D'var Torah By: Rabbi Laurie Rice for ReformJudasim.org
The Torah on Women: Think Again!
Our ancient sages were obsessed with organization. As such, they categorized most everything, which is best reflected in the Talmud’s 63 tractates, which address a variety of subjects including Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore, and much more. Nearly every topic has its place and order, with the exception of women. Women must have perplexed our dear Rabbis. We can imagine the discussion: Are they women or are they chattel? They bleed, but do not die, yet they must be impure, but they create new life, something we certainly cannot do. And while there is indeed a tractate attributed to women, Nashim, we find the ambiguity of women’s roles in the Bible and within ancient Israelite society reflected in this inability to “categorize” women as one might the Jubilee year or the subject of ketubot.
The ritual of the sotah, addressed in Parashat Naso, is an example of this ambiguity. Because of the linguistic difficulties that riddle this passage (Numbers 5:11-31), an accurate understanding of the details of the ritual and the motivation behind them may forever elude us (perhaps just like the nature of woman herself).
Adultery is considered a very grave offense in the Bible, much in the same way that incest is a sin punishable by death (see Leviticus 20:10-12). Unlike the laws of incest, which apply to both men and women (see Leviticus, chapter 18), in the case of adultery there is a fundamental difference between men and women. A married woman is forbidden to have sexual relations with all men except her husband, but a married man is free to have sexual relations with any other woman as long as she herself is single and available. Since biblical law allows men concubines as well as wives, there are no punitive measures against a married man who engages in extramarital sex. Even when the Babylonian Talmud attempts to prohibit a man from spending time in privacy with women outside his family (Kiddushin 80b-81b), such relations still remain outside the purview of sexual transgressions.
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