| Down and Dirty
A D’var Torah for Parashat Naso
By Cantor Robin Anne Joseph (AJR ’96)
A priest’s work is never done.
After a long day directing the services of the Gershonites, recording the enrollment of the Kohathites, the Gershonites, the Merarites, and retaining sacred donations…must the priests also be marriage counselors?
In Paashat Naso, any man who thinks his wife has “gone astray,” whether she has actually had sexual relations with another man or not, should be brought by the jealous husband to the priest. (Num. 5:12-15)
Oh, really? Whatever happened to the death penalty? Not that I’m in favor of that, but isn’t the death penalty the prescription for adultery?
Remember back in Leviticus… “If a man commits adultery with a married woman—committing adultery with another man’s wife—the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” (Lev. 20:10)
And coming up in Deuteronomy… “If a man is found lying with another man’s wife, both of them—the man and the woman with whom he lay—shall die.” (Deut. 22:22)
Why shouldn’t this jealous husband just have his wife and her lover killed as prescribed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy? The x-factor in this scenario in Naso seems to be jealously. Regardless of whether or not the wife has had an extra-marital affair, her husband’s jealously is not evidence; it is a feeling.
And so, enter The Priest. The husband may not simply have his wife killed just because he cannot control his jealously. So, off to the priest they go—where evidence is still not given, because there isn’t any. The priest is not called upon to make a judgement based on testimony of witnesses; that’s not part of his job description. Rather, he is going to work his priestly magic, so to speak; he’s going to perform a ritual, administer a curse (or a spell or an oath, depending upon the verse) involving the ingestion of “bitter waters,” sacrifice a “meal offering of jealousy,” and call upon יהוה to cause the curse to take effect (or not), according to the guilt or innocence of the woman. (Num. 5:15-22)
Although, this process smacks of the early-American witch hunts (although vile “witch cakes” were fed to the dogs and not the accused witch) and, no, there is not a reciprocal ritual where a suspected adulterous husband can be brought to the priest by a jealous wife, this is not a trial and I’m not convinced that this is the unfair, misogynistic practice that it may appear to be. The husband doesn’t get to bring his wife to a judge; he doesn’t have a case. I would argue that this “meal offering of jealousy” (Num. 5:15) that he brings to the priest says more about him than it does about her, and that the priest is just trying to resolve the issue peaceably (or with the least amount of bloodshed possible).
It’s worth emphasizing that the husband’s offering is a “… meal offering of jealousy; a meal offering of remembrance of wrongdoing.” We are dealing with a husband who cannot let go of (and/or forget?) his jealous passions. A רֽוּחַ־ קִנְאָה֙, a fit of jealousy (or a “jealous spirit”) has taken hold of him. (Num. 5:14) In Tractate Sotah 3a the rabbis call this “a spirit of impurity” and argue whether or not an adulterous woman can even be brought by such a husband who is in this kind of a state.
I can envision the scene, as Ploni ben Ploni, steam coming out of his ears, comes traipsing up the path to the Tent of Meeting, his wife in one hand, his meal offering in the other. I can just hear the priest now, watching from the Tabernacle, “Oy. This guy again? Hey, Itamar: get the water ready.”
And what comes next looks to me like a careful dance between the priest trying to placate Mr. ben Ploni while giving the wife of Ploni every opportunity to be cleared of wrongdoing. First, the priest is instructed to “bring her forward and have her stand before יהוה” (Num. 5:16), essentially creating a little distance between the couple. And so, while the rest of the ritual is done in the presence of the Lord, it doesn’t seem to be in the immediate presence of the husband. So, then how could the husband know exactly what’s going on? I would argue, he couldn’t. The priest is offering an incantation and making “bitter waters” with household dirt that he takes from the floor of the Tabernacle [Num. 5:17-18], which would not be in the sight of the husband (or anyone else for that matter, since neither husband nor wife would likely be following the priest into the Tabernacle). God only knows, literally and figuratively, what the priest is actually doing. And how much harm could a little dirt do in a vessel of water? And how could we actually see what gets put into that vessel, anyway?
Complicit in this ritual is the wife. She must “amen” the “curse” שְׁבוּעָה/sh’vu’ah which he bestows upon her. And of all the words used for “curse” or “cursing” elsewhere in this parashah (הַֽמְאָרְרִ֖ים, אָלָה, שְׁבוּעָה) the word שְׁבוּעָה/sh’vu’ah can be interpreted as an oath that is attesting innocence, as if there is an understanding that the priest is administering an oath/curse that both he and the wife knows will absolve her.
There are other methods for dealing with an adulterous wife when there are witnesses and testimony. But when jealousy rears its ugly head, the priest gets called in to work his “magic.” But on a very real, very down-to-earth (pun intended?) way, he seems to me not to be searching for a reason to have this woman killed, but rather to be creating a process for resolution and a mechanism for the couple in question to find their way back to each other.
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Cantor Robin Anne Joseph (’96) teaches cantillation as part of the faculty at AJR. A musician and composer, Robin’s liturgical and folk-rock compositions can be found through Transcontinental Music Publications and OySongs and sung at a synagogues world-wide. Past-president of ARC (the Association of Rabbis and Cantors), past-president of the Women Cantors’ Network, and the president emerita of Kol Hazzanim—the Westchester Community of Cantors, Robin has served the congregation of Temple Beth Shalom in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY for the last 44 years.
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