"A woman of valor who can find her. Her price is beyond pearls. Her husband's trust is with her and the rewards are great" (Mishlei 31:10-11). The Malbim says that this verse can be understood both literally and allegorically. The "woman of valor" is the nefesh (the psyche of a man or woman) that has been refined through Torah. The husband represents the intellect that has been devoted to the task of wedding the psyche to the spiritual. Metaphorically, one must cross distant oceans and plumb the water's depths to find the psyche's pearls - these are the good hidden faculties and powers that are latent in the nefesh. It is our work to bring them to the surface of conscious behavior. (Malbim on 31:10-11) My desire is only to fulfill Your will, Your Torah has penetrated to my bowels (mei'ai) (Tehillim 40:9). "If a man's wife goes aside and commits a trespass against him then he will bring his wife to the Kohen." The Kohen is the one to fix these things since he is the one that hosts Hashem's presence in this world, the Shechinah. And the Shechinah is represented as feminine because Hashem's manifest presence in the lower worlds depends on an outflow of divine light from the masculine aspect of godliness above. The Kohen is called the "best man" to the bride, protecting and guiding her by shepherding the holiness of Yisrael. This spiritual work makes him the proper person to understand and deal with a break in the relationship of husband and wife. (from the Zohar on parashat Naso)
Naso
Reb Shlomo Minyan HarNof
(R. Raphael, email: [email protected])
A Failure To Guard Our Imagination:
The tragic cycle of Soteh:
He's blaming her while She blames him
The rabbis did not see the waywardness of the Soteh as arising from nowhere. Rashi says that the story of Soteh starts with the husband and not the wife. It begins when a man fails to bring obligatory gifts to the Kohen and in such a case, the rabbis tell us, he will end up having to go to the Kohen to test his wife with the waters of Soteh. This teaching is based on the order of the pasukim:
"�whatever any man give the priest it shall be his" (Bemidbar 5:10).
"The Lrd spoke to Moshe, saying, Speak to B'nei Yisrael saying to them, If any man's wife go aside, and commit a sin against him and a man lie with her�" (Bemidbar 5:11-12)
And the Klei Yakar explains Rashi's intention as follows: The rabbis say that a person who doesn't bring his tithes to the Kohen will, in the end, become poor. His field will produce no more than the gifts he should have brought to the Kohen. And there is a parallel to another situation in which a man likewise becomes poor. The rabbis said that if a man takes up with prostitutes, the result will be that he will not be able to make a living - he will have to beg for scraps of bread.
When a woman sees that that her husband has become impoverished she looks for reasons that will explain his sudden dissipation. Her suspicions arouse all kinds of jealous imaginings about the cause of her husband's misfortune. Perhaps his business affairs are slumping because he is preoccupied elsewhere. He could be carrying on with immoral women, as it says, "one who gathers to himself a flock of whores loses his wealth" (Mishlei). Her suspicions make her resentful, "If he doesn't care about me and is sneaking around, then I'll show him." She "does him one better" as is hinted at in the pasuk "u'malah bo ma'al."
The rabbis said that the waters of Soteh only work if the man is indeed free of immorality. If her husband's poverty came only as a result of his failure to tithe to the Kohen, then her imaginings are unfounded - her suspicions are foolishness and the waters of Soteh will test her. But if he is guilty of sin that is similar to hers - if indeed he has been carrying on with prostitutes - then her sin is mitigated and the waters will have no effect.
Working through Imagination Now there is no doubt that marriage is not a simple proposition. There are two distinct wills that are joined together in a marriage, two wills that surface in all their power over the course of the relationship. What is it that binds two people together given their very different needs and desires?
In the marriage ceremony the man acquires the woman as his wife. He sanctifies her to him, separating her from the rest of the world through the matrimonial bonds. This "kinyan" is realized through the wife's assent and her receiving something of value. By sublimating her will to her husband's, through her "bitul" she is acquired. While "kinyan" enables man and woman to become united, it really describes only the overall relationship. This must be accompanied by a world of actions, words and emotions that make the kinyan a living reality.
The man is overtly in the position of the giver. He is the one who does the act of acquiring and he takes responsibility for providing the family's physical needs. But the real building of the relationship comes not only in the formal setting, out of responsibility. It is made more through the spirit in which these duties are carried out. Underlying the whole structure of marriage is a mutual relationship of love where both partners need to feel valued and protected. Without this feeling that each is "there for the other," the relationship will flounder. Because marriage is meant to be an expression of our relationship with Hashem, manifesting our preciousness and uniqueness to the Creator.
No one says that any of this is easy and it sometimes happens that we get caught up in all kinds of distractions, obligations, projects. We can neglect the people around us and before we know it there are walls of resentment and distrust that have been thrown up around us. The story of the Soteh is the extreme case where the bonds of relationship have broken down altogether and it is left to the Kohen to sort things out.
The unfaithfulness of the woman is clarified through drinking the bitter waters, bitter because they reveal a shameful truth. But what led up to this tragic situation? Why has she denied the reality of the kinyan of marriage? Why would she go off together with a man who is not her husband, throwing the promises of Torah bonding in her husband's face? Why would she bring such shame upon herself and her family? It can only be that the bonds have already come to seem unreal. The promise of the relationship has become a lie and her actions are a way of protesting that lie.
The question is, has she taken full responsibility for salvaging the relationship? If the spiritual state of affairs is deteriorating, has she supported her husband in trying to raise him out of his negativity? Or has she overreacted, jumping to conclusions, taking unwarranted vengeance when the situation really called for her to support her husband?
If the husband in some sense sets the cycle off, the wife completes it. Both are made responsible for the outcome. Each has the power to break the pattern and bring things back around. In any relationship, deeds influence thoughts and thoughts spill over into imagination. We have a responsibility to clarify wherever we can so as not to let things get out of hand: Are we sending clear messages about how we are feeling inside? Is what we imagine to be true about the other really the case? If we don't clarify things as they develop, in the end, we'll have to live with the consequences. But if we do manage to struggle with our fears and feelings of abandonment in order to clarify our relationships, the reward can be great.
The impetus for doing this is not only for the sake of our relationships but also, because by so doing, are we carrying out Hashem's will in the Torah. Fixing our relationships is the way to fix our waywardness from Hashem's will. We have already taken the medicine. We have learned the Torah. Now the question is, have we, like David HaMelech, let it penetrate to the depths of our lives?
The only way to do this is by clarifying our relationships. If the Torah we have learned is at odds with the way we conduct our relationships, we can begin to heal ourselves by imagining that there is a holy Kohen to turn to. Someone who understands the spiritual chemistry of men and women, who knows how to let the medicine of Torah penetrate through the steely habits of blaming in order to establish our relationships in caring once again.
Replacing Coarseness With Sensitivity - Purifying Our Encampment
"And you will send out of the camp all those with (1) leprosy or (2) gonnorheal flow or (3) those who are unclean from a corpse" (Bemidbar 5:2). And B'nei Yisrael were divided into three camps in the Midbar. The camp of the Shechinah (the Mishkan), Levi and Yisrael. And the leper whose sin is lashon hara showing, that even his mind is corrupted, is sent out of all three camps, while the zav may still reside in the camp of Yisrael. And finally the one who has been exposed to the dead may even come into the camp of Levi, i.e., he is only excluded from the innermost part.
And the three camps parallel the brain (Shechinah), heart (Levi) and liver (Yisrael). The liver is the seat of lust but also the source of acts of kindness, and in the body this parallels the nefesh. Promiscuous desire is the opposite of the eagerness to do kindness for everyone, even for those not deserving, and this is represented by the open tent of Avraham who invited all to come in.
Shyness or embarrassment is the perfection of the spirit of the heart. This is represented by Yitzchak whose every fiber was given over on the altar. It is the red that is transformed to white through softness and purification and it is the opposite of the hardness of heart caused by the yetzer hara which sits like a fly between the two openings of the heart.
Mercy is the perfection of the intellectual power, the clarification of who is deserving of his mercy and who is not and this is the difference between kindness and mercy for kindness doesn't distinguish. But mercy (rachamim) is the clarification of fitting and not fitting, which is the aspect of our forefather Yaakov. And it is through fixing ourselves that we purify the camp so the Shechinah can dwell amongst us (Shem MiShemuel, Bemidbar 154-5).
Mitzvot
There are eighteen commandments in this parashah according to Sefer HaChinuch. Their general categories are:
At A Glance