{"id":46580,"date":"2018-12-29T12:08:44","date_gmt":"2018-12-29T10:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=46580"},"modified":"2022-07-24T07:53:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-24T04:53:43","slug":"mad-or-wayward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/mad-or-wayward\/","title":{"rendered":"Mad Or Wayward?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The term “Sotah” reveals a peculiar ambiguity. It refers both to the woman who is under suspicion of adultery and specifically to the woman who has undergone the ordeal and been found guilty. As Rashi explains the word (on Num 5:12), it carries two quite different meanings: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur Rabbis have taught: \u2018Adulterers never sin until a spirit of madness enters into them, as it is written of the Sotah, <\/span>`<\/span><\/i>ki tisteh<\/span><\/em>\u2014if she becomes mad [<\/span>shotah<\/span><\/em>]’\u2019 (Prov. 6:32). But the plain sense of the verse is that <\/span>ki tisteh<\/span><\/em> means: if she deviates from the path of modesty…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the first reading, derived from the midrash (Tanchuma, <\/span>Nasso<\/span><\/i> 5), the Sotah is the bearer of a “spirit of madness.” In order to read it this way, the Rabbis notice that the biblical word is, unexpectedly, spelled with a shin<\/em>, from the root<\/span> sh-t-h<\/span><\/em>, which refers to madness, folly, craziness. In the second reading, <\/span>ki tisteh<\/span><\/em> is read in accordance with its sound, as derived from the root<\/span> s-t-h<\/span><\/em> with a <\/span>sin<\/span><\/em> or a <\/span>samech<\/span><\/em>\u2014<\/span><\/i>to deviate, be wayward, go astray. The woman has deviated from social norms of modesty; she is on a slippery slope that may already have brought her to full adultery. <\/span><\/p>\n

Two different understandings of adultery are implied. In the first reading, the adulterous act is described as an incomprehensible loss of sanity. This is the crime of passion that in French law traditionally constituted grounds for leniency. Such a diagnosis of the <\/span>Sotah<\/span><\/i> conveys the fear that such taboo acts arouse in normative society. The Rabbis here see an otherness that they define as the invasion of “a spirit of madness.” But if she is indeed possessed by such a demonic spirit, if she is, in modern terms, clinically insane, is she responsible for her own acts? In the other reading, the “slippery slope” interpretation, the <\/span>Sotah<\/span><\/i> remains responsible. If she had not “deviated,” she would not have reached this point. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, this rational perspective loses an aspect of the situation that is clearly important to the Rabbis: it obscures the madness of illicit passion, the otherness of what the <\/span>Sotah<\/span><\/i> represents\u2014which opens up difficult questions about moral responsibility. <\/span><\/p>\n

Commonsense interpretations of the text and act are in tension with the mad truth of a reading that elides <\/span>Sotah<\/span><\/em> and <\/span>shotah<\/span><\/em>. If, at the moment of sin, the Sotah has become fundamentally irrational, then she has, in a sense, become a stranger to her daylight self. For society, she now represents the terror of human permeability to momentary gusts of passion. <\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":59051,"id":59051,"title":"isam26-crazy","filename":"isam26-crazy.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/isam26-crazy.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/better-not-kill-saul\/isam26-crazy\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"isam26-crazy","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":59049,"date":"2019-07-08 18:06:07","modified":"2023-09-26 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