Shabbat Shalom!
The Torah portion for this week is "Naso," Numbers 4:21 through 7:89. It is the longest parasha of the year and covers some rather strange stuff, including 1) the division of labor among the Levites for carrying the tabernacle when it was to be moved, 2) the removal of lepers and other "unclean" personnel from the camp, 3) guilt offerings to be sacrificed by thieves, 4) the vows of the Nazirites who consecrate themselves to God for a period time by abstaining from wine, cutting their hair, and proximity to dead bodies, for the purpose of gaining divine favor or expressing gratitude for it, 5) the famous priestly blessing, 6) the sacrifices brought by the twelve princes (or heads) of the tribes for the dedication of the tabernacle, which, incidentally, were exactly equal, and 7) a really strange law about a drawn-out ritual to determine whether or not a woman is guilty of adultery when suspected so by her husband. This is a somewhat perplexing passage which every weekly torah commentary that I could find on the internet completely ignored.
What happens is this: if a man is jealous and suspects that his wife has been unfaithful, and there is no direct evidence to prove one way or the other her guilt or innocence, he is to bring her to the kohanim. The husband is to bring barley meal which the priest will mix with holy water and the dust which has settled upon the floor of the tabernacle. The woman is to let down her hair and swear vows, and the priest writes them down in a sacred scroll; and then the accused woman is to drink this mixture of bitter water. The remainder is to be waved in the air and then burnt on the alter. If the woman is guilty, her belly will swell, her thigh shall wither up, and she will die; and her name will be cursed by all the people. If she is not guilty, she will remain healthy and conceive a child.
In the words of a current popular song by OMC, "How bizarre; how bizarre!"
Hmmm... So what are we to make of this? From our contemporary perspective here in the late Twentieth Century, this seems barbaric--even alien. It makes us feel uncomfortable about our Torah. Perhaps that's why most of the rabbis who published on the internet this week chose to ignore this section. I know a Reform rabbi who said, "The Torah is not a Jewish book," by which I believe he meant that if we don't like a passage in the Bible because it appears to contradict our contemporary values, we can just dismiss it as merely an ancient text describing ancient attitudes and practices, far removed from us, so we can look at it merely as an intellectual curiosity. But can we really?
The ancient Israelites were dealing with a difficult, practical problem, here. What do you do when there is an accusation of a serious crime, but not enough evidence to back it up? Well, in our society, by our judicial system, when you don't have evidence, you throw it out of court. A man or woman is innocent until proven guilty and without clear, solid evidence that logically proves guilt, they are innocent. This is a common assumption we've accepted all our lives and goes back to the time of Locke. But the ancient Israelites didn't have the benefit of such ideas. They lived in a fearful, superstitious, credulous world. Such "tests via ordeal" were common amongst the Babylonians, Hittites, Egyptians, and even later with the Greeks and Romans. During the Middle Ages and even up until Colonial Times, similar tests were conducted for witchcraft. A woman accused of being a witch was thrown into the water: if she floated, she was a witch, taken out, and burned; if she didn't and drowned, then she was innocent.
We must also remember the larger context of the Torah: more than a historical or legal record, these are religious books about the belief in God. This ancient Israeli culture encouraged a strong faith in an all-powerful and all-knowing God who possessed knowledge of the absolute truth and they believed that he could be persuaded, through mystical, religious ritual, to reveal that ultimate truth. Today, we're not even sure if there is such a thing as objective truth. In court, witnesses swear to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but it's a farce because everyone knows that what they're really testifying to is their own version of the truth--their point of view. And in adultery cases, like we have here, the issues can become clouded and confused because there are so many variables: what were the circumstances? Must there be vaginal penetration? And then there's the whole sub-issue of consent.
Also, adultery is not seen as serious as a crime as it was in the past. It seems so commonplace--just read the newspaper over the last three weeks: Joseph Ralston, Lieutenant Kelley Flinn, even President Clinton. In our society, marriage vows are going in the same direction as one's "word of honor" and business-deals-on-a-handshake. I'm not here to say whether that's right or wrong; but merely to point out that fidelity is not taken seriously. That's why there are some editorials and letters-to-the-editor complaining that the Army regulations against adultery are outdated, and why the comics page can joke about the eighth commandment being re-written as "Thou shalt not ADMIT adultery." People are starting to question whether private fidelity can be any measure of quality public leadership. Loraine O'Connell, in today's Orlando Sentinel, refers to President Nixon as "faithful to Pat," but still "one of the most mean-spirited, unscrupulous, [and dishonest] presidents in out history." In the larger picture, what's more important? That he kept his pants on or that he screwed over our entire country and forever altered our faith in our government? If Nixon could commit all these horrible crimes and get off with a pardon, surely a mere adulteress does not deserve the death penalty, as is the case in this law which we are considering tonight.
One of the reasons why marital fidelity was so important in older days was because of family lines and legitimate heirs. Ancient society--and societies not quite so ancient--placed extreme value upon a person's birth. Who your parents were and their socio-economic class determined how you were treated--in fact, much of the book of Numbers deals with categorizing people. One part of this very parasha assigns certain Levites certain tasks based on who they are descended from. In American society, we've rejected these notions to an extent and judge people on who they are as individuals--their abilities, their actions, and not so much on their parents or social class (at least in theory). Perhaps that's one reason why it's not as important today to keep family lines pure and keep from straying.
Yet adultery is still an important element in our culture. Greek mythology is filled with it: every time one of the gods or goddesses sleeps around, disasters occur. Lancelot and Guinevere's adultery destroys Camelot and leads to the death of Arthur. In William Shakespeare's classic tragedy Othello, the hero wrongly suspects his wife and kills her--the only tangible evidence is her handkerchief in the hands of another man. In Hawthorne's story, Hester Prynne fares somewhat better than Desdemona, although she is forced to stand up to public ridicule on the scaffold and to wear a scarlet A on her chest. And even into the Twentieth Century, adultery resonates throughout our literature and leads to real problems, such as in The Great Gatsby, or recent movies like "Fatal Attraction." And yet other movies like "Same Time, Next Year" can portray the adulterous couple as sympathetic heroes. Our society seems confused on this issue--we're morally repulsed by adultery, yet also titillated by it. It makes for great drama as we struggle with the age-old question of whether we can love more than one person at the same time and the more contemporary question of how absolute marriage vows are.
But as interesting as this "intellectual curiosity" is, we still have this strange law, here in the Torah, that we must deal with. Supposedly, this is the only place in Jewish law where a ritual ordeal is undertaken that demands of God to reveal the truth. The talmudic rabbis tell us that an immediate result was expected and this is a major exception to the talmudic principle that one should NOT rely upon the occurrence of miracles. This is most strange, because logically, how could such a concoction work? It has been suggested that the solution was relatively harmless, but that if a woman with a guilty conscious believes it, she could literally worry herself to death, psychologically. Also, who's to say what poisons the priests could put into the water when they desire the results to go one way over another?
Apparently, it was believed that this ritual would be effective only as long as "the majority of Israel did God's will;" and that statement is vague enough that the results could be disqualified anytime anyone was unhappy with the so-called verdict. There was much objection to it and eventually the ritual was abolished by Rabbi Johanan ben Zakki in the time of the Second Temple--about two-thousand years ago. A good thing, no doubt. It was clearly unfair and certainly one-sided, because a wife could not accuse her husband of adultery.
Times change and we move on. The world progresses, and our religion evolves. Were more civilized, more just. As screwed up as our judicial system may be today, were reminded it could be much worse. That's what this passage in our Torah is all about. Rather than making us feel uncomfortable, I find it very reassuring as a benchmark by which to measure ourselves. On a daily biases, I often look around the world and despair at contemporary barbarism, people acting upon animalistic whims, the absence of values and self-control, but when I read a passage like this, four-thousand years old, it helps put things in a larger perspective and gives me faith in the continual progression of humanity. To me, this is a triumph of optimism in the late Twentieth Century.
Shabbat Shalom.