Perishah, but they went back to calling him "Son

of the murderer."

When adulterers became

numerous, the bitter waters stopped working and Rabban

Yohanan ben Zakkai ended their use, for it is said I will not punish

sense must stumble (Hosea 4).

(Mishnah Sotah

9:9)

When adulterers became

numerous, the bitter waters stopped working, and Rabban

Yohanan ben Zakkai ended their use for it is said I will not punish

their daughters, and it is written, and the man shall be clear of guilt

– when the man is clear of guilt, the water tests his wife; if the man is not

clear of guilt, the water does not test his wife.

(Yalkut Shimoni

Hoshea 519)

[If one only has enough

money to buy one of them and] the lamp of his home and the lamp of Hanukah are

set before him, or the lamp of his home and the [wine for the] Kiddush of the

day [are set before him], the lamp of his home takes precedence because of [the

importance of] domestic peace, since God's own Name is erased in order to make

peace between man and wife. Great is peace, for all of the Torah was given in

order to make peace in the world, for it is said It's

ways are ways of pleasantness, and all of its paths, peace.

(RaMBaM Hilkhot

Megillah ve'Hanukah 4:14)

"If I

do not address the women first, they will annul the Torah"

Yael Levine

The

idea that the women were asked to accept the Torah before the men were asked

already appears in the Tannaitic literature. In Mekhilta De'Rabbi Yishmael, we read: "So you shall say to the House

of Jacob (Shemot

19:3) – speak gently, tell the women the main points; and tell the

sons of Israel (ibid), be strict with

them and tell them."¹

Some

midrashic sources cite additional explanations. One

of those offered by Shemot Rabbah

states: "R. Tahalifa of Caesarea said: The Holy

One blessed be He said: When I created the world I

only commanded the first man. Afterwards Eve was commanded and she transgressed

and spoiled the world. Now, if I do not address the women first they will annul

the Torah."²

In

connection with the idea that Eve was not immediately commanded, but rather

only after Adam, one might mention the story from the midrash Yelamdeinu that

relates how R. Abahu was once walking along the road,

accompanied by gentiles:

They

said to him: It is written in the Torah, and the Lord [God] commanded Adam (Bereishit 2:16) – Adam

was commanded, but Eve was not commanded not to sin. He said to them: Why is it

written, commanded Adam, saying? What does saying tell us? That

he should say it to the parts of his body, and from whence was she formed? From

his ribs.³

Several

comments from the school of the Ba'alei HaTosafot mention that this command was actually given

prior to Eve's creation; Adam was commanded to relay the commandment to her,

and he did so after her creation.⁴

The

words of the Amora of Eretz

Yisrael, R. Tahalifta of

Caesarea, express the view that past experience taught that only if the Divine

speech addresses both women and men directly and simultaneously can there exist

the possibility that the practical observance of the Torah will be accepted as

binding, at least from the point of view of those receiving the commandments.⁵

According to this approach, reception of the Torah is not an event which is

completely detached from the past and independent of it. Rather, it draws upon

the way of life and experiences depicted in Bereishit.

The tendency to first address the women, placing them before the men, is

clearly positive: it reflected an attempt to learn from the past and rectify an

early distortion. The death which Eve brought to the world finds a kind of

rectification and a certain recompense in that the

women were the first to accept the Torah of life.

While

Shemot Rabbah claims that

Eve was commanded not to eat from the tree of knowledge some time after Adam

was, Midrash HaGadol (by R.

David HaEdni, a leading Yemenite scholar of the 13^th

and 14^th centuries) states that Eve never received the command, a

fact which led her to confuse Adam, eventually leading to his transgression of

the prohibition:

And

why were the women commanded before the men? Because the Holy One blessed be He

said, "When I created My world I commanded the

first man, but not his wife Eve. She went and confused him and he transgressed My command. It is worthwhile to command the women first…"⁶

It

should be noted that another passage in Midrash HaGadol also mentions that Eve was not commanded, and

implies a criticism of Adam for not having managed to avoid sinning:

And

eat from it (Bereishit

3:17). I commanded you, I did not command her. You should have observed

my commandment.⁷

Rashi adopts the ideas of Mekhilta

DeRabbi Yishmael in his

comments on the verse, So you shall say to the House of Jacob; and tell the sons of

Israel. In his supercommentary on Rashi, R. Natan Shapira (d. 1577)

addresses the view of R. Tahalifta of Caesarea mentioned

in Shemot Rabbah. He points

out that if the Holy One blessed be He had wanted to command the men first, the

women could have reasonably claimed later that they had not accepted the Torah

freely, but rather only in order to appease their husbands. He adds that, "a

mishap of this sort [had already] occurred when He commanded Adam – but not Eve

– regarding the tree of knowledge, and she enticed him to transgress God's

command. Therefore, the Holy One blessed be He

commanded that the women be spoken to first, rather than the men."⁸

In

his commentary on the Torah, R. Yaakov ben HaRosh (circa 1269-1343) explains the verse, So you shall say to the House of Jacob; and

tell the sons of Israel:

He

put the women before the men because Eve, as a result of not having been

commanded by the Holy One blessed be He regarding eating from the tree of

knowledge, ended up eating it and feeding it to her husband. Therefore, He preempted

in order to honor the women by giving them priority since they had not wanted

to remove their [golden] nose rings to make the calf.⁹

It

is worth pointing out that R. Yaakov ben HaRosh in Tur

Orah Hayyim¹⁰ continues the line taken by Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer,¹¹ saying that since the women did not want to

give their nose-rings to their husbands in order to make the calf, the Holy One

blessed be He repaid them by having them observe Rosh Hodesh

more strictly than men do. He adds to this and mentions in the name of his brother

R. Yehudah (1270-1349),

who served as the Rosh Yeshiva following the Rosh's death, another reason: The

holidays parallel the patriarchs, and the twelve New Moons parallel the twelve

tribes. But after they sinned with the calf, the New Moons were taken from them

and given to their wives as a commemoration of their abstention from that sin.¹²

R. Yaakov ben Harosh's

statement in his commentary on Shemot considers the

sin of the calf from the women's perspective, and claims that they were

addressed first because of their abstention from that sin, and offer a reason

for their exclusion from that failure. However, that interpretation is not at

all required in order to explain why the men so quickly subdued to sin. One

might expand upon the view offered by Shemot Rabbah regarding the women's having

been addressed first: the theophany at Sinai involved

a kind of reverse discrimination for the community of women. Another experience

awaited the men. Since they were second to receive the commandments, after the women,

they did not have the fortitude to avoid sin for very long after the giving of the

Torah. Thus we learn that only when the Divine command and revelation are

offered simultaneously and in the same status to all members of the nation, men

and women alike, can God's will be realized in a world full of His majesty,

splendor, and light.

Dr. Yael Levine authored the prayers, "A

Women's Supplication Before Torah Study" and "Prayer

for the Daughters of Israel Who were Murdered by their Spouses."

1. Mekhilta

DeRabbi Yishmael, H. S.

Horowitz and Y.A. Rabin edition, Jerusalem 1970, second edition, Yitro Masekhta DeBahodesh, 2, pg. 207.

2. Shemot Rabbah

from Midrash Rabbah

I, Vilna 1878, 28:2:40a.

3. See Rabbeinu Shimon HaDarshan, Yalkut Shimoni, Bereishit, VaYeira, D. Heiman and Y Shiloni, editors, Jerusalem 1973, Bereishit

47, pp. 166-167. This idea is also mentioned in Tosafot

HaShalem – Otzar Peirushei Ba'alei Hatosafot Y Gellis, editor,

Jerusalem 1982, Bereishit 2:16:3, pg. 105. See there

also Bereishit 3:14:2, pg. 132.

4. See Tosafot HaShalem, Bereishit 2:16:3 and 5, pg. 105.

5. See

the commentary Matnot Kehunah

on Shemot Rabbah 28:2

(cited in ftn. 2), paragraph beginning "And she

spoiled it": "For it was wrong in her eyes that He had not commanded

her first."

6. R.

David HaEdni, Midrash

HaGadol, Sefer Shemot, M. Margoliot, editor,

Jerusalem 1957, 19:3, pg. 377. R. Yaakov ben HaRosh's commentary on Shemot 19:3 also claims that Eve

never received the prohibition. See the discussion below.

7. Op. cit. Bereishit 3:17, pg.

106. The editor there writes that the source of the passage has not been found

(loc. cit., note 2).

8. R. Natan of Haradnah, Biurim al Ha'Eshel HaGadol Rashi z'l, Venice 1593, BeShalah, 77a-b.

9. R. Yaakov ben HaRosh,

Perush al HaTorah,

Zalakavi 1706, Shemot 19:3,

pp. 53a-b.

10. Arba'ah Turim HaShalem, Tur Orah Hayyim 4, 345-494, Jerusalem

1993, section 417, pp. 264-5.

11. See Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, M. Heigger, editor, Horev 10 (1948), Chapter 44, pp. 230-1.

[1]2. See also Beit Yosef on loc. from note 10,

beginning veshamati mei'ahi.

The Torah Deals Strictly with Theft from Converts

And if there is no man to redeem: This means that the

claimant who put him to the oath died and left no heirs…Our Rabbis asked: But

can you find anyone in Israel who has no kinsman whatsoever, neither a son nor

a brother nor other relative near akin to him from his father's family, going

back as far as Jacob? But this person referred to is a proselyte who died and

has no heirs.

(Rashi on Bamidbar 5:8, Silbermann translation)

And he heard the voice speak to him

What is the meaning of And

him? (It should be pointed out that this conjugation of the verb occurs

only once again in Scripture, in Ezekiels Account of

the Chariot). Here is what Rashi says about speak

to him:

Midaber is the same as mitdaber

– He heard the voice uttering itself – it was out of reverence for the

Most High God that Scripture speaks thus: The Voice was speaking to itself,

and Moses of himself heard it. (Silbermann trans.)

That is to say, the

first to him, the voice midaber to him, refers to the speaker

Himself, God. Moses heard God speaking to Himself, heard it within himself. This

was not an acoustic event in which the sound reached Moses, but rather a

process occurring in Moses' own consciousness, which, in Rashi's

bold formulation, speaks to itself. He achieves acquaintance with that which is

taking place within the Divinity. He captures the meaning and direction that is

within God, and he hears it from within himself.

(From Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz z"l, He'arot le'OParshiyot HaShavua)

Reception of the Torah: Forced or Freely Taken?

And they stood beneath the mountain: R. Avdimi

bar Hama bar Hasa said:

This teaches us that the Holy One blessed be He held the mountain over them

like a basin and told them, "If you accept the Torah, all is well, but if

not here shall be your graves." R. Aha bar Yaakov

said: This implies a great claim against [the validity of the acceptance of]

the Torah. Rava said: Even so, the generation

received it [again] in the days of Ahashveirosh, for

it is written, the Jews observed and accepted (Esther 9); they observed what they had already accepted.

(Shabbat 84a)

The Torah Should be Accepted through a

Personal Decision, "Not in order to receive a reward."

…That

is why Israel was not given the Torah immediately after the splitting of the

Red Sea, because if they had received it after the splitting of the Red Sea, it

would have looked as if they accepted the Torah in order to receive a reward,

as a result of the great miracles that had just been performed for them. That

is why God waited a bit – meanwhile they could partially forget the miracles

performed for them, as it says, there was no water for the community, and

they complained. Afterwards, they received the Torah, saying that they

would do it and hear it, which proves that they accepted the Torah

solely out of love for the Torah.

(From Rabbi

Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev's Kedushat

Levi)

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