This is the law of jealousies when a woman goes astray to someone other than her husband and is defiled or if a spirit of jealousy comes over a man, and he is jealous of his 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 [prevents the water from proving his wife] but the iniquity of his sons and daughters does not, come and hear: I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your brides when they commit 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 follows: Speak unto the children of Israel, a man or a woman - when they do any sin committed by humans (Bamidbar 5:6). Why was this parasha written? Because it is written: A person - when one sins, breaking-faith against God... or by finding a lost object and denying it, or by swearing falsely...To the one whose it is, he is to give it at the time of his being 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 [converts] and the parasha of gerut [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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