Naso--Sotah Re-"Examined": Male Privilege?

[Reposted from May 29, 2014, after an accidental erasure]


The recent mass murders committed by Elliot Rodger reawakened heated discussions of misogyny, harassment and male privilege, along with the usual re-heating of the cultural battles over guns in the US.  However, I came to question notions of male privilege in parshas sotah not because of the Rodger case, but because of a posting by Rabbi Jonathan Gewirtz.

Ironically, I agreed with some of what he wrote, particularly that "[p]eople feel that when they see people sin, or act in a way that perhaps doesn’t live up to all the ideals a Jewish person could exemplify, they have a right to denounce them, curse them, and write them off."  

However, his use of the parshas sotah as a paradigm for saving broken marriages--that the entire purpose of the administration of the mayim hame'arerim was "G-d [] figuratively jump[ing] through hoops to pacify the husband...[] do[ing] a miracle to convince her husband that she didn’t betray him"--got me to do what the Rodger crime didn't.

G-d-ordained male privilege?

Let's take a closer look.

To be sure, let's assume two things for arguments sake.  One, the obvious--it took a lot to get us to this point: a warning to not be secluded with a particular man was blatantly ignored, so there was some wrongdoing on her part. Second, let's assume--in line with Rabbi Gewirtz' piece--that the woman came through the ordeal and was proven innocent of the accusation.  

Much is made of the woman's behavior; the series of Rashis that illustrate how all the steps in both the offering of the minchas sotah up until the actual administration of the oath and the waters are a mida-k'neged-mida for various elements of her waywardness.

In fact, the entire process is set up to get her to confess; if guilty, she faces a choice between a gruesome death on one hand, or divorce, penury [losing her kesuva] and general opprobrium for infidelity on the other.  And, just in case she doubts the efficacy of the waters, the process leading up to the drinking is supposed to tip the scales [and avoid the possible erasure of G-d's Name] by eventually forcing a confession.

This, then, raises the question: if she knew she'd have to go through this to prove her innocence, what would stiffen her resolve in the face of this humiliation? I posit that she knows what awaits at the end: she gets her kesuva back, and she gets the brachos of "ve'niksa venizre'a zara". I'll take it a step further: she now has the opportunity to WALK, take her money and her brachos. [Notice that the posuk says she'll conceive. It doesn't say it has to be with the current cad.] 

Wait...is he really a cad?  Well...if after trying to get her killed [and using the name of G-d to do it] he would refuse to give a get, that might prove it further, but even granting that point can't be directly supported from sources, other indicators of the cad's character can:

1] Rashi on 5:12 indicates that the guy, for starters, is stingy: he withheld the matnos kehuna, so he drags himself to the Kohen to deal with this;

2] Sotah 2a states that a man's zivug is commensurate with his deeds, indicating that somewhere along the line, he should have looked in the mirror [the converse--that a man's deeds reflect his spouse's--is not necessarily true, which is why it remains unstated];

3] Sotah 3a that posits that the kinui which sets the whole process in motion is actually forbidden, and is prompted by an "impure spirit"...

But--didn't G-d allow His name to be erased for shalom bayis? Isn't that the whole point of the story?

Actually...if you jump to the mishnah on 47a, where a proliferation of adultery leads to the suspension of the practice of mei sotah, where the water has lost its efficacy [especially when the husbands were themselves unfaithful] indicates that clearly there were lost marital causes not worth saving--possibly even mandating divorce; but G-d as it were no longer got involved, at least not in the same way.

It's eminently possible that G-d was willing to go so far to have the Name erased to protect the WIFE's honor, even given the appearance of impropriety on her part [which she suffers for.  Very much in public.]

Furthermore, if one thinks that G-d having the Name erased to protect the husband's honor is by extension an attestment to his good character, think again:  G-d went so far as to kill the talking donkey--whose power of speech was created at Twilight on the Original Friday--to protect the "kavod habrios" of Bilaam Harasha.  It might stand to reason--from this [admittedly loose] analog and the aforemetioned indicators--that hubby's character is a bit closer to Bilaam than he would like.

(And as far as protecting the wife's honor if she is guilty?  Also no problem: if the water worked and revealed her guilt, then G-d's honor would as it were be restored by the proven efficaciousness of the waters, and SHE might have been closer to Bilaamic behavior than she might have been willing to admit.)

Now she has a marriage settlement and can present the case of a murderous spouse...and even use the kohanim who administered the process to prove it.

There is a reason we have the Shalom Task Force and Bat Melech. Not all marriages are worth saving. For a long time "go back, for shalom bayis" was the communal default. Parshas sotah might have been used to promulgate that once upon a time. But if one is "bodek" the parsha again--like the waters, when they work--one will see that it can be used to indicate the opposite.

Pesach: Power Corrupts

Tucked away in maggid in the middle of the Mitzrayim narrative is the “Arami Oved Avi” passage, a seeming non sequitur that turns into an immediate prequel: what drove Yaakov’s family into Egypt in the first place was his treatment at the hands of Lavan.   Still, why would a passage most famously associated with the mitzvah of bikkurim make its way into the Pesach narrative?

While the timeline doesn’t necessarily add up that way—the midrash about Yosef having to go to Egypt in chains so Yaakov could go to down there in a dignified manner comes to mind—one can see historical parallels between the houses of Pharaoh and Lavan and their patterns of oppression and the nature of the power dynamics that existed.

What might follow are lessons not only about the redeemed [“us”] but whom we were redeemed from [“them”].  In other words: these paradigmatic eliminationist anti-Semites had something to gain from their attitudes and policies; they weren’t necessarily “sonei yisrael” 100% “lishmah” [not that it made them any less nefarious].

“Arami oved avi” in a way hints that the story of yetzias mitzraim actually begins with that passage, which would behoove us to examine Lavan first.  As I’ve noted elsewhere, the combination of Lavan’s sordid family history in addition to his propensity to attach a price tag to everything drove how he related even to his own flesh and blood, so it would make sense that when his power dynamic was threatened and he lost his family, he would at least have an eliminationist impulse cross his mind [as evidenced by the discussions about “machshavah k’maaseh”].

Bear in mind it takes Yaakov at least 14 years to DO anything [his breeding strategy with the sheep], and the full 20 years to SAY anything [after Lavan chases him down].  As we’ll see this is important when you consider the truth-to-power dynamics inherent in his relationship with Lavan, and Moshe’s relationship with Pharaoh.

Like Yaakov [although not quite in the same manner], Moshe is an honored member of the very household responsible for engineering the eliminationist oppression.  In a manner different from Yaakov, it didn’t take all that long for him to actually speak up effectively [as per the medrash that he asked for the enslaved Hebrews to get Shabbos off].

Furthermore, we see both antagonists pursue their aims differently in reaction to Divine messages: Lavan, as it were, backs off; Pharaoh doubles down repeatedly until he essentially destroys his own nation. 

What motivates the different responses?

Both Lavan and Pharaoh are driven by a combination of material and “spiritual” concerns.  Lavan—as indicated by Bereishis 31:2 as a starting point—finally realizes in a way that the con game he’s run is up, and his son’s reaction in the previous possuk indicates that he was beginning to feel his loss of influence and power over the other part of his own family, which would have inevitably had a further negative impact on his reputation in the neighborhood.  And finally, when he catches up with Yaakov and essentially realizes his power over them is at an end, he plaintively asks where his “gods” are.  The irony here is that Lavan still wants to hold on to the “trafim” even after G-d Himself has stopped him with a divine vision, now as if they are all he has left.

Pharaoh has similar concerns, if not in the same order.  As with most despots, his main concern is maintaining his iron grip on power and his nation's viability, as indicated a] in Shemos 1:10 where he first uses the “fifth column” threat [“hava nischakma lo”] as an excuse to subjugate the Hebrews, and b] his repeated trips to the riverbank in the morning to hide from his populace that he is, actually, less than divine.

A curious effect thus occurs:  at the same time that his feared loss of power and influence comes to pass with each plague and the concomitant devastation to Egypt, Pharaoh—who at first doesn’t completely buy into his own deification, a necessary concession to then maintenance of power—begins to actually buy into his own divinity in a way he previously hadn’t, thinking he actually can fight G-d.  Ironically—it might be all he thinks he has left.

In this way, we have an additional Pesach theme: not only to speak truth to power in the name of freedom, but to realize that since the political is almost always personal, there is always an element of the elevation of self to levels that lead to similar levels of near absolute corruption.

Vayikra: Anti-Marketing

As has been seen in these pages, one possible reason that Parshas Vayikra is the first one taught to schoolchildren might have to do with the explanation regarding “adam ki yakriv mikem”—that just as everything in the world belonged to Adam haRishon because there was no one else around at the time, one should [or, more accurately, may] bring a korban that has absolutely no taint of misappropriation—hence, the ultimate educational message being imparted to said schoolchildren: no benefitting from what isn’t yours. 

[Especially not spiritually.]

One might—in however strained/”shver” a manner—apply this to the current “shidduch system”, or more specifically, how some men act entitled within said system while having their dubious tendencies enabled by the very matchmakers who should be using the system to rein them in.

More specifically: how older guys who set rather self-serving age limits for potential matches are catered to by the system, which is in direct contradistinction to the message that one should not further spiritual ends [making matches] through dubious means [feeding a sense of entitlement].

I described this tendency in some detail in my Beshalach piece, so I don’t need to really hash out further how objectionable one should find those tendencies. 

This time, my targets are shadchanim and singles coordinators.

Let’s make this simple:

If you’re gonna run a tachlis singles event—EVEN OUT THE AGES.

Period.

As a counterbalance to the Talmudic dictum that “more than the man want to get married, the woman wants to get married”, we have the story on Kesuvos 82b about women not marrying almost at all when they found the terms of the kesuva to be unfavorable.

Are the GUYS gonna stop if the market doesn’t cater to them?  In theory, it’s been proferred that if guys can’t “get” the kind of frum woman they like, they’ll “date out”…or go as far as marrying out.  But if that were so, should shadchanim who are operating under a tachlis principle as a driving force put these men in circulation in the first place?   Since when was “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” “da’as Torah”?

Some market forces should admittedly apply.  I mean, there really is no good reason to never take ANY attraction factors into account, as one Rav once exhorted his troops [and my contracomment got me kicked off the frum facebook group where the article was posted approvingly.  This can be taken too far].

But if shadchanim are worried that guys wont show up if they don’t stagger the ages…hello?  Are you trying just to marry off guys, or everyone?  Last I checked the shidduch system hadn’t yet bough into Obergfell v Hodges.  Plus, if your goal really is tachlis, while you can’t toally ignore market forces, you shouldn’t operate as if they were the ikkar.  Otherwise…just let everybody go and date independently and get married when and how they want, like I wrote in 2008.

In fact, shadchanim SHOULD try their hand at anti-marketing: instead of letting a couple of older guys to slip in who didn’t quite come under the age limit in order to even out the numbers—why don’t they actually make restrictive age groups and keep to that limit?  If people want to network and set their friends up later, great.  At least there are other factors at play there and everyone really consents to the process.   There’s enough pressure in the system as it is.

Beshalach: Mira-calculus

"Matchmaking is difficult like splitting the Red Sea" [Sotah 2a]

"One should not rely on miracles" [Kiddushin 39b, Pesachim 64a]

I'm far from the only one who thinks that the "shidduch crisis" has little to do with actual shidduchim.

As I've noted elsewhere, if the endgame of shidduchim was simply to empty all the neshamos from Guf and bring the geulah faster, we would still practice polygamy, and divorce-after-ten-years-of-childlessness would still be mandatory.

Obviously communal support of marriage imperatives should go beyond the pru u'rvu mandate.  Which is precisely why there is one element that crisismongers and crisis-skeptics like me should be in full agreement on.  And they can point fingers at guys.

Specifically, older guys.

More specifically, older guys who use a cutoff age significantly below theirs as a dealbreaking criterion, sometimes citing fertility issues as a justification.

There was time when fecundity may have been paramount.

There was a time when there were no correctives or options other than the usual [or fervent prayer.  I mean, we could mention that 3 of the 4 foremothers had serious fertility issues.  Two of them were way under 40.]

These are not those times.

Any guy past the age of 40 [especially if he's not a Kohen] who plays the fertility card in turning down a woman--especially one reasonably close to his age, plus OR minus--might have a hava amina that he's both entitled and obligated to have a large family at the same time, and ergo, it's a "mitzvah" for him to set a much lower age cutoff.  What's sometimes even more shocking is that some communal singles orgs seem to go along with this when the top cutoff for female attendants at their events is lower than the one for males.

The only thing that is being promulgated above has nothing to do with mitzvos or hashkafos.  It's male privilege with a religious veneer, which makes it infinitely more reprehensible.

I can already hear some naysayers, even based on the quotes at the top of this piece: "A shidduch is ALREADY a miracle.  You want me to have to rely on another one if I marry an 'older' woman?  Ain somchin al hanes!!!"

Hello.

What makes a guy think he has anything to do with the miracle of childbirth beyond his initial contribution, if that, especially with options provided by reproductive technology and adoption?  And that's even assuming that a woman over 40 will have "trouble", which is not even close to being always the case.  Certainly using 35 as a cutoff borders on inexcusable.

In fact--in line with what I wrote about prenups last year--one of the most romantic things a guy over 40 can do for a woman close to his age is be willing to support her through her possible reproductive struggles and be ready for that possibility.   

There was a time when [Sanhedrin 104a, re Eichah 1:1 ["rabasi 'am"]], as a matter of communal "policy", to "produce more children [they would] marry young women to older men....and vice-versa."  

A time when they did both.

There's something rather bizarre in thinking that one has earned the right to an intergenerational match by virtue of having lasted single for so long.  It also introduces some sort of imbalance into the process if that becomes one of the first things a guy looks for.

A time when they did both.

Only then would it have nothing to do with privilege and the evolutionary impulse to pass on one's genes.  Otherwise that's all it is, and it really doesn't deserve a religious imprimatur.  

Adderabba.

A time when they did both.

Vayeishev--Graceful Exits

In this weeks' parsha, Yosef actually deliberately leaves evidence behind that actually can be [and is] used to frame him because a forceful removal of his top garment from the clutches of Potiphar's wife wouldn't have been "derecheretzdik".  Or, as Ramban notes, "proper respect" as the wife of his master "dictated this course of action".

Is that level of derech eretz actually yehareg veal ya'avor [he could have easily been executed]?  Aside from the fact that Potiphar's wife wasn't really acting commensurate with her station?

There are a few lessons to be learned here about graceful exits, particularly when one looks at some of the details leading up to the fateful encounter.

Rashi on 39:6 notes that Yosef started to twirl his hair "because he saw himself ruling", and G-d was moved to "incite the bear against [him]".  So aside from Mrs. Potiphar's conflicting inclinations [Egyptian immorality on one hand, her fuzzy prophecy about her descendants on the other] acting as a catalyst, Yosef had already begun to dig his own hole and deal with his own conflict: on one hand, having to remind himself that eshes ish was zayin mitzvos, swearing not to do it on top of that, and then finally actually being prepared to succumb--Yosef was conflicted enough once he summoned up the strength to make the less than graceful exit that he might have felt that he wasn't really in a position to violate the accepted cultural norms.  After all, but for the grace of G-d [and "demus dikyono shel aviv"], he might have misbehaved the way she was about to.   So he had to cut his losses.

Furthermore, just because SHE sullied her station, it would not have necessarily given him the right to aid and abet in said sullying, even if he had resisted the temptation [and we see that he might have come close to succumbing].  So at that point, Yosef's only salient exit strategy involved him making a statement about his OWN escape from the clutches of immorality, without necessarily making a parallel statement about his counterpart's behavior.  He had to give himself mussar without giving her mussar...hence his leaving his garment.

In theory, this would indicate that while one must sometimes clearly articulate when morality is being blatantly violated, one should avoid being ostensibly offensive about it.

Yet, to paraphrase my mara d'asra Rabbi Allen Schwartz, sometime the exit has to be emphatic.

When does one need to balance the forcefulness of the exit, and when must one lean towards the fully emphatic?

A personal story might be somewhat instructive.

In Jan. 2010 I and a friend who is considerably more doctrinally socially and politically conservative than I am went on a road trip to Indianapolis to see the AFC Championship game [Colts 30, Jets 17.  Too much Peyton].  After the game--the 3PM game--we left the stadium and searched for a bar to watch the 6:30 game.  We finally found what looked like a nondescript establishment with nothing on the facade but we could see several widescreen TV's showing the NFC contest, so we went in.

After about 90 seconds when several gentlemen in Colts jerseys one after the other kept asking me where I was staying for the night--and one made a rather graphic proposition--I figured out what kind of establishment I had walked into.

My traveling companion did not figure it out that fast.

Now, in theory, this was likely going to be one of those cases where I would have just made a rather quietly graceful exit without anyone noticing, had I been alone.  After all I had certainly entered the premises under somewhat false pretenses.  I would not have felt compelled to yell "Leviticus 18:20!!!" on my way out.  I actually might mot be too far off if I opine that such behavior would have  been contra to...well, derech eretz.

However, now I had a dilemma.  Time was going by and my counterpart was still not figuring out where he was--and I was operating under the assumption for some reason that if I did clue him in on it, whatever exit I had would be less than...graceful.

After about 20 minutes, when a female patron sitting at a table clued him in [she figured that he might want to know that, unlike him, the majority of the patrons in the bar were NOT acolytes of Sarah Palin], he reacted about the way I'd expected.  Thankfully the woman was nice enough to provide the graceful exit I was looking for: she told us where we could find the SPORTS bar we had been looking  for in the first place but hadn't been able to find.

[Thankfully, religion actually didn't visibly play into it.  We were both wearing Jets caps.  Maybe it just reflected somehow on Jets fans.  Chilul ha-Jets?]

Now, if I'd known exactly what kind of establishment it was, I would not have walked in [kal vachomer considering my counterpart].  I still ask myself if the way I handled it under the circumstances was both the most moral and least offensive.

Yosef, at the risk of his life and ultimately immeasurable cost to his freedom, did both because the circumstances leading up to that moment called for it.

Hopefully one can recognize which response are called for in which circumstance.

Bereishis: Spiritual Competition

The fratricidal episode between Kayin and Hevel in this weeks parsha is of necessity one of the most enigmatic in the Torah.

Why would G-d so blatantly as it were “play favorites” in reverse when Kayin was ostensibly the first one to invent the notion of sacrificing to G-d, and then seemingly not only not get credit for the effort, but rather chastised for his failure?

My mara a’asra Rabbi Allen Schwartz recently said that the root of Kayin’s avera was that he engaged in competition rather than cooperation.  He might have had the original idea to serve G-d through sacrifice, but what kept him from sharing this idea with his brother?  Maybe he thought that G-d would grant him some sort of agricultural advantage; give him another sister/wife; give him something that his brother wouldn’t get because G-d would "like him better" if he sacrificed and his brother didn’t.

My take is that Kayin "originated" another idea: trying to use spirituality to one up an ostensible competitor, and that was why G-d not only "gave him mussar" but also in mida-k’neged-mida mode favored Kayin’s competitor to his face.   Kayin may never have even expected any response; in fact, one can imagine Kayin actually initially congratulating himself on just having the original idea and even chuckling to himself when his brother starts collecting sheep, thinking that not only is his idea better simply by virtue of its originality, but that his brother is wasting effort trying to outdo him….until the Fire comes down.  It may have been G-d’s way of delineating between “mitoch shelo lishmah bah lishmah” and  “hamasmilim bah sama demosa”: indicating where a spiritual competition might cease to be spiritual.  

[There might be several degrees between, say, Kayin’s spiritual one-upmanship even just in contemplation and the notion that “hatzo'ek al chavero hu ne’enash techila”.   But one can see how one might lead to the other.]

However, once he realized his efforts were not only rejected but that the rejection was compounded AND his “competitor” got all the credit while he was forced to watch, he became enraged. 

[Whether or not Hevel also copied the competition idea is unclear; the posuk does say “And Hevel brought also”, so he may have engaged in competition; however, he also might have been spurred by watching his brother’s effort without actually thinking along the lines that Kayin did, having no reason to assume that G-d would favor him and not Kayin’s offering.]

So why would the Torah open with such an enigmatic lesson that ostensibly goes so far as from what it initially appears to be saying?

The easy answers are a] that the Torah does this all the time and b] it does this precisely because it wants its learners to delve beyond the surface so that it almost tricks and/or forces its adherents to be “[me]haf[e]ch bah, [me]haf[e]ch bah” to get to the ultimate point, because if one stops too far short, the lesson drawn may be incomplete at best, and at times possibly incorrect [maybe even repeating Kayin's mistake, in a way].

Beyond all that, the Torah’s other lesson here to both Kayin and us might be that spiritual progression and striving isn’t linear, and also at times doesn’t have a guarantee of there not being a loss involved in the effort even if there is no palpable gain [G-d’s reference to a “pesach chatas”, again, implying that Kayin may have actually committed a sin with his sacrificial effort].   The CEO’s and financial captains who helped sink the economy in 2008 and walked away with golden parachutes might have learned a thing or two from Kayin, but it certainly wasn’t a spiritual lesson.

Counterintuitively, however, it also belies the notion that "Biblical morality" as practiced by certain other faith strains that use Biblical texts as foundations are actually necessarily salient just because they call it that.  We have something they don’t [“im yomru lecha yesh Torah bagoyim al ta’amin”] and often we fall into the trap of thinking that we need to make alliances out of the necessity to maintain “Biblical morality” [especially in the US] because the alternative has to be worse.  I’ve written elsewhere that this is mistaken thinking, and I would go further here: this is one area where “spiritual competition” may actually be warranted.  We certainly didn’t start it [viz. the midrashim about G-d "shopping" the Torah to everyone else and coming to us last, as well as most of the history of early Christianity], and the fact that G-d “turned to Hevel’s offering” indicates that sometimes one side actually does get the advantage granted.   It’s no longer as if we have ideas we aren’t sharing [which in the information age is well-nigh impossible].   Ain chadash; all the ideas are out there.  We can and we should be specific about what’s ours and not conflate them with what might no longer be."