The Pious Fool and the Poisonous Waters
Two Sotah-related ideas that I’ve blogged about in the past, but which came up recently in daf yomi.
The first is the chassid shoteh. On Sotah 21b, discussing the earlier Mishnah:
הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר: חָסִיד שׁוֹטֶה כּוּ׳. הֵיכִי דָּמֵי חָסִיד שׁוֹטֶה? כְּגוֹן דְּקָא טָבְעָה אִיתְּתָא בְּנַהֲרָא, וְאָמַר: לָאו אוֹרַח אַרְעָא לְאִיסְתַּכּוֹלֵי בַּהּ וְאַצּוֹלַהּ.
§ The mishna continues: He, Rabbi Yehoshua, would say: A foolish man of piety, and a conniving wicked person, and an abstinent woman, and those who injure themselves out of false abstinence; all these are people who erode the world. The Gemara asks: Who is considered a foolish man of piety? For example, it is one who sees that a woman is drowning in a river, and he says: It is not proper conduct to look at her while she is undressed and save her.
There is a similar explanation in Yerushalmi Sotah 3:4, where instead of refraining from action, his religious considerations cause him to delay and fail in the saving. Thus:
אֵי זֶהוּ חָסִיד שׁוֹטֶה. רָאָה תִינּוֹק מְבַעְבֵּעַ בַּנָּהָר. אָמַר. לִכְשֶׁאַחֲלוֹץ תְּפִילַּיי אַצִּילֶּנּוּ. עִם כְּשֶׁהוּא חוֹלֵץ תְּפִילָּיו הוֹצִיא זֶה אֶת נַפְשׁוֹ. רָאָה תְּאֵינָה בִּכּוּרָה. אָמַר. בְּמִי שֶׁאֶפְגַּע בּוֹ תְּחִילָּה אֶתְּנֶנָּה לוֹ. רָאָה נַעֲרָה מְאוֹרָסָה. וְהָיָה רָץ אַחֲרֶיהָ. הָדָא הִיא דְתַנִּינָן. הָרוֹדֵף אַחֲרֵי חֲבֵירוֹ לֲהוֹרְגוֹ. אַחַר הַזָּכוֹר. אַחַר נַעֲרָה מְאוֹרָסָה.
Who is a foolish pious man? He saw a baby struggling in a river. He said, after I take off my phylacteries, I shall save him. By the time he takes off his phylacteries, that one is dead. He saw a prime fig and said, I shall give it to the first person I shall meet. He saw a preliminarily married girl and ran after her. That is what we have stated: “If somebody pursues another to kill him, after a male, or after a preliminarily married girl.”
On parshablog, I would do an occasional roundup of interesting posts and articles. In one roundup, I noted two news stories in which people’s religiosity got in the way of their common sense. In the first, from Life In Israel, a woman had accepted a taanit dibbur, committing herself to a speech fast, this resulted in a home birth:
In a ridiculous story, worse than ridiculous really as lives were in danger, a woman in Jerusalem refused to go to a hospital to give birth, or even after birth for examination and care, because she was in the middle of a taanis dibbur - a speech fast -at the time of birth.
According to this report on Kikar, on this past Motzei Shabbos MDA and the police were called in to deal with a woman who had given birth earlier in the day but refused to allow herself to be brought to the hospital for care. Her husband called the authorities. he claims to not have been home at the time of birth, but at some point during the day he had come home and discovered his wife in the bedroom holding the newborn baby that was still attached by the umbilical cord.
They tried to persuade her to allow them to bring her and the baby to the hospital, but she refused to communicate with them.
In the second, a Jewish man would not / “could not” help his wife who went into labor, because she had niddah status. Thus, from the New York Post:
A Bronx tow-truck driver gave a big boost yesterday to a stranded couple — he delivered their baby.
Antonio Paulino, 50, was driving in East Harlem yesterday afternoon when a man flagged him down.
“He said, ‘My wife is giving birth,’ ” Paulino said. But the Orthodox Jewish father-to-be said his religion forbade him from touching the baby or the mother.
“I reached in and took the baby out,” Paulino said.
I commented that “I guess he [the Jewish man] had never heard of the idea of a chassid shoteh.”
This comment angered a certain Lubavitcher chassid blogger, who was already upset at me for other posts about whether mashiach could come from the dead. He noted:
Excuse me Josh - but I cotinued reading your article, when I came across this sentence that smelled of bias: "I guess he had never heard of the idea of a chassid shoteh."
I went to the link and found NOTHING to suggest the Jew was a chassid. So, what you could have written was, "I guess he had never heard of the idea of a shoteh." Just as the Sota isn't a chassidishe woman per se!
This little anecdote of yours tells much about your flimsy attitude of some other Jews, as if your derech is superior and you can look down your nose at other Jews. Think again and you'll discover who, in this case, was the bigger shoiteh.
and so I explained that this was a technical halachic term, which had nothing to do ch”v with chassidus, which would arrive many centuries later.
I clarified as well in the next roundup, where I explained why I think any halachic concern was unjustified. In that same post, I was surprised and responded to a post by Rabbi Gil Student on the Hirhurim blog, where he tried to be melamed zechut on this anonymous pious fool who fathered the tow-truck baby.
Another old Sotah-related parshablog post, The Nature of the Bitter Water, dealt with a statement on Sotah 20a:
אָמַר אֲבוּהּ דִּשְׁמוּאֵל: צָרִיךְ שֶׁיִּתֵּן מַר לְתוֹךְ הַמַּיִם. מַאי טַעְמָא — דְּאָמַר קְרָא: ״מֵי הַמָּרִים״, שֶׁמָּרִים כְּבָר.
Shmuel’s father says: It is necessary for one to put a bitter substance into the water that the sota drinks. What is the reason for this? It is as the verse states: “And he shall blot them out into the water of bitterness” (Numbers 5:23), indicating that they are already bitter before the scroll is erased.
Ibn Ezra has a cryptic statement:
מי המרים. לפי דעתי שמלת מי סמוך ומלת המרים תאר השם אם כן סודו ידוע גם יתכן שנקראו על שם סופם כמו ובגדי ערומים תפשיט והעד ובאו בה המים המאררים למרים להורות כי האלות הנקראות המאררים ישימו המים מרים אחר היותם מתוקים:
What is meant by its secret therefore being known? The English translation as Sefaria, from Norman Strickman and Arthur M. Silver, explained parenthetically that סמוך meant that the construct form in play implies a missing word, and so the secret is “We know what word is missing. According to I.E. the phrase me ha- marim is short for me ha-sammim ha-marim (the water containing the bitter ingredient). See Sotah 20a.”
Avi Ezer, a supercommentary who often tries to mitigate controversial and cryptic implications of Ibn Ezra’s commentary, does so here as well. (See my post for translation and details.)
But Shadal thinks that Ibn Ezra is saying that the kohen will sometimes put poison into the water, if he is convinced that the woman is in fact guilty. That turns the Sotah water into a trick and hidden execution, without God’s intervention, and more generally just a psychological trick, to get the woman to confess or, if innocent, to establish her as innocent in her husband’s eyes. Shadal attacks Ibn Ezra for this. But I’m not convinced that that is the sod Ibn Ezra intended. Rather, that the herbs were always placed there, giving a way via derech hateva for the curse to take effect, and Hashem’s guidance caused them to take hold or not.