Parashat Naso – 5782
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites
One of the topics discussed in Parashat Naso seems pretty odd to someone today who encounters it for the first time: the topic of sota, the wayward wife. The Torah describes a situation in which a man suspects that his wife cheated on him and is in an intimate relationship with another man. This causes strife between the couple. The Torah offers a surprising solution for calming things down: The couple comes to the Temple where the suspicion will be checked by writing a text from the Torah in which the kohen (priest) has the woman swear that she didn’t cheat on her husband. After that, the kohen takes the piece of parchment and erases the text in sacred water. The woman then drinks the water. If the suspicion is justified and she indeed cheated on her husband, the water would harm her. But if the husband falsely accused her, the woman would be blessed by the water.
Frankly, it’s hard to understand how drinking the water would cause either harm or blessing to this woman. The Ramban (Nachmanides, of the great biblical commentators in the 13th century) wrote about this ceremony that it is the only element in the Torah’s judicial system in which justice is dependent on a miracle. In other words, this was a supernatural ceremony that we do not pretend to understand.
We must admit that in today’s culture, it’s hard to read such a description. Maybe we can understand that in the culture of ancient times, in which a woman’s fate was usually in the hands of a man, this ceremony was meant to actually protect her from a suspicious man’s rage.
Jewish sages noticed one detail that you might have missed in the short description you just read. The kohen erased the text into the water, but the text included G-d’s name which was erased as well! Usually, the erasure of G-d’s sacred name was strictly prohibited because it conveys contempt. But here the kohen was told to erase G-d’s name. Why?
Taught Rabbi Yishmael: Great is peace, for even the Great Name written in holiness, the Holy Blessed One said to blot out in water so as to impose peace between husband and wife.
(Vayikra Rabbah 9)
Peace between a man and his wife was so important that it warranted permission to erase G-d’s name. This is a symbolic yet tangible way to show the tense couple, and maybe the suspicious husband, that the most important thing in a healthy marriage is to make sure that suspicion and jealousy are not dominant in it, but rather a sense of reconciliation, emotional closeness, and love.
Later in the parasha, we read about the nazir – a man who wants to become spiritually uplifted and makes a vow to abstain from wine for a set period of time. It is a time in which the man tries to reach spiritual balance in the face of his impulses. One of the biblical commentators, Gersonides (The Ralbag, Rabbi Levi Ben Gershon, philosopher and astronomer, 14th century, Southern France) wrote that the commandments regarding the nazir are the direct continuation of those relating to the sota. If the purpose of the laws of sota were to bring the couple back to a healthy relationship, the laws pertaining to the nazir related to inner peace. A person fighting an internal battle between his desires and his values finds a way to reach balance and a serene life via temporary abstinence.
After that, we read the commandment of Birkat Kohanim, the Priestly Blessing, in which the kohanim bless the Jewish nation; a commandment that continues to his day, daily, in the Land of Israel and in other countries on holidays. The pinnacle of the blessing is the sentence: “May the Lord raise His countenance toward you and grant you peace.” Here, the reference is to national peace. The kohanim are blessing the nation that they should live in peace, and that the various shades of the nation will become a magnificent multi-colored picture and not a source of strain, dispute, and segmentation.
Peace spreads in circles. A person who lives peacefully with his values and desires, inside himself, can conduct a healthy relationship, and can influence the wider, national circle that will also conduct itself based on the values of peace, striving for harmony among the various streams in the nation.
