Telephone Torah Study: Jealousy, Domestic Violence and Judaism
This week we’ll tackle the issue of jealousy, domestic violence and Judaism when we study the Torah portion, Naso (Num. 4:21:7:89). To join in on the conference call, please dial 702-851-4044, when prompted punch in 2, then our pass code 22252#.
‘We’ve Got to Stop It,’ Rabbi Lisa Edwards commentary on this subject and how it relates to Naso will serve as our guide for this discussion:
The sign read, “We’ve got to stop it,” and under it a woman sat alone at a table in the grocery store parking lot. The sign also contained the words “domestic violence,” so I walked over. She greeted me warmly, “I’m trying to put a face to it. To say it could happen to anyone. Because,” she explained, “before it happened to me I wasn’t very sympathetic. I would hear about battered women and think to myself, ‘just put one foot in front of the other and walk away.’ I had no idea how difficult that could be, how entrapped people can become in this cycle of violence. Are you a survivor?” she asked me.
“No,” I said, “but I worked at a battered women’s shelter for six years, so I well know what you’re saying.”
“Jealousy, for no reason, can start it all,” she said. “But it can be anything-just that desire to control something-someone-in a world that feels so out of control.”
One of the strangest passages of Torah occurs in this week’s Parashat Naso–the ritual of the jealous husband and what comes to be known in Mishnah as the sotah wife (sotah from the word used in our parashah, tisteh, meaning “gone astray” or “turn aside”). “If any wife has gone astray and broken faith with her husband . . . [and] a fit of jealousy (ruach kinah) comes over him and he is wrought up about the wife who has defiled herself; or if a fit of jealousy comes over one and he is wrought up about his wife although she has not defiled herself, the husband shall bring his wife to the priest . . . . ” (Numbers 5:12-15). The priest is instructed to subject the wife to a bizarre ordeal, including drinking “bitter waters” made of sacred water mixed with dirt from the floor of the Tabernacle and ink from the writing of the punishment she will face if guilty. If the drink causes her womb to swell, she is judged guilty; if not, she is innocent. If guilty, it is left to God to punish her-presumably by the miscarriage or infertility that will result from her swollen belly.
We’re not the only ones troubled by this passage. The Talmud includes a whole tractate about it,Sotah, and examines this ordeal in great detail, including added restrictions that greatly reduce the likelihood of using it. But even if we stay just with the Torah’s cryptic version, chances are the woman will not suffer physical harm either from the “potion” or at the hand of her husband.
Continue reading on Reform Judaism
Torah Passage of the Week:
“If any wife has gone astray and broken faith with her husband . . . [and] a fit of jealousy (ruach kinah) comes over him and he is wrought up about the wife who has defiled herself; or if a fit of jealousy comes over one and he is wrought up about his wife although she has not defiled herself, the husband shall bring his wife to the priest . . . . ” (Numbers 5:12-15).
