Thoughts
on The Parsha
Parshas
Nasso
You
Can Run But You Can't Hide
By: Daniel Listhaus
וַיְדַבֵּר
ה'
אֶל
משֶׁה לֵּאמֹר:
דַּבֵּר
אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ
אֲלֵהֶם אִישׁ אִישׁ כִּי תִשְׂטֶה
אִשְׁתּוֹ וּמָעֲלָה בוֹ מָעַל:
וְשָׁכַב
אִישׁ אֹתָהּ שִׁכְבַת זֶרַע וְנֶעְלַם
מֵעֵינֵי אִישָׁהּ וְנִסְתְּרָה וְהִיא
נִטְמָאָה וְעֵד אֵין בָּהּ וְהִוא לֹא
נִתְפָּשָׂה
“Hashem spoke to Moshe,
saying, “Speak to the B'nei Yisroel and
say to them: Any man, if his wife will go astray and commit a
trespass against him; and a man will have lain with her carnally, but
it was hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she became secluded
and she was defiled – but there was no witness against her – and
she had not been seized...”
-Nasso 5:11-13
Our parsha deals
with the topic of sotah –
the women suspected of meeting another man, who is then warned and
then later caught again being secluded with him. Despite the usual
stance of “innocent until proven guilty”, the Torah demands that
this woman go through a difficult process which first tries to get
her to admit if in fact she is guilty and if that does not work she
is given the bitter waters to drink from. The sotah waters
only have a fatal affect if in fact the woman is guilty, if she is
innocent then not only will the waters not harm her, but she is
actually given a beracha
(blessing)
to have children.
Amongst
the various details of the sotah,
Rashi1
comments that a sotah's lying
with another man renders her unfit to her husband, whereas a man who
lays with another woman, even his wife's sister, is still permitted
to his wife. Rashi
then continues and writes, “Like the incident of two sisters who
resembled each other...”
According
to many m'forshim (commentaries),
this last line of Rashi was
an editorial mistake and placed there by accident, as it has nothing
to do with the first part of the Rashi.
However, regardless, the incident being referred to is one worthwhile
to reflect on.
The
Medrash2
relates that there was once two sisters who looked very much alike.
One was married to a certain person in one town, and the other was
married to a certain fellow in a different town. One of the sister's
husbands suspected her (his wife) of being with another man, so he
warned her and wanted to take her to the Beis Hamikdash in
Yerushalayim to make
her drink the sotah-water.
However, before he had a chance to do so she ran away to her sister's
house . Her sister asked her why she came so suddenly and she
explained to her that her husband wanted her to drink the sotah
water but that she did not want
to. Her sister understood that if she was so worried about drinking
the sotah water, she
must be guilty so she offered that since they looked extremely
similar, they swap places, and that she will drink the sotah
water instead of her. Indeed,
they went through with their plan and the sister dressed in her
clothes and went to drink from the sotah water,
which of course had no affect because she was in fact innocent. They
were so happy that their plan had worked that they got together and
hugged and kissed each other on the mouth. When they kissed, the
guilty sister smelled the sotah water
and died instantly. The medrash then
continues and states that this fulfills that which Shlomo
HaMelech wrote in Koheles3,
“Man is not in control of the
wind, to be able to confine the wind, and he has no authority on the
day of death. There is no substitution in war, nor does evil escape
him to whom it belongs.”
Oftentimes
we find ourselves doing things with the thought, “I hope I do not
get caught”. Sometimes it is mere hope, and other times
sophisticated schemes are devised to cover up any evidence. However,
when it comes to doing things we should not be doing we must take a
moment to consider who it is we are trying to fool. The plan of the
two sisters sounded perfect to them – identical twins switching
places in order for the innocent one to be the one who drinks the
sotah water, thereby
saving her sister's life. However, the one thing they forgot to take
into account was who it was they were trying to outsmart. They may
have pulled the wool over the guilty sister's husband's eyes, but
they failed to remember that one cannot outsmart G-d.
As
humans, we are limited to our own intelligence. Therefore, by
definition, everything we think is only through our own brains. For
example, sometimes your brain registers others' body language or
behavior and interprets it based on what it knows would cause you to
act in such a way. Even the most emotionally intelligent people are
biased with their own life experiences, habits, and behaviors. As the
gemara4
says, “One who declares others
unfit, is himself unfit.” However a bigger mistake than failing to
recognize this is to actually go so far as to limit G-d to our own
intelligence and subconsciously assume to ourselves: “I could
outsmart Hashem because if I were G-d I would fall for this trick.”
This was the mistake of identical sisters. Their plan seemed
fool-proof and would have worked had it not been Hashem – the
controller of the entire world – that they were ultimately trying
to fool. When it comes to trying to fool Hashem, you could try to run
but you certainly cannot hide. If one is meant to die, he will. If
one is meant to end up in a certain circumstance, he will. The one
Hashem wants to reward will be rewarded, and the one Hashem wants to
punish will be punished no matter what. As it says in Mishlei5,
and we recite every morning in davening:
Rabos machshavos b'leiv ish, va'atzas Hashem hee sakum –
There are many designs in the
heart of man, but it is only the counsel of Hashem which prevails.
The
mishna6
states, “Consider three things
and you will not come to sin: Know what is above you – an observant
eye, and an attentive ear, and all your deeds are recorded in a
book.” Upon reading this mishna,
a question immediately comes to mind. Why does the mishna
have to list the three items?
Just write, “Know what is above you”, and people reading the
mishna will understand
that it refers to Hashem who knows the past, present, and future, and
will reward and punish accordingly?
The
mishna7,
continuing its discussion of the laws and details of the ben
soreir u'moreh (wayward and
rebellious son) – the child who gets used to overindulging in meat
and wine. Describes certain situations where despite the child doing
everything that would make him a ben soreir u'moreh,
he will not become one due to the type of meal he was partaking in.
The gemara8
which follows comments that one could only be deemed a ben
soreir u'moreh if he is in
company of bums. If however, there would be even one proper person of
standards present, then the child's actions will not be perceived as
habitual and the halacha would
not categorize him as a ben soreir u'moreh.
Being in the company of people with higher standards and morals has
an incredible impact on the way one acts because it causes one to be
much more conscious of what he is doing.
Similar
to this idea, Rabbeinu Yonah offers
the following answer to the question on the mishna in
Pirkei Avos. He writes
that things lose meaning once you begin to drop a description for a
title or category instead. Certainly the mishna could
have said, “Remember Hashem is above you”, but unfortunately that
just does not send the chill down our spines. We say to ourselves,
“Okay, I'll remember that”, and then go right ahead and
rationalize how we would be able to explain our various actions to
Hashem because after all – if we were G-d and we had to rationalize
to ourselves, we would accept such arguments and let ourselves off
the hook. Therefore, explains Rabbinu Yonah,
the mishna chose to
provide details: Hashem is omnipresent and is watching and listening
to everything we do, say, and think. Not only that, but He never
forgets – as if written down.
There
is no doubt that this is a fundamental belief and must be the
foundation of our every day lives. It is no wonder that the Rama
inserts into the first halacha
of Shulchan Aruch9
what Dovid HaMelech
writes in Tehillim10,
which captures this idea:
“Shivisi Hashem l'negdi samid...”
(“I have set Hashem before me always...”)
May
Hashem help us not fall so often into the trap of assuming Hashem is
limited, chas v'shalom, to
our own level of intelligence
and then thinking we could outsmart G-d just because we could
outsmart ourselves.
1Rashi
Bamidbar 5:13
2Medrash
Tanchuma 6 as well as Yalkut
Shimoni Koheles 8
3Koheles
8:8
4Kiddushin
70a
5Mishlei
19:21
6Pirkei
Avos 2:1
7Sanhedrin
70a
8Ibid.
70b
9Orach
Chaim 1:1
10Tehillim
16:8
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