D’var Torah
Shabbat Shalom! Thank you all so much for coming to celebrate this special day with me. Some of you may be wondering what exactly I just did, so I’ll explain. The giant scroll that I read from is the torah, a holy text in Judaism that contains 5 books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Each week, we read one portion. My portion is Parashat Naso, in Numbers.
This portion talks about a lot of things. It discusses many concepts such as temple duties of several clans of Israelites and the laws of Nazarites, who are people who devote themselves to G-d through making vows such as not drinking wine, not cutting their hair, and not coming into contact with dead bodies. It also discusses how you make up for inconveniencing someone by paying them back what you owe them plus an inconvenience fee. But what really stuck out to me was the Sotah ritual. And no, not like the kind you drink, although I do wish I could give a whole D’var about Dr. Pepper. But this Sotah ritual follows a husband going to the priest and accusing his wife of cheating. This process consisted of a test of the woman’s loyalty through a magical spell. The Torah says:
וְלָקַח הַכֹּהֵן, מַיִם קְדשִׁים, בִּכְלִי־חָרֶשׂ, וּמִן־הֶֽעָפָר, אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בְּקַרְקַע הַמִּשְׁכָּן, יִקַּח הַכֹּהֵן, וְנָתַן אֶל־הַמָּֽיִם:
“The priest shall take holy waters in a clay vessel, and he will take earth from the ground of the Mishkan and put it in the water.” (Numbers 5:17)
And then he makes her drink it. In other words, he’s literally feeding her mud. He then pours these bitter waters on her, and the belief was that if her thighs sag and her belly distends because of this magical mud water, it proves that she cheated. The priest then makes a declaration that she’s a curse among her people, and then she has to reply “Amen, amen.” But this obviously was a flawed system. First of all, does the husband genuinely think she was cheating? Even if he does, what if he’s wrong? What if she’s innocent? Can we guarantee that her physical reaction to drinking the Sotah waters reflects whether she was cheating or not? Plus, what if he’s just angry at her and wants revenge? Or maybe, he’s just really bored, so he’s doing it for kicks and giggles.
Since nobody can read minds, rituals like this will never work, because we can’t tell what’s really going on in their relationship or who is really telling the truth. Unless the wife’s cheating was directly seen by the husband, he most likely picked up the suspicion through rumors that could be false. And these rumors could lead to social consequences and shame if people don’t know the full story.
The truth is that relationship problems will never not exist. The Talmud, a very extensive commentary on the Torah, states that “When adultery became rampant, the bitter waters [of the Sotah] stopped, and it was Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai [who] canceled [their use]” (Talmud Sotah 47a). So this guy just goes and eliminates the Sotah ritual, because at that point it was clear that it wasn’t preventing people from cheating.
This really intrigued me. I didn’t know that you could just go and get rid of rituals and processes that the Torah says we have to do. But I guess it makes sense. Why should we have to listen to every single thing that this book has to say? Being Jewish shouldn’t mean compromising our own morals and ideas. We shouldn’t have to follow every single tiny detail we’re told to do in order to be Jewish. We can participate in Judaism even if we disagree with some things, and we can also reinterpret things in order to be Jewish in our own way.
I don’t keep kosher and I’m not super religious - and sometimes I even forget about Shabbat (oh no!) - but that doesn’t make me any less Jewish. I still connect to Jewish values and my Jewish education, and even if I don’t agree with or practice every single thing that the Torah says, I am still Jewish and can still be in Jewish community. Being Jewish is more than just devoting yourself to Torah and G-d, though for many people that’s what it is about. The way that I connect to my Judaism doesn’t have to be about my relationship with G-d. For me, Judaism is about gratitude, love, knowledge, kindness, and my Jewish identity.
And if you’re able to *not* keep kosher and still be Jewish, you are able to *not* keep harmful practices and still be Jewish. This Sotah ritual causes women to be very vulnerable and in positions of less power. Is it really worth keeping this ritual if it has so many unfair dynamics based on gender? Personally, I think that it’s not worth keeping. Lke Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai said, it’s not working. Why do we as humans feel obligated to continue what we know is wrong just because we’ve been told it is right, just because we’re used to it?
Today, women are very scared to come forward about their abusers, not because of a priest or a ritual, but because of society and fear of being shamed. Similarly, social consequences play a role in this ritual because women are a lot less powerful and don’t have control over how their body will react to this concoction, or whether their husbands will make an accusation in the first place. There is stigma around sensitive topics such as abuse. I wish we could get rid of this stigma the way that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai got rid of the Sotah ritual. This stigma isn’t helping anyone, and kind of like how the Sotah ritual doesn’t reflect an essential value of Judaism today, the stigma around abuse doesn’t reflect values of society today, and it shouldn’t have such a huge impact on the lives of so many women.
When I was younger, I thought that Judaism had to be a certain way, that you had to do EVERYTHING, and if you didn’t, you were a “bad Jew.” But now I realize that it’s about so much more than that. It can be about holidays, it can be about the food, music, and culture, it can be about friendship, it can be about knowledge and Jewish learning. Judaism doesn’t have to be about what anyone else thinks - it can be about how YOU connect to YOUR deeper self on your own terms. So how DO you connect to your deeper self? I encourage all of you to keep that question in mind as you go about your daily life.
I’d like to first thank my tutor, Tracy, who made sure that I was confident in all of the Hebrew parts of today’s service. I’d also like to thank Rabbi Noyo for helping me write this speech, and for teaching my class this year. We will miss you so much and it’s been such a great year. Thank you to Ashley Adams for giving me some great tips on public speaking. Thank you to all my previous Chaverim School teachers for giving me the best Jewish learning possible and really shaping who I am today. A special thank you to Rabbi Barbara for having such a positive impact on how I think about my Jewish identity and for being a great rabbi to me for eight years. I also want to thank my b. mitzvah class, Teddy, Mia, Micah, and Hazel - it’s been so fun spending all these years at Chaverim with you all. Thank you to the Abramoski’s for being there as a second family to me. Many thanks to my friends for dress help, and since they so strongly wanted to be mentioned by name: Fiona, Willow, and Avani! Thank you to my grandparents and uncles for traveling pretty far to be here today. I love you and I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you to my brother, Josh, for being the comedic relief and for being really fun to hang out with. Maybe most importantly, I’d like to thank my parents for always loving and supporting me and raising me to be the person I am today - you guys did a really good job! In all seriousness, I couldn’t have done this without you. And thank you to each and every one of you. I can’t even express how glad I am that you’re all in this room today.
Shabbat shalom.