Imu Shalev: Hello and welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha, diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, I’m Imu Shalev. This week’s Torah portion is Naso… except for our Israeli listeners who are reading Parshat Beha’alotecha this week. Today, we’re going to look at a section of Parshat Naso which can be a bit uncomfortable to discuss: the sotah, the wayward woman who is suspected of adultery. You don’t hear the word ”‘wayward” much anymore, do you? So for this wayward woman, whose husband has accused her of being intimate with another man, the Torah outlines a bizarre ritual. She comes before the priest and he makes a mixture of water and dust from the Tabernacle floor and then takes a scroll of parchment which details this very law and dissolves it into the water, and gives it to the woman to drink. If she was guilty, she would die a gruesome death. But if she was innocent, then she would not only survive but would become pregnant. 

If I’m being honest, I find the whole thing a bit hard to relate to. If a buddy of mine were having trust issues in his marriage, it’s not like I would say, “All right, friend, it’s time to bust out the mei sotah. You know, the waters of waywardness! That’s what you and your wife need.” So how exactly should we relate to the law of the sotah? Sure, it would be easy to shy away from asking these questions and to talk about something more comfortable. But let’s not shy away. Instead, let’s go into the verse. This week, Rabbi David Fohrman sits down with a member of the Aleph Beta family, Rivky Stern, to tackle the mystery of the sotah. 

Just an editorial note: what you’re about to listen to is from a project at Aleph Beta known as Parsha Lab. Parsha Lab is a little bit different from some of the other Aleph Beta courses that we’ve shared with you thus far on Into the Verse. What makes it different is that it lets you see how we learn Torah at the beginning of our process, before the ideas have gone through multiple revisions and been polished by producers and editors. It’s just two scholars sitting down to have an informal, unscripted conversation about the text. So what you’re going to hear from Rabbi Fohrman and Rivky… it’s a fascinating conversation, well worth a listen, but a bit incomplete… but don’t worry, I’m going to pop back in at the end so we can find some resolution together. All right, here’s Rabbi Fohrman and Rivky.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Rivky, what I want to talk to you about today is an idea that we have been batting around a little bit with the office. It began with an observation by Immanuel Shalev of a tantalizing possible clue that, you know, I spent some time thinking about and I think might be the beginning of something here. The back story is that this has to do with a section of text in this week's parsha that has to do with the sotah. Rivky, you want to give our listeners a little bit of the back story here on the sotah?

Rivky Stern: Sure. Basically, I think the laws of the sotah deal with a marriage in crisis. There is a man who is very suspicious of his wife and she doesn't do anything to sort of make that suspicion go away. She ends up being alone with another man after he warned her not to be alone with that man, and then she is brought to have some sort of ritual with the kohen, the priest, to find out whether she actually cheated on her husband.

Rabbi Fohrman: It’s a very strange ritual, it’s one of the most mysterious things you're going to find in Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers. By the way, it should be emphasized that this is entirely voluntary. She doesn't need to submit to this process. As you correctly noted, the marriage is in crisis. It seems to be the victim of mutual suspicion or mutual anger or mutual scorn. The husband is jealous, in the words of the text — possibly paranoid, possibly justified. We don't know. He doesn't know. He goes and he asks his wife or almost makes a demand of her and says, I need you not to be in intimate seclusion with this other man. I think there might be something going on between you two. Basically, instead of them kind of working it out together and somehow achieving some kind of reassurance in the normal way that couples would handle these things, she seems to invite two witnesses to watch her flaunt that warning. It's like, Come here, Bob and Sam. Watch me go seclude myself with Phil. Almost as if to taunt her husband. 

Rivky: A troubled marriage indeed. She purposely is alone with this man in front of witnesses.

Rabbi Fohrman: And in front of the witnesses is the weird thing. If you were going to have an affair, you wouldn’t say: Hey, Bob and Sam, watch me go upstairs and seclude myself in the bedroom with Phil! That's not an act of romance. That's an act of spite. I think it's correct when you say this is a marriage on the rocks. It's almost more on the rocks because of the mutual suspicion and scorn than it is on the rocks by whatever might or might not be happening with this imagined or possibly imagined affair. This is sort of the background with sotah. 

The Sotah’s Brew

Rabbi Fohrman: Basically, the Torah seems to be creating the situation where if she wants, she can create a reset in the marriage. There's a ceremony that will either exonerate her or implicate her. She drinks these waters, these very strange waters, that are mixed by the kohen… 

Rivky: It feels like the witches of Macbeth, right?

Rabbi Fohrman: It does. It almost feels like a witches’ brew. There's some dust from the ground… you've got this scroll with this curse – it feels like it's Harry Potter – where the letters of the curse including God's name are erased in the waters. She drinks this. If she's in fact guilty of adultery, she'll die miraculously. If she is in fact not guilty of adultery and nothing's going on, then not only will she survive the encounter, but she'll be guaranteed by God that if she's childless, she'll become pregnant, she will be blessed with this lineage which may have previously eluded her.

Rivky: Which also sort of seems strange because when this marriage is in crisis, assuming she's exonerated, it's sort of strange to imagine that this is a couple that should really be having children. So I think that's another sort of question mark for us.

Rabbi Fohrman: And what it seems to indicate is that there is the possibility actually of saving the marriage, that there is something that could happen here that would be constructive in terms of allaying this sort of mutual suspicion and scorn which has crept into the marriage.  You can imagine this paranoid guy who's really worried about his wife and Phil. She's saying to him, Look, there's nothing going on between me and Phil. But the marriage has gotten to this point where he can't even accept her reassurances. You could imagine this guy thinking, If only there would be a sign from Heaven, if only I could have some sort of objective clarification, then somehow that could make it all better. What's happening over here is God coming out of the clouds and saying, I'm willing to be that verification. I'm willing to provide that kind of reset.

A Phantom Sotah Story

Rabbi Fohrman: Anyway, what I wanted to share with you was an idea — an interesting, intertextual hint actually — which Immanuel suggested and I've been kind of running down over the last day or so. I think that it's rather tantalizing. There seems to be another text sort of hovering over here, kind of a phantom sotah story, I wonder. Could it be that this earlier story in the Torah somehow becomes a template, as strange as it may sound, for the sotah ritual? Could it be that the weird ritual is some sort of replay of the original story? 

Let's play our little game: Where have we heard these ideas before? Where have we heard these words before? Here's the data, folks. If you look at the ritual of the sotah, one of the things that happens is that there's this elaborate curse which is drawn up on a scroll and then it is placed in the waters. The waters are these strange waters. They're called cursed, bitter waters. Look at the language:

וְכָתַב אֶת־הָאָלֹת הָאֵלֶּה הַכֹּהֵן בַּסֵּפֶר וּמָחָה אֶל־מֵי הַמָּרִים

(Numbers 5:23)

You write these curses down and the priest erases them in these bitter waters, right? Something being erased in water… If you think about these waters, another element which is really interesting is that there’s something else that’s mixed in the water: dust from the floor of the Tabernacle. It’s a really strange sort of brew over here. The question I would ask you is: Does this remind you of any earlier episode in the Torah? Especially if you consider the language of sotah itself?

אִישׁ אִישׁ כִּי־תִשְׂטֶה אִשְׁתּוֹ וּמָעֲלָה בוֹ מָעַל

(Numbers 5:12)

A man whose wife has gone astray and trespassed him… note that the language here of “trespass” is Mem-Ayin-Lamed — “ma’al.” 

It turns out that this other story seems to involve all of these elements and more. What other story involves water? What other story involves the erasure of something in water? What other story involves dirt getting erased and muddied in that water, too? What other story also has that word ma’al associated with the erasure of those waters with all the dirt and all that? Rivky, what do you say? Where have we heard these words before? 

From Erasure to Remembrance

Rivky: I think all of our first instincts when it comes to water is the Flood story from Genesis. I think we have some of these common links there. The erasure is obviously the erasure of humanity. Everyone except for Noah and his family gets erased. Dirt as well. Rabbi Fohrman, correct me if I'm wrong, but we have in the story of Noah this idea that the land too gets mixed in with the water.

Rabbi Fohrman: How does the water get mixed in with the land?

Rivky: Well, it's a flood. It grabs all the land.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's a flood. It grabs all the land: אָנֹכִי מַמְטִיר עַל-הָאָרֶץ – [God] is raining water on the land (Genesis 7:4). Also, Rivky, it's not just the ideas. It's the actual words. The words of erasure, that specific Hebrew word that describes the erasure of God's name into the waters: in Hebrew, it's Mem-Chet-Hey, “machah.” You see it there in the Flood: אֶמְחֶה אֶת-הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר-בָּרָאתִי מֵעַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה – I will erase man that I created from the face of the earth (Genesis 6:7). The text could have chosen any number of other words: I’m going to kill man, I’m going to destroy man. But no, I’m going to erase man. By the way, Rivky, where does man come from?

Rivky: Man comes from the earth itself…

Rabbi Fohrman: Ah, what's the specific Hebrew word for the land that man comes from? Do you remember? 

Rivky: וַיִּיצֶר יְקוָק אֱלֹקים אֶת-הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן-הָאֲדָמָה – God forms man out of dust, afar (Genesis 2:7).

Rabbi Fohrman: Ah, afar. And what are you supposed to put in the sotah's drink? וּמִן־הֶעָפָר אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בְּקַרְקַע – afar, dust, from the ground (Numbers 5:17). You’re supposed to erase that in the waters, too. Just like in the Flood, when man that originally came from afar was erased in the waters. It's like man went back to the dirt. There's this water raining on the dirt of the land, this water raining on man, and it's as if all the men dissolve and go back to the dirt. It's the same thing happening. It's almost like it's a recreation of these Flood waters. 

Rivky: Ma'al is the one word we're still missing.

Rabbi Fohrman: So take a look again at Genesis 6:7 in the Flood story. Can you find the phantom ma'al?

Rivky: Let me read it out loud: וַיֹּאמֶר יְקוָק אֶמְחֶה אֶת־הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָאתִי מֵעַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה – And God says, I will erase man — who I created — mei’al, from upon the face of the earth. 

Rabbi Fohrman: The word ma'al in the story of the sotah is a play on words, perhaps, of mei’al, מֵעַל, from upon the face of the earth. And it's not just this. Take a look at the type of offering which accompanies the sotah procedure: כִּי־מִנְחַת קְנָאֹת הוּא מִנְחַת זִכָּרוֹן מַזְכֶּרֶת עָוֹן – because this is an offering of jealousy, a memorial or remembrance, in some way (Numbers 5:15). As if the deeds of this woman are going to be remembered for ill or for good. If she's innocent, that's going to be remembered. She'll be exonerated. If she's guilty, that will be remembered. So there's some kind of din, some sort of judgment, involving remembrance. Couple that with something else here in sotah. Read the beginning of Numbers 5:14 and put it together and tell me what in the Flood does it remind you of?

Rivky: וְעָבַר עָלָיו רוּחַ־קִנְאָה – and the feeling of jealousy came over him…

Rabbi Fohrman: In context, it means that a feeling of jealousy passed over him, but the word ru’ach doesn’t literally mean “feeling,” right? What does ru’ach literally mean?

Rivky: Ru'ach is a wind.

Rabbi Fohrman: So what does a wind passing over remind you of in the Flood?

Rivky: That feels like the ending of the Flood itself.

Rabbi Fohrman: Ah, it is the ending of the Flood. What the beginning of the sotah is, is the end of the Flood. The beginning of the sotah is the feeling of jealousy that triggers all of this. The end of the Flood is what? Take a look at the very beginning of Genesis 8.

Rivky: וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹקים אֶת-נֹחַ – And God remembered Noah (Genesis 8:1). There’s that zikaron, that remembrance. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Ah, and what happened when God remembered Noah?

Rivky: At the end of the verse: וַיַּעֲבֵר אֱלֹקים רוּחַ עַל-הָאָרֶץ – God made this ru’ach, this wind, pass over the earth (Genesis 8:1).

Rabbi Fohrman: Fascinating, right? So at the very end of the Flood story, there's another kind of remembrance which is a mirror image of the sotah kind. The sotah is a feeling of jealousy that triggers what ultimately may become a destructive event for this marriage and for the woman, for everything. But at the end of the Flood, you have another kind of remembrance which is actually lifesaving which is God's, using exactly the same words.

Rivky: That's also the remembrance for her, right? Because the remembrance for the sotah in some ways is meant to sort of be the first step in the reparation of the relationship.

A Tale Of Two Relationships

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. Let's go back to the hope of the reset we talked about before. If you can put paranoia and jealousy behind him on his side and you can put scorn and anger and retribution behind her on her side... if you really think about what's gone wrong in their marriage… What's gone wrong in their marriage is that their marriage has become a terrible clash of power dynamics. It's like the love has seeped out of it. In a strange kind of way, I wonder if something like that… is it the case that when God remembers Noah and God causes a wind to blow upon the waters to kind of begin the possibility of restoration of the world… if you think about the blessing and the curse, right? There's a curse going on here. These cursed waters are here in the Flood, too. The cursed waters have destroyed man. But they've saved one man. And what's the blessing that Noah gets immediately after this?

Rivky: לֹא-אֹסִף לְקַלֵּל עוֹד אֶת-הָאֲדָמָה בַּעֲבוּר הָאָדָם – I will not again curse the ground because of the man (Genesis 8:21). Wow, l'kallel. That curse.

Rabbi Fohrman: There it is. Right? I'm never again going to curse the land through water like I've done here. Cursed waters. And instead what does God say to Noah? I have a job for you. You're supposed to come out and what's your job?

Rivky: To have children. Wow. Just like the sotah. The exonerated sotah is blessed with children, as part of the reparation of their relationship. So Rabbi Fohrman, just to put things together and maybe spell things out more clearly, one of the things that we were saying at the beginning of this podcast episode was that it looks like this relationship between husband and wife is in disarray and it's almost at the verge of completely breaking apart and there being no way to resolve it. And what hopefully the sotah laws do is they sort of start to maybe repair the relationship. It's almost at the point of being broken completely, but maybe this can repair it. I think in some ways it was a little bit of just a theory, a speculation… but now that we can connect it to Noah, it feels much more grounded. The textual and thematic connections to Noah feel very real. It seems like the story of Noah is also about a relationship that is in disarray, disrepair. It’s the relationship between humanity and God. God is looking at the people of the world, asking, what is with these people? I created them. I was happy with them, but look what they're doing to each other. כִּי רַבָּה רָעַת הָאָדָם בָּאָרֶץ וְכָל-יֵצֶר מַחְשְׁבֹת לִבּוֹ רַק רַע כָּל-הַיּוֹם – The evil of man was great in the land, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).

Rabbi Fohrman: Doesn't that sound a lot like the accusation of a jealous husband, of an angry husband? It's like, you're always bad. You know what I mean? And maybe you are always bad. 

It seems like it might be that there is a precedent for sotah in this story. We see this elsewhere in the Torah, in fact, that our laws seem to emerge out of our stories. It seems that the law of the sotah might be harkening back to the original kind of mei sotah, the waters of the sotah, which could either destroy or heal. In the case of humanity, it destroys some people and these waters provide for blessing, are lifesaving, for Noah (who is immune to them), almost as the exonerated person is immune to them.

Why Won’t God Destroy Again?

Rabbi Fohrman: This is completely speculative and I could be completely off here, but let me maybe close out our little podcast with the following possible thought, understanding that it's just possible. One of the greatest puzzles of the Noah story is that the reason why God destroys the world is suspiciously similar to the reason why after the Flood He promises that never again will He destroy it. Rivky, go back to that language for why God decides to destroy the world in the first place. That language that we talked about before sounding almost like a jealous husband.

Rivky: God says וְכָל-יֵצֶר מַחְשְׁבֹת לִבּוֹ רַק רַע כָּל-הַיּוֹם – that the nature of man, the nature of humanity, is just bad.

Rabbi Fohrman: And look at that language: “the inclination of his heart.” Okay, now fast forward to after the Flood. Why does God say He's never again going to destroy the world?

Rivky: He uses almost the same language: כִּי יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע מִנְּעֻרָיו – because the inclination of the heart of man is bad from his youth (Genesis 8:21). It's basically saying fundamentally the same thing: that man is bad… but before, God said that man is bad and therefore I have to destroy him, and now, God says that man is bad and therefore I will never destroy him again

Rabbi Fohrman: So there's this great puzzle, which I don't think we can solve really in the context of the last few minutes of this podcast, which is how could the reason why God's going to destroy the world become the reason why God will never again destroy it? You know, if I was snarky, why couldn't I go back to God and say: God, you know, if You had taken a different attitude five minutes ago, maybe we wouldn't have had a Flood?

It's almost like there's something changing. But it's almost like what changes isn't man. It's almost like what God is doing is sort of giving this reassurance that yes, I know that you're evil. Because you can imagine Noah saying, Look, how do you know? If it happened once, it could happen again. How do you know people will never again get this bad? You're telling me to have all these children. What if You decide to destroy them again? And God says, No, I'm not going to do that because I'm actually looking at the reason why I destroyed you and never again will I destroy for that reason. Why? Maybe the answer is something about the relationship has changed. There's been a reset in the relationship between God and humanity.

Imu: This is indeed where Rabbi Fohrman and Rivky’s conversation ends. But the truth is I think they’re really on the cusp of the significance of the parallels that they have uncovered. I think they would tell you that the significance of these parallels for them is that God gives humanity a superpower. He gives them a tool really only God has, which is the ability to press the reset button. o-d is a creator — and when a creator doesn’t like his painting, his powerpoint presentation, you paint the whole thing white. You start over. 

Can you do that in a marriage?  A marriage is complicated, with so much history, and there are transgressions in a marriage. Things that you can never forget. There are suspicions of those marriage-ending events. That if only you could really know the truth could you possibly rebuild. The Flood of Noach is a devastating destructive event and the Flood of Noach — the waters of Noach — are purifying and cause rebirth. Those two things are true simultaneously: for those who strayed, the waters destroyed them; for those who were pure, the waters ushered in a rebirth and a new era for God’s relationship with man. And so seemingly we too have this tool in our relationship. We get to do something that humanity never gets to do; we get to divine the truth. Think about how crazy that is. If I wanted to go into business with somebody and I didn’t know if they were going to cheat me, or if I didn't know if the business venture was going to be successful… wouldn’t it be great if there was a ritual to find out if this partner was trustworthy or if this venture would be profitable? The Torah doesn’t let us peer into the future or peer into the hearts of others. It doesn’t let us peer into the past to divine what was. Except for the waters of the sotah. It gives a relationship a chance at rebirth, a chance at repairing. I think that was a very powerful thing.  

And as I am musing and speculating about what we do with this in the 21st century when we can’t have access to that tool, I am at least moved to know that this seems to be the most important relationship, the only relationship I know of that provides a reset tool.  So it makes me think that a marriage is worth investing in. Whether it makes sense to go to that therapist that Rabbi Fohrman and Rivky were talking about, or whether it makes sense to do something that I’ve never seen in my particular community, but know of, a marriage renewal ceremony… Things like that start to make sense to me. And maybe those are good tools to avail yourself of. Because a relationship with a spouse with its ups and downs, its pains and disappointments, is worth investing in. As always, thanks for listening.

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Credits:

This episode was recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman, along with our former executive producer, Rivky Stern. 

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Rivky Stern. 

Into the Verse editing was done by Beth Lesch.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. Additional audio editing was done by Veekalp Sharma. 

Our editorial director is Imu Shalev.