<HTML>From: Jeffrey Spitzer <Jeffrey@Spitzer.net>
Subject: Difficult texts (Sotah)
Professor Sokolow's approach has much to commend, but I would also add a
little word study on qinah. Contrast the husband's vague sense of
jealousy (no circumstantial evidence, just a ruach qinah--even the gemara
recognizes that the "impure spirit" comes first) with the qinah
demonstrated by Pinchas. They might uncover Mishle 27:4 (who can stand
before jealousy) or Shir haShirim 8:6 (jealousy is as cruel--kashah--as
She'ol). Or Eliyahu's qinah in 1 Melakhim 19. Do you think the TaNaKh is
lauding the jealous husband of Mishlei 6?! Or put it from God's
perspective, Who, through Yirmiyahu and Yehezkel and Hoshea repeatedly
call Israel an adulteress. Not a sotah, but a confirmed adulteress. But
yet God did not wipe us out. Qinah is not a good thing. But it exists.
And it is enough to destroy a marriage whether there actually is adultery
or not.
I imagine the Sotah in this way. When an adulterer and an adulteress are
found together by witnesses they are killed.
A man suspects his wife of adultery. She actually committed adultery.
She is afraid of being killed through the sotah ordeal, so she confesses
with contrition. There are no witnesses, so she isn't killed. She
forfeits [slight edit - zg] her ketubah and is gone. If she did not do it,
she goes through the ordeal, she is acquitted, and the husband, suitably
embarrassed, accepts her back with contrition. The purpose of the Sotah
ritual is to force the husband to publicly confront his jealousy and then
face communal and religious pressure to drop it--to really drop it--when
his wife is confirmed innocent.
What does our society do with jealousy? We get divorced. If there is
actual adultery, moderns sometimes become reconciled and forgive each
other, but I can't imagine a marriage continuing with the assumption of
deception and infidelity that the jealous spouse carries in his heart.
With the force of a miraculous vindication and the authority of the
kohanim before his face, the jealous spouse must abandon the jealousy.
Students understand relationships better than they understand law. And
they understand feelings better than vague ideas like sacrilege.
Sotah is about saving a marriage, not about humiliating a wife.
B'vrakhah,
Jeffrey A. Spitzer
Director of the Rabbinics Lab (http://www.uscj.org/ssds/boston/main.htm )
Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston
Jeffrey@Spitzer.net</HTML>
