In Parshat Naso, there is a woman who is accused of an illicit sexual affair. The women needs to drink bitter water with God’s name broken up into it. If her thigh doesn’t sag and her belly doesn’t distend she is innocent; if not she is guilty (Numbers 5:11). All that needed to be done is for the husband to have a רוח קנאה, a jealous spirit, for this procedure to occur.

          What is sad is that a husband can be jealous and accuse his wife of an illicit relationship but not vice versa. A woman who has evidence that her husband has cheated has no recourse, whereas a man is able to force his wife to perform this ritual. The rabbis were uncomfortable with this practice.  In Mishnah Sotah the rabbis made it much less likely for this to occur, saying that the woman needed to be warned about her behavior by two witnesses who then see her in seclusion with another man (Sotah 1:1). Later on in Mishnah Sotah it states that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai discontinued the ritual of the sotah because the number of men who were adulterers proliferated (Sotah 9:9). It is evidence of shinui haitim, the changing nature of the times. What made sense in one time period did not in another.

          Still the Sotah leaves us feeling very uncomfortable. Three twentieth century commentators, Rabbis Herbert Chanan Brichto, Emanuel Rackman and Yaakov Kamenetsky, said the sotah was used specifically to prove women innocent. Kamenetsky said that if a man suspected his wife, “the doubt will never leave him unless God, so to speak, Himself promises that she is actually pure.”[1] This is further supported by Jacob Milgrom, who asserts that by bringing this to a Kohen, it is taken out of the people’s hands and placed in God’s hands.[2]

          Why focus so much on this Sotah ritual? In truth the entire body of rabbinic literature cites only one example of its implementation: Shemayah and Avtalyon making the freed slave woman Karkemith.[3] Even there there is disagreement as to whether she drank the real waters or a placebo. Regardless of whether that happened, by reading about the Sotah we can learn how our ancestors thought and how that changed over time. I would no longer read it as being about “the wayward women” but rather about an ancient, magical ritual that was used to show that God proclaims innocence and a clean slate.

          As we read the passage on the Sotah as well as the Nazir in my Torah study, who according to the rabbis should be criticized for making an excessive vow, let us recognize that not every biblical passage needs to correspond to our lives today; however that does not mean that there are not lessons that we can derive from them. We have moved from a world of the Sotah to a world of #MeToo, where women’s testimonies are believed and valued. Let us recognize that the Sotah is a vestige of our past that teaches us how society used to function and let us praise God that our society has moved on from there.

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[1] In Yosef Lindell Was the Sotah Meant to be Innocent? | The Lehrhaus

[2] Ibid

[3] Mishnah Eduyot 5:6