Naso: Drinking

Naso: Drinking 

The meat of this week's parsha  is abbrevitated in the name NaSo נָשֹׂ֗א: Nazir (נ)  Sotah  (ש= ס) [ although the talmud uses  samech ס, the Torah uses sin ש )] Asham א.  These three concepts are bracketed by the Levitical burdens of the Tabernacle and the 12 identical tribal offerings of initiation for  the Tabernacle. 

Both Nazir ( the Nazerite) and Sotah ( the suspected wife) have their own tractates in the Talmud. The first discussion in  tractate Sotah  involves the relationship to the  Nazir

דתניא רבי אומר למה נסמכה פרשת נזיר לפרשת סוטה לומר לך שכל הרואה סוטה בקלקולה יזיר עצמו מן היין

  as it is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says: Why is the portion of a nazirite (Numbers, chapter 6) placed adjacent to the portion of a sota (Numbers, chapter 5)? This was done to tell you that anyone who sees a sota in her disgrace  should renounce wine, 

Rashi: יזיר עצמו מן היין - שהיין מביא לידי קלות ראש והוא גרם לה:

 translation:

renounce wine: because wine induces giddiness which caused her  [to become a sotah (suspected wife)]

Steinsaltz: יזיר עצמו מן היין, ששתיית יין היא לעתים קרובות הסיבה לזנות, וצריך אדם לתת דבר זה על ליבו. ולפי זה יש איפוא קשר ענייני בין סוטה ונזיר, ומשום כך נסמכו המסכתות.

translation: 
renounce wine: because drinking wine sometimes induces lascivious thoughts, and a person needs to consider that. Therefore there is some connection between the ideas of sotah  and nazir, and because of that they are juxtaposed.

Drinking  connects Nazir and Sotah  on several levels.  The sotah drinks the potion of proof and the drama of the event induces a  vow that includes the  avoidance of  wine, the vow of the Nazir.  

 The Nazir must avoid wine and grape products.  Rebi understands this to mean intoxicants.  Rashi and Rabbi Steinsaltz clarify the connection between the suspected woman and alcohol consumption.  The imagined scenario is that  a wife is found secluded alone with a man who will evoke the husbands jealousy.  Arriving at that situation involves a number of  misjudgments[including  getting caught]. The drinking leads to a lowering  of inhibitions. That relaxation -  that  includes some discounting of the rules, a change in perspective - might have been part of the motivation for that (third or fourth) glass of wine. The wine is an enabler. 

The Nazir makes herself and outsider.  He follows a new set of rules, accepted in all their arbitrariness. We have a modern phrase for this kind of blind adherence to arbitrary rules: Drinking the Koolaide.  The phrase has evolved to mean adherence to an abstruse  set of rules which could be dangerous.  The Talmud describes  incidents in which decade-long terms of naziruth ( the Nazir condition) are nullified and must be repeated.  

 The sotah, if she is guilty,  also drank from a Koolaide,  that is neither wine nor the waters of proof. Anna Karenina and Madam Bovary drank from the drug that places novelty and excitement above faithful marriage. 

The sotah ritual confronts a modern problem: the presumption of guilt. She has been found secluded with a man and intimacy is assumed.  She must take an oath and drink the potentially poisonous mixture to "prove" her innocence.   This is a sexist position that attributes lasciviousness to women.  The presumed male authorship leads to an argument that the law, written by the oppressor, is wrong because it  does not understand the victim.  It does not understand the low probability of an actual transgression and it is insensitive to the consequences of the ritual.  These kinds of presumptions need to be confronted. They are the  basis of racism.  They are the basis of antisemitism. Prejudice means the presumption of guilt based upon difference. 

It is not natural to understand the other.  I am not sure that it is possible. We need to strive to understand and optimize ourselves. 

 מִשֶּׁרַבּוּ הַמְנָאֲפִים, פָּסְקוּ הַמַּיִם הַמָּרִים, וְרַבָּן יוֹחָנָן בֶּן זַכַּאי הִפְסִיקָן

 When adulterers multiplied, the ceremony of the bitter waters ceased and it was Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai who discontinued it,

(Sotah 9;9)

Things change.