JERUSALEM DIARY 2.0 – DAY TWO (CORRECTED): THE SOTAH, THE HEBREW AND THE MEANDERINGS OF THE DAY

Isn’t this funny?  We passed it walking home from dinner tonight and I just thought I’d share it.  We’ve had quite a day, one that I’ve already written about once and then, somehow, allowed the post to be devoured by the ethers of the Internet.  I’m going to try again but far more briefly as it’s getting late.

First, here’s my daily security photo – from outside the coffee shop where we had breakfast.  And yes, this young man is patrolling THE MALL with a machine gun. 

After that well-guarded breakfast we went to our first class of this trip at Pardes, a wonderful educational entity that’s tough to describe and even tougher not to love.  Our teacher today, as she was last year, was Tovah Leah Nachmani (she’s on the left.)  She’s an inspired and inspiring teacher and we had a blast discussing the laws of the Sotah (a woman accused of adultery) and, according to the Book of Numbers (Bamidbar), what should happen to her.  You can read it here – beginning with verse 11.  It’s fairly horrifying on first (or second or third) reading but this time we ended up with an unusual perspective. 

Tovah sent us out with our Chevruta (study partner – mine was my husband) to try to figure out what the commentators were asking themselves as they wrote about this passage -and how they answered.  As we did so, a strange perspective emerged.  SEE DAY THREE POST FOR IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO THIS: Basically,it seems that asking a woman accused of adultery to stand before God to be judged (the only time God concerned Himself in this way with the laws of men), to drink water mixed with dirt from the Temple floor and the ashes of the burned paper accusing her, and then to wait to see if her belly swelled up or not (yes was a sign of guilt) seems to subjecte her to something both terrifying and humiliating.  But once past that, even if she was guilty, there was no physical punishment, only a mandated divorce – and her lover was also punished.  SEE DAY THREE POST FOR IMPORTANT CORRECTION TO THIS

There’s more to it though: if his possibly adulterous wife stands before God to be judged, no husband however outraged is going to play God and punish her himself -by killing her ashe could in so many other cultures or even by beating her.  The ordeal in fact protects her from worse.  In addition, it’s clear to all that the preservation of the family was so important that only God could adjudicate when it was so jeopardized.

There’s lots more to it but it’s really late.  Suffice it to say that it was exciting to learn how much more lay behind this disturbing ritual.  Even so, it’s all of a piece.  )Our hair is dangerous, our voices are dangerous, even the potential for adulterous behavior is dangerous.  WE are dangerous.  And it’s not, mostly, for what we might do but for what we might cause to be done that is the big issue.  Granted, the Sotah has to have been formally warned in advance by her husband that she shouldn’t hang around alone with a specific man he suspects of having designs on her – and she can only be tried if she has done just that, but even so, these rules don’t apply equally to husbands. 

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned in the couple of years since I began studying this stuff, however, is that you can’t read it only from the perspective of the present.  The culture of the times is a critical variable in the mission and outcome of divine commandments and their enforcement.  And of what we can allow ourselves to learn as we read.

Enough already.  We also had an amazing walk around the city, bought me an orange hat and had a three hour Hebrew lesson.  But that’s for another day. Goodnight for now… and, as I learned today – erev tov.