We finally get back on track with Numbers! One of the more contentious readings, even. We open with a discussion of the duties off transporting the components of the Tabernacle and the labor divisions thereof between the various Levites, followed by some brief discussions of removing people with discharges or who are unclean in particular ways from the camp, as well as some reiterations on protocol for realizing and compensating people for wrongdoing.
And then we get to the messy bit! Chapter 5 contains an extended description for a spell that can be performed in cases where a man suspects his wife1 of adultery, whether or not he had any evidence that involved bringing her to the temple and offering a "meal offering of jealousy" on her behalf, followed by the priest taking water from the tabernacle's floor and mixing it with water. He'd then scrape the ink off some manner of scroll into the water, and then make the woman drink it; if she had done adultery, she'd get bloated2. In a nutshell, this isn't great! There's speculation that it was some sort of abortificant, but it's unclear how much it was actually practiced before being discontinued and it's very clearly encoding some real patriarchal shit! The most charitable reading is that it's basically a way to bullshit a jealous husband, and even that's got a lot to unpack. Speaking of unpacking, we [retrieved](ok so this is kind of interesting
https://valentine-wiggin.medium.com/the-ordeal-of-the-bitter-water-8e6dd85fe8c9) several sources doing just that if you want to read more about it.
Anyways, we think it's kinda fucked up.
The following chapter details how one takes the Nazarite vow, and it was interesting to see how it situated the consecration specifically in the hair. More interestingly, given that I think this is the first time Nazarites get mentioned in the Torah, at no point does it explain why someone would take this vow.
The portion closes out with an extended tongue twister, by which I mean I read the same passage twelve times detailing the offerings of the elders of the twelve tribes to the newly built Tabernacle3.
No clips from the commentaries this week, but we do have some music to set the mood for the offerings of the elders
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in an interesting point regarding the translation, there are various footnotes indicating that while the text is translated as, roughly, "husband and wife", the actual language in use is specifically about people in the presumed feminine or masculine roles of a ritual occurence, indicating a sort of textual gendering contingent on their positions within the immediate legal/ritual matter. There was further discussion as to force femming your husband by situating him in the womanly role.
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you may recognize this spell from a variation used during the incident with the golden calf, in which Moses performed a similar exercise with the dissolved gold of the calf on the entirety of israel to identify who worshiped it as an idol
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let it never be said that I won't commit to a bit
based on looking at commentaries on some of the first few verses the name of this reading (nasso) probably?? derives from naso (to take the sum) so once again we are counting things and by things i mean guys.
considering bread made of the seven species. one of our members offered to try making it to tell us all how it turns out
we get back into the beginning of offerings and what to do in the case of someone wronging someone else in various ways, which means once again we're dwelling on wizard spells jealous husbands can invoke to find out if their wife has been committing adultery, which is really not cool. discussed a bit why the topic of transgression/trespass is coming up after the census. we had some speculation that this is working in from more broad forms of trespass, but also getting into the specifics of practices around the tabernacle, marriage is also often used as a metaphor for relationship with the divine.1
getting to the nazarite stuff again we found it noteworthy that you like. can take the nazarite vow as a woman it's just that the sages really don't recommend that anyone take the nazarite vow.2
also it's offering extravaganza again. we pleasantly recalled why we linked spanish flea last year as @geostatonary gamely recited the whole thing, aloud, again.
bonus discussion from ibn ezra of moses's theoretical super-hearing, and also sforno sucking up to the first temple immensely
in the haftarah, we hear a bit of the story of samson, who is perhaps the most famous nazarite and somewhat nonstandardly was dedicated as a nazarite like. before he was born
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see also last week's haftarah about a guy and his wife who are kind of a metaphor for g-d and the people
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a little snark in the sages' commentary about how the nazarites are kind of holding themselves to the standards of priests... but aren't. and also sforno dunking on the italian catholics.
I think it's interesting to hold in mind when reading this parsha that trial by ordeal was, until modernity really, a pretty ubiquitous form of regress for a conflict where parties disagree with no proof. There is even some argument to be made that it is effective way of assessing guilt for a time without other options, especially noted by the high exoneration rates we see in trial by ordeals that we have records of. Idk I am glad that we instead live in a time and culture where adultery is not That big a deal, but also seeing how life-and-death such an accusation would have been it seems merciful to have a system by which such an accusation could be shaken off and pointless jealousy could be put to rest.
Also, a thing raised by my Rabbi this week is that when reading Torah it helps to pay attention to proximity and to ask why certain things are conveyed together. The fact that we go from a depiction of this trial straight to a depiction of the Nazirite laws (and what to do once you break them) is telling. The problem with the Nazirite vow is that it is extremely easy to break, it sets one up for failure, it turns the mundane into transgression. Putting the trial next to the Nazirite vow seems to me to be telling the same story, speaking to the harm of excessive piety or excessive jealousy
