Drash for Parashat Naso

To Drink the Bitter Waters

Top Ten Commandments by Kinky Friedman:

Walking on the ragged streets of time 
A man is asking if there is a dime 
Someone can spare. 
No one pays him any mind, 
But surely someone sees him there a-crying when no one’s there. 
And the washed out whore demands the bottle in his hands. 

Ah, Mister, don’t you weep, God knows we’ve tried to keep 
The Golden Rule and the Top Ten commandments. 

You can’t believe the thing you’ve seen on the midnight TV screen 
And nightmare sent by satellite. 
Rain fire falling from the skies a mother holds her baby and cries 
And day for us for them is night. 

And love is just a word we preach for who can learn what none will teach. 
Ah, people, don’t you weep, God knows we’ve tried to keep 
The Golden Rule and the Top Ten commandments. 

And moving across on the city street a neighbour tried to find his feet and fell on down and slipped to ruin. 
The bystanders are all standing by watching from corners of their eyes wondering what on earth can he be doing. 

With a faith nobody shared and a love nobody dared 
Oh, Mary, don’t you weep, someday we’ll learn to keep 
The Golden Rule and the Top Ten Commandments.

In recent days, we have seen the discovery of three women who were kidnapped and kept captive as for a decade, in a house of squalor in Cleveland, Ohio USA.  They were apparently kept in chains and other restraints, for the purpose of the sexual gratification of their captor, alleged to be Ariel Castro.  No, he isn’t Jewish despite his given name…thank God for small favours!  It’s a case that has the world fascinated, and no doubt appalled that something like this could happen in a densely populated neighbourhood of a major American city.  The neighbours, and the alleged captor’s family, claim that they didn’t have a hint as to what was going on.

This week, Jody Arias was convicted in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, of the first degree murder of her boyfriend, apparently over sexual jealousy and desire for revenge.  She argued for mitigation of the charges because, she claimed, the victim had abused her, sexually and otherwise, repeatedly and continuously.  Perhaps, but the jury did not buy it.

Funny how all these cases come out of the USA?  It’s enough to send an American abroad running for cover.  But really, the truth is that there have been equally appalling incidents of sexual abuse, and sexually-motivated abuse, here in Australia and elsewhere.  Everywhere.

On this past Wednesday, when we gathered for the morning service for Shavuot, we read the Ten Commandments from the twentieth chapter of Exodus as is the custom.  As you know, I like to call them the Top Ten Commandments.  This, after the ironically humorous song by the American Jewish Country artist, Kinky Friedman.  I personally like to call them the ‘Top Ten’ as an acknowledgement that they are not the only Ten.  Specifically there are 603 more…at least by traditional accounting.  But just as the Top Ten songs on the current hit charts get the lion’s share of ‘air time,’ these Top Ten Commandments get the most attention.

But that’s not to say that we’re so careful about complying with them.  Thankfully, I doubt that there’s a murderer in this room.  But if we’re honest, everybody here has probably violated most of the other nine at one time or another.  And that may include that pesky Seventh Commandment…Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.

There’s never any shortage of scandals in the world involving extramarital sex, or marital infidelity, or ‘Adultery’ as rendered in the common translation of our Seventh Commandment.  Powerful people often misbehave sexually, and when they do it makes juicy tidbits on the news.  But each one of us personally knows someone, someone neither powerful nor famous.  Someone who didn’t make the evening news, yet who was hurt by their partner’s sexual behaviour.  The experience of hurting or being hurt – perhaps unsurprisingly, many people play both roles sooner or later – can lead us to question why Lo Tin’af, Thou shalt not commit adultery, is included in the Top Ten Commandments.

When you think about it, the common experience with sexual infidelity is exactly why this offence is included.  Inclusion of any offense in a law code, implies that the specific behaviour is likely to be attractive to people.  It implies that, left to their own devices, people would tend to engage in it.  If it wasn’t attractive to large numbers of people, why would it have to be legislated against?  It also implies that the framers of the law code in question saw the particular offence as deleterious to the public order.  The People Israel in receiving the Torah were a loose band of wanderers trying to constitute themselves into a people ready to rule themselves in their own land.  One can see the importance of a strong family structure among these people.  One can see that widespread licentious sexual conduct would hamper the kind of social cohesion that would enable them to succeed in their national quest.  Inclusion in the Ten Commandments of Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery, implies that the ancient Israelites had a problem with adultery.  And that it would pose a problem as they occupied and subdued their Promised Land.

As I like to point out on occasion, I belong to the so-called Baby Boomer Generation – the generation that was born in the years following the Second World War when our parents settled down and fuelled a wave of economic prosperity.  The parents of my generation were happy, after a childhood mired in worldwide economic depression and a young adulthood spent amid the horrors of the war, to re-affirm the value of life and express their optimism for the future by making lots of babies.  And they were far more indulgent of those babies than previous generations were.  So we baby boomers were the most indulged, most coddled, most spoiled children in history.  That is of course, until the generations that came after us!

One of the ‘gifts’ my generation gave to the world was the sexual revolution.  Thanks to a number of social developments, not the least of which was the development of The Pill, we ‘discovered’ the joys of sex at a young age and we proceeded to break and flaunt all existing sexual mores that existed.  Perhaps the then-existing sexual mores needed a bit of ‘adjustment.’  Perhaps there was, as is often charged, far too much duplicity and hypocrisy in the way people behaved sexually.  But in retrospect, we threw away all framework of restraint and replaced it with what can only be termed, utter nihilism.

What characterises our present age is not that people commit sexual offences against one another.  As I pointed out, that was happening among the ancient Israelites…and before!  Rather, it is the way that we commit sexual offences with no sense of shame or regret, except perhaps regret over the consequences of being caught.  Infidelity has become to us like exceeding the speed limit on the highway.  We know it is against the law, but we only take it seriously as far as we think we might be caught.  But the truth, certainly if one gives credence to Queensland Transport’s current ‘Better Slow Down’ anti-speeding campaign, is that highway speeding is not a victimless offence.  And nor is marital infidelity.

We would do well to acknowledge that sexuality is a very powerful force in our personalities.  To acknowledge that expression of our sexual selves has the potential to bring us and our partners great joy…or great pain.  To admit that, even if the mores existing in the 1950’s were at times hypocritical and needed some adjustment, that a world without sexual restraint is also not good.  Not good for us as individuals, and not good for society as a whole.  Most of the sexual offences we commit, do not begin to approach the severity of those allegedly committed by Ariel Castro in Cleveland or Jody Arias in Phoenix.  Thank God for small favours!  But the offences that we so commonly commit, do create a lot of pain – physical and emotional.

 Which brings us to the third section of this week’s Torah reading.  It outlines the procedure to be followed when a man believes that his wife has committed the offence of voluntary sexual infidelity.  We didn’t read as far as the part where the wife is forced to drink the Bitter Waters.  If the drink kills her, it proves her guilt.  If it doesn’t kill her it exonerates her.  Of course we should be appalled about the idea that a man can force his wife to drink poison if he suspects her of adultery.  But you should know that there’s an entire tractate in the Talmud devoted to the idea, and its administration.  It isn’t as simple as it seems on the surface.  And it is quite possible – and plausible – that the Bitter Waters do not represent some kind of poison.  Rather, this may be simply a public ritual where the water – holy water mixed with some kind of dust – is meant to be metaphorical of the ‘bitter waters’ of improper sexual behaviour and public shame.  Perhaps some time we’ll study part of this tractate and try to understand what it comes to teach us.  For now, I want to address the simply idea of putting the matter in ‘God’s Hands.’

The situation foreseen in the passage is where there is no witness to the alleged offence.  But the husband’s jealousy, and the rage it creates, is very real.  Sexual misconduct represents the breaking of a vow, the transgressing of a code of conduct.  But it represents something far deeper than that.  The ‘production’ of offspring, and their essential identity, of course.  But also the very repository of the deepest feelings and attachments of one person for another.  It is therefore something very serious, and our Torah reading acknowledges that one cannot just ignore it.

But one also cannot take matters into one’s own hands, and act on the passions that the situation creates.  To me, that’s the real message of this text.  Instead of jumping to our own conclusions, we place the situation into someone else’s hands for resolution.  And that ‘Someone Else’ in this case is God, through the office of the priest.  There is a procedure, and it is followed, and the truth is discerned through a dispassionate means.  The waters may be bitter, but drinking the Bitter Waters is better than ‘honour killings’ or allowing the jealousy and hurt to fester. 

The procedure of the Bitter Waters, this particular way to out ‘the truth’ in a case of suspected adultery, is no longer in force.  Obviously, since there’s no longer a corps of priests to perform the rite!  I’m not complaining!  But we still drink, far too frequently, from the bitter waters of infidelity and sexual offence.  It’s a powerful force that sadly leads us to hurt one another even when that is not our intent.  Even if most of us will commit nothing like the crimes of Ariel Castro and Jody Arias, many of us will ultimately hurt, or be hurt by, someone close to us.

Even in the shadow of the sexual revolution, we should admit that constraints against absolute freedom of sexual behaviour are not a bad thing.  They may have needed adjustment, but not abolishment with the resulting anarchy.  And even if the Bitter Waters is no longer the way to learn the truth, we can still take a lesson from what we understand of its intent.  And that is, that it is necessary to sort out such matters dispassionately, perhaps with the help of some sacred body, to seek out the truth and then accept it when arrived at according to the best efforts.  We engage in far too much Trial by Media, or Trial by Gossip.  Instead, we should listen to the wisdom of our Torah as it prescribes trial by sacred agent and procedure.  Any quest for truth is bound to be like drinking of bitter waters.  But if we do our best to discern truth, the bitter water of knowing the truth will sting far less than acting out our passions and jealousies.  Shabbat shalom.