Naso (Torah)

As I sit down to write on this week’s portion, I feel a certain envy of my friends living abroad, who have a full week to “digest” the festival of Shavuot before going into a new Shabbat, with another Torah portion—especially one as rich and full, with such a diversity of subjects crying out for comment and analysis, as this one. Both the Midrash Rabbah and the Zohar on this portion are bountiful and filled with homiletics. Even the chapter of the Gifts of the Princes, in which the princes of each of the tribes bring identical gifts to the Sanctuary on twelve successive days (Numbers 7) serves as a rich source for midrashic exegesis, the gift of each tribe being seen as uniquely appropriate to its peculiar history and experience. (There are those who suggest that this richness is an outcome of the proximity of Naso to Shavuot).

Be that as may, I will briefly comment on two subjects, which are to my mind among the most interesting laws in this portion and in the Torah as a whole. Both of these are very distant from our everyday, contemporary Jewish experience: the Nazirite, and the Trial by Ordeal of the wife suspected of adultery (Sotah). In both cases, these laws are long defunct; the Sages already had ambivalent attitudes toward them; and each one has an entire tractate of the Talmud devoted to elucidating their legal intricacies. My own interest is in trying to understand what, beyond the laws as such, is the meaning of these practices.

The Nazirite

In Numbers 6:1-21, the Torah provides an option for a certain model of asceticism. Although the Hebrew word for such a person, Nazir or “Nazirite,” is used today to refer to Christian and other forms of monasticism, Biblical Naziritism in fact does not involve sexual celibacy, but abstention from three acts: contact with the dead, cutting ones hair, and consuming wine and other grape products.

The Rabbi’s ambivalence regarding the Nazirite is reflected in their interpretation of the requirement that at its conclusion he bring a sin-offering “because he sinned on the soul” (v. 11). One view states that he does so because he had been on a higher level of holiness, and now, rather than continuing to sanctify his entire life to God, he has returned to mundane everyday life, “to contaminate himself with the lusts of this world” (Ramban al ha-Torah on v. 11). The other view, that of R. Eleazar Ha-Kapar in Sifrei, states that, on the contrary, the Nazirite sinned by dint of the fact that he abstained from that which is permitted. In other words, such asceticism, by the very refusal to enjoy legitimate bodily pleasures, is itself sinful.

Modern Jewish apologetics have by and large stressed the latter view, noting the world-affirming, this-worldly emphasis of Judaism—possibly adding the Maimonidean celebration of the “golden mean,” the balanced, moderate approach, taking all things in moderation. Yet this does not quite seem the whole picture. Rabbi Michael Rosen recently remarked that, as it seems clear that the Torah is here providing a definite framework for the option of asceticism or withdrawal from the normal course of life, it is important to attempt to understand the phenomenon and its spiritual and psychological roots, rather than to smugly dismiss it, saying that middle-of-the-road, comfortable, “bourgeois“ religiosity must be the norm for all.

My own sense is that the institution of the Nazirite combines two interrelated themes. There is a basic impulse toward a more intense type of religious experience, to reorder the priorities of life as a whole toward spirituality. This is achieved, first of all, by a certain return to the primitive; by a rejection, if only symbolically, of some of the externals of urban civilization; of a hearkening back to the days of the desert: a rejection of polished, urban civilization, and a return to the pristine simplicity of the desert. There is something wild in his very appearance, a return to the wilderness, a rejection of the concern with externalities, with propriety, with the opinions of others, that looms so large and takes up so much of the energy of the respectable urbanite. One of the original Nazirite groups, the Rechabites, are cited in Jeremiah 35 as an example of loyalty to ancestral traditions. The basic impulse described there was to forego many of the appurtenances of civilization; their forebear Yonadav son of Rechab, taught them: “Do not drink wine, nor build houses, nor plant seeds, but live in tents.” One can imagine these Nazirites wearing rude homespun clothing, or even simple animal skins like Elijah. The growing of long hair seems to symbolize a rejection of the city dweller’s concern with appearance. Wine, too, is an archetypal product of sophisticated, urban civilization: a certain degree of settlement is required to grow grapes, leave them in vats to ferment, etc.: it involves a polishing or improving of natural food as it grows from the earth. More so then meat and bread, it requires extensive time period and a lot of patchkerei, fuss and bother, to prepare. In our day, there is an entire culture of wine-tasting, in which familiarity with varietals and specific vintages is seen as a sign of sophistication—not to mention the danger of intoxication as a result of drinking to excess. More than anything, it would seem, the Nazirites sought a return to essentials, to an unadorned, simple life.

Numerous examples of this impulse come to mind, in a variety of cultures and religions. In early Christianity, there were those who built monasteries carved into the sides of the mountains in such wild, inaccessible places as Wadi Kelt; or Simon of the Desert, who stood on a pillar for twenty years; or, in medieval times, the Trappists, who eschewed all speech. Even that paragon of balance, the Rambam (Maimonides), states in one passage that, if one finds oneself living among people who do not adhere to the basic rules of decent human behavior, and they do not leave one alone, than one should flee from such a place and even go to live “in the caves and bushes and wilderness” (De’ot 6.1). In more recent contexts, such models as the Amish, who live in families, but reject much of modernity and insist on living off the land, come to mind. In early Hasidism, too, there was a certain anarchistic element—a rejection of conventional propriety and behavior, and a return to the essentials of the inner life of service of God in every moment of life.

The hippie culture of the ‘60’s (and, I must add for those who are too young to remember: before it became a marketable commodity, like everything else in our global marketplace culture) had much of this spirit. With all of its failings—a certain mood of self-indulgence, expressed in the free-and-attitude towards drugs and sex; an element of irresponsibility and living for the moment, which in the end made it impossible for the more serious visionaries within it to build anything lasting—there was a core sense of seeking a purer, more honest life, with more direct relationships between people, and less obsession with the accumulation of things. For a few brief years, some of the communes in the remote reaches of America may have had some small bit of the same spirit as the Rechabite tents of old.

All this may seem surprising to many of us who are used to thinking of the Jews as the quintessential urban people. Certainly, this has been true for centuries, both in the European classical Diaspora and in the modern world: Warsaw, Vilna, New York, London, Paris, are but a few of the cities in which Jews felt at home. The shteitl was largely a fruit of necessity, when Jews were excluded from the big cities of Russia and forced into the small towns of the Pale of Settlement. The Jewish “character” is inevitably thought of as sophisticated, intellectual, quick, adaptable to a wide variety of milieus and cultures and human types, enjoying complexity and subtlety—in short, the very epitome of cosmopolitanism. Even the return to nature and to rural milieu, so celebrated by classical Zionism, seems to have played itself out. Israel today is one of the most intensely urbanized and over-crowded places in the developed world. Whose imagination is stirred today by Degania, Kfar Tabor, Emek Yizrael, Rosh Pinah, or even Sdeh Boker? Indeed, how many people even remember their names?

Nevertheless, there is also a powerful anti-urban impulse also present in the Tanakh, at least in certain streams and themes, stemming from a certain innate contradiction, or conflict, between civilization and spirituality. The Torah provides the option of Naziritism, together with a clear framework and safeguards, for those—and there evidently always are such—who seek the purity of a narrow, intensely focused spiritual life.

Sota: Trial by Ordeal of the Unfaithful Wife

The other longish chapter within the portion of Naso, Numbers 5:11-31, describes the “trial by ordeal”—the test to which a woman is submitted when her husband is overcome by a spirit of jealousy and suspects her of having been ”defiled” with another man. She is taken to the Temple or the Sanctuary, bringing with her a meal offering; the priest mixes a vial of water with dust from the floor of the sanctuary, referred to as “bitter waters” and recites certain curses before her; these are then written on a scroll, which is erased in the water, which she is then required to drink. If she was in fact guilty, the curses take effect, her body swells, her thigh falls away, and she dies a horrid death. If not, her innocence is considered vindicated, her husband is expected to take her back, and she will conceive a child.

Nearly every modern reader instinctively rejects this ritual out of hand as primitive, bizarre, and intolerably cruel. First of all, because of its patriarchal, blatant double standard: it is the woman alone who is held to such stringent standards of marital faithfulness, whereas the philandering husband, providing his paramour is an unmarried woman, gets off scott free. Secondly: because of the cruel and barbarous nature of her punishment: a protracted and painful death, described in graphic detail. Third: the total dependence on a supernatural miracle to reestablish the woman’s innocence or guilt. If my memory serves me correctly, this is the only case in the Torah in which an individual’s guilt or innocence are in fact determined by means of supernatural intervention. It would seem that Hazal were disturbed by this chapter, feeling no little ambivalence about it, couched in the laconic comment that, once adultery became too common, the bitter waters were abolished (Mishna Sota 9.9). Already in their age, the sense of horror regarding such unfaithfulness was somewhat abated. They also softened the impact of the possibly fatal consequences of the trial by emphasizing its positive effect: to affect reconciliation between man and wife. “Great is peace, that even the Holy Name is erased [i.e., as a part of the curse text dissolved in the bitter waters] in order to make peace between man and wife.”

I shall not attempt to offer an “apologia” for this law. To the believing Jew, for whom the entire Torah is the word of God, this too is Torah, and we must learn it. Implied in this case, too, is the faith that, so long as it was practiced, the Divine Will was somehow directly present in its results; the Torah was interested in invoking the miraculous in order to safeguard the area of marital chastity. For those who cannot accept such a faith, this chapter remains deeply problematic. In either event, my own interest is to try to understand it in its own terms.

Two brief remarks seem in place. First, it is interesting that the starting point of the chapter is not so much the woman’s dalliance, but the husband’s jealousy. “And a spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and she has been defiled… or a spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and she has not been defiled…” (v. 14). Male jealousy, it would seem, is a universal, basic human emotion that, so long as it is present, wreaks havoc with any possibility of normal, settled, harmonious family life. It is pointless arguing whether it is a worthy emotion, whether it is rational, to say that the woman is not chattel, that she is the master of her own body, etc. etc. Like the impulse toward religious perfection and purity present in the case of the Nazirite, intense, all-consuming jealousy exists at all times, at least among certain individuals. And, surprise of surprises, it shows no sign of disappearing in the modern 20th century or even in the so-called post-modern 21st century. Various attempts to “outgrow” this “outmoded,” “patriarchal,” even “chauvinist” emotion have not been crowned with notable success. (I remember some ‘60s’ communes which tried to practice sexual “pluralism” or “group marriage”; sooner or later, the men ended up slugging it out when one guy slept with another’s girl-friend.) The Torah was concerned with coping with this emotion, by creating a mechanism for providing a decisive, unequivocal answer to the niggling question—was she in fact faithful or not? It seems to me that one can perhaps fault the method chosen, but it is difficult to gainsay the motivation.

Second, it seems to me nearly impossible for us moderns to even begin to understand the scale of values underlying such a test. Our attitudes towards sexuality have so changed that it is difficult for us, at least in self-appointed “liberal” circles, to see adultery as much more than a “misdemeanor”—a mistake or mishap to be regretted. There is truly a quantum jump between our mentality and that of the Torah regarding sexual matters. The Torah seems to teaches us that, on the most basic level, there is something holy (or, more precisely, that should be made holy) in the act of sexual intercourse. All the rest follows from that. This is a kind of a priori axiom, which cannot be arrived at by logical or empirical reasoning that starts from a secular, biologistic world-view. A certain religious faith is needed to start with to arrive at this place—if not in every detail of the halakha, at least some sort of basic concept that such a thing as “holiness” exists in human activity, beyond utilitarian or practical social considerations.