This week’s parasha, Parashat Nasso, presents the law of the sotah – a wife whose husband has become suspicious that she has had an extra-marital affair.
The Torah teaches, in summary, that such a husband would bring his wife to the kohen and offer a korban-a minchat kena’ot. Subsequently, the kohen has the woman drink this offering together with other ingredients to miraculously test the woman’s fidelity: if she had been unfaithful, she and her paramour would die. If, however, she had been faithful, she would be blessed to conceive a child from her husband.
One interpretive technique that our chachamim use in service of understanding the Chumash is semichoot haparshiyot – lessons to be learned from the juxtaposition of sections of the Torah. Often, particularly in the more narrative sections of the Torah, the connection between one section of the Torah and the next requires no explanation. For example, the episode surrounding the destruction of Sedom is immediately preceded by Avraham’s pleading with Hashem on behalf of the city. This type of juxtaposition requires no explanation – the narrative is seamless. However, there are other sections of the Torah, often the more halachic sections, that seemingly jump from one unrelated topic to another. It is for these sections that our chachamim often use the technique of semichoot haparshiyot to elucidate the Torah.
The aforementioned passage concerning the sotah is preceded by a presentation of laws related to gifts made to a kohen – specifically, that gifts, such as terumah, that a person is obligated to give to a kohen must, in fact, be given to the kohen and become his property. Our chachamim ask why the Torah juxtaposes the section regarding gifts to a kohen and the seemingly unrelated section regarding the law of the sotah. Using the technique of semichoot haparshiyot, the gemara in Masechet Berachot (63a) explains that a person who does not give obligatory gifts to the kohen will eventually require a kohen to intervene on behalf of his marriage – through the law of sotah.
This statement by our Rabbis, that denying the kohen his due will lead a person to need a kohen certainly carries an ironic and literary flair. However, how does this phenomenon occur?
The author of Torah Temimah, Rabbi Baruch Epstein HaLevy, explains that the same stingy and jealous qualities which impel a person to deny a kohen his due also lead that person to deny his wife basic financial needs. Out of this state of privation, the woman may seek assistance from a man outside of her marriage. To elaborate, compulsive stinginess and jealousy are symptoms of a pathological need for control over the material world and material possessions. This irrational need causes this individual to shirk his financial responsibility to the Kohen and to his wife.
It is not a stretch to suggest that the inverse of this teaching is also true – being generous to those communal people and institutions (the kohanim mentioned by the Torah) who rely on us for financial support will lead to uplifting and strong relationships with one’s spouse and, by extension, with one’s family. The feelings of support and trust that are manifest in generosity reorient a person’s relationship with the material world and possessions. This person comes to learn that material blessing is not an end in itself; material blessing is a tool which helps us and those around us build a more holy and spiritually perfected world.
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