stillsmallvoice
May 23rd 2004, 09:21 AM
Hi all!
Yes, what would our Potions Master, the one & only Professor Severus Snape (see http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9080&highlight=Harry+Potter), say about the potion we (Jews all over the world) read about in this coming Saturday's Torah portion (Numbers 4:21-7:89, the longest of the 54 portions)?
(Aw c'mon, "Professor Snape & Numbers 5:11-31" is a better title than merely "Numbers 5:11-31"!)
Numbers 5:11-31 details what is to be done with the sotah, a married woman whom her husband suspects of being unfaithful. Below are two articles on the issue from an orthodox Jewish perspective:
(by Rabbi Phil Chernovsky)
If a wife is unfaithful to her husband, and there is no proof of her adultery, or if a man suspects his wife of unfaithfulness and it be unwarranted, he may formally warn her in front of witnesses not to be seen in the company of a particular man. This warning is a precondition to the whole topic of Sota.
Suspicion alone, or even adultery per se, do not produce the conditions for Sota without a formal warning by the husband. Once the warning is issued, it is a mitzva (requirement) to proceed with the Sota-process. The husband must bring his wife to the kohen [priest] at the Beit HaMikdash [Temple]. A barley-meal offering is brought. No oil or spice is used with it since the issue at hand is so serious and unpleasant before God. Note from SSV: I've heard why the offering here must be plain barley meal, which is unique, I think, among the various meal-offerings in the Torah. Barley meal is very coarse and is usually an animal feed. Adultery is bestial & those guilty of it have acted like animals, who copulate by instinct and are driven by their brute impulses.
The kohen prepares a potion consisting of water from the Kiyor (the washing basin in the courtyard of the Beit HaMikdash), earth from the floor, and the dissolved writing of this portion of the Torah. The kohen administers an oath to the woman asking her to swear to her innocence, if that be the case, or to admit her guilt. The woman is warned of serious adverse effects of the potion which she will be given to drink, if in fact she has committed adultery, and of the favorable consequences of the potion if she is innocent.
(...).
There are many details, too numerous to include here, concerning the conditions necessary for the Sota-process to go though to its end. In other words, there would be many situations when the oath and potion would not be used.
One interesting and serious warning for today. The first part of Sota, namely the warning in front of witnesses, applies today, even without a Beit HaMikdash. If a man were to give the Sota-warning in front of witnesses today, and his wife subsequently is seen alone with the man named in the warning, he would be duty-bound to bring his wife to the Beit HaMikdash (a slight problem today, unfortunately) and he would be prohibited from having relations with her until then. Big problem. Easy solution: don't do the first part, no matter what the situation.
and
by Rabbi Noson Weisz
One of the laws discussed in Parshat Naso is known as the law of the sotah, which describes how a Jewish court is meant to deal with an adulterous woman. (Numbers 5:12-31)
If a woman is accused of adultery by her husband, and there are serious grounds for suspicion, she is given a choice: accept a divorce or stand up to a strange test. The test, if she opts for it, requires her to drink "bitter waters" into which the name of God had been dissolved. If she is guilty, she dies instantaneously.
If we could hold a contest to determine the most misunderstood commandment in the Torah, then the law of the sotah would have to be declared the hands-down winner.
The chief problem lies in the mistaken idea that this law is meant to put down women. But this is far from the case. As in everything else, the truth is in the details.
First let's set the record straight as to the facts.
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
While it is the accused woman who must actually drink the bitter waters, the waters affect her male partner in adultery identically. Just as the waters examine her, they also examine him. (Talmud, Sotah 27b)
What is more, the Torah awards the power of decision to the woman rather than to the man who must share her fate. She is not forced to drink the bitter waters at all. She can admit to adultery and accept a divorce. The truth is she doesn't even have to admit to anything. She just has to refuse to drink the bitter waters on any grounds at all. She can say she has too much anxiety; she can say she would rather lose money than cause the holy name of God to be rubbed out; she can say she can't live with such a suspicious husband anyway etc. All she loses if she chooses not to drink is her ketubah, her marriage settlement, merely a monetary loss. She is free to marry anyone, and walk away from the entire mess totally unencumbered.
The man, on the other hand, is at her mercy. If she professes her innocence and insists on drinking the waters it will avail him naught to admit to his guilt. As long as she decides to drink, if the water kills her, it will kill him too.
In general Jewish law treats both parties to adultery in precisely the same fashion. Whatever is a punishable offense for the female is the same for the male.
GOD'S COOPERATION
Nachmanides (http://tinyurl.com/ytgwl) points out that of all the 613 commandments, it is only the sotah law that requires God's specific co-operation to make it work. The bitter waters can only be effective miraculously. The Torah assures guilty adulterers that their horrible deaths will follow the drinking of the waters instantaneously, and it promises the innocent woman who was wrongfully accused and elected to go through the humiliating sotah experience to demonstrate her innocence that she will conceive a child even if she is barren.
In fact, the Talmud says that Chana, the prophet Samuel's mother, and a prophetess in her own right, who was barren, threatened God that if He would not help her to conceive through her prayers she would make herself into a sotah and force Him into helping her anyway. (Brochot, 31b)
The sotah law is also the only commandment whose fulfillment requires the erasure of God's name, an act that is ordinarily forbidden and punishable by the administration of lashes. The commentators all explain that the stakes involved in Jewish family purity and the preservation of marital trust that serves as its foundation are so high, that God is willing to tolerate the erasure of His own name, as well as to depart from His ordinary policy of conducting the world according to the rules of nature in order to restore domestic trust and marital peace.
Thus, anyone who is skeptical about the existence of God or about the fact that He intervenes in human lives can safely assume that the entire sotah story as it is described in the Talmud never happened at all. On the other hand, anyone who accepts the truth of Torah as interpreted by the sages cannot fail to be moved by God's obvious concern for the sanctity of a Jewish marriage.
Every miracle is an outright violation of the Divine policy to remain hidden behind natural phenomena and stay out of man's way, so as not to disturb the unhampered exercise of free will. Yet, whereas the holiest rabbis or the greatest tragedies cannot persuade God to alter this policy of concealment, every Jewish sotah had the power to force God to come right out into the open.
The sotah law is the diametric opposite of discrimination against the Jewish woman. It emphasizes her supremacy in the all important area of family purity. When it comes to these issues the Jewish male is a mere appendage.
See also http://tinyurl.com/3xtmd.
So...what would Prof. Snape say?
Be well!
ssv :hi:
Yes, what would our Potions Master, the one & only Professor Severus Snape (see http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9080&highlight=Harry+Potter), say about the potion we (Jews all over the world) read about in this coming Saturday's Torah portion (Numbers 4:21-7:89, the longest of the 54 portions)?
(Aw c'mon, "Professor Snape & Numbers 5:11-31" is a better title than merely "Numbers 5:11-31"!)
Numbers 5:11-31 details what is to be done with the sotah, a married woman whom her husband suspects of being unfaithful. Below are two articles on the issue from an orthodox Jewish perspective:
(by Rabbi Phil Chernovsky)
If a wife is unfaithful to her husband, and there is no proof of her adultery, or if a man suspects his wife of unfaithfulness and it be unwarranted, he may formally warn her in front of witnesses not to be seen in the company of a particular man. This warning is a precondition to the whole topic of Sota.
Suspicion alone, or even adultery per se, do not produce the conditions for Sota without a formal warning by the husband. Once the warning is issued, it is a mitzva (requirement) to proceed with the Sota-process. The husband must bring his wife to the kohen [priest] at the Beit HaMikdash [Temple]. A barley-meal offering is brought. No oil or spice is used with it since the issue at hand is so serious and unpleasant before God. Note from SSV: I've heard why the offering here must be plain barley meal, which is unique, I think, among the various meal-offerings in the Torah. Barley meal is very coarse and is usually an animal feed. Adultery is bestial & those guilty of it have acted like animals, who copulate by instinct and are driven by their brute impulses.
The kohen prepares a potion consisting of water from the Kiyor (the washing basin in the courtyard of the Beit HaMikdash), earth from the floor, and the dissolved writing of this portion of the Torah. The kohen administers an oath to the woman asking her to swear to her innocence, if that be the case, or to admit her guilt. The woman is warned of serious adverse effects of the potion which she will be given to drink, if in fact she has committed adultery, and of the favorable consequences of the potion if she is innocent.
(...).
There are many details, too numerous to include here, concerning the conditions necessary for the Sota-process to go though to its end. In other words, there would be many situations when the oath and potion would not be used.
One interesting and serious warning for today. The first part of Sota, namely the warning in front of witnesses, applies today, even without a Beit HaMikdash. If a man were to give the Sota-warning in front of witnesses today, and his wife subsequently is seen alone with the man named in the warning, he would be duty-bound to bring his wife to the Beit HaMikdash (a slight problem today, unfortunately) and he would be prohibited from having relations with her until then. Big problem. Easy solution: don't do the first part, no matter what the situation.
and
by Rabbi Noson Weisz
One of the laws discussed in Parshat Naso is known as the law of the sotah, which describes how a Jewish court is meant to deal with an adulterous woman. (Numbers 5:12-31)
If a woman is accused of adultery by her husband, and there are serious grounds for suspicion, she is given a choice: accept a divorce or stand up to a strange test. The test, if she opts for it, requires her to drink "bitter waters" into which the name of God had been dissolved. If she is guilty, she dies instantaneously.
If we could hold a contest to determine the most misunderstood commandment in the Torah, then the law of the sotah would have to be declared the hands-down winner.
The chief problem lies in the mistaken idea that this law is meant to put down women. But this is far from the case. As in everything else, the truth is in the details.
First let's set the record straight as to the facts.
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
While it is the accused woman who must actually drink the bitter waters, the waters affect her male partner in adultery identically. Just as the waters examine her, they also examine him. (Talmud, Sotah 27b)
What is more, the Torah awards the power of decision to the woman rather than to the man who must share her fate. She is not forced to drink the bitter waters at all. She can admit to adultery and accept a divorce. The truth is she doesn't even have to admit to anything. She just has to refuse to drink the bitter waters on any grounds at all. She can say she has too much anxiety; she can say she would rather lose money than cause the holy name of God to be rubbed out; she can say she can't live with such a suspicious husband anyway etc. All she loses if she chooses not to drink is her ketubah, her marriage settlement, merely a monetary loss. She is free to marry anyone, and walk away from the entire mess totally unencumbered.
The man, on the other hand, is at her mercy. If she professes her innocence and insists on drinking the waters it will avail him naught to admit to his guilt. As long as she decides to drink, if the water kills her, it will kill him too.
In general Jewish law treats both parties to adultery in precisely the same fashion. Whatever is a punishable offense for the female is the same for the male.
GOD'S COOPERATION
Nachmanides (http://tinyurl.com/ytgwl) points out that of all the 613 commandments, it is only the sotah law that requires God's specific co-operation to make it work. The bitter waters can only be effective miraculously. The Torah assures guilty adulterers that their horrible deaths will follow the drinking of the waters instantaneously, and it promises the innocent woman who was wrongfully accused and elected to go through the humiliating sotah experience to demonstrate her innocence that she will conceive a child even if she is barren.
In fact, the Talmud says that Chana, the prophet Samuel's mother, and a prophetess in her own right, who was barren, threatened God that if He would not help her to conceive through her prayers she would make herself into a sotah and force Him into helping her anyway. (Brochot, 31b)
The sotah law is also the only commandment whose fulfillment requires the erasure of God's name, an act that is ordinarily forbidden and punishable by the administration of lashes. The commentators all explain that the stakes involved in Jewish family purity and the preservation of marital trust that serves as its foundation are so high, that God is willing to tolerate the erasure of His own name, as well as to depart from His ordinary policy of conducting the world according to the rules of nature in order to restore domestic trust and marital peace.
Thus, anyone who is skeptical about the existence of God or about the fact that He intervenes in human lives can safely assume that the entire sotah story as it is described in the Talmud never happened at all. On the other hand, anyone who accepts the truth of Torah as interpreted by the sages cannot fail to be moved by God's obvious concern for the sanctity of a Jewish marriage.
Every miracle is an outright violation of the Divine policy to remain hidden behind natural phenomena and stay out of man's way, so as not to disturb the unhampered exercise of free will. Yet, whereas the holiest rabbis or the greatest tragedies cannot persuade God to alter this policy of concealment, every Jewish sotah had the power to force God to come right out into the open.
The sotah law is the diametric opposite of discrimination against the Jewish woman. It emphasizes her supremacy in the all important area of family purity. When it comes to these issues the Jewish male is a mere appendage.
See also http://tinyurl.com/3xtmd.
So...what would Prof. Snape say?
Be well!
ssv :hi: