Unscrolled : 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle With the Torah (9780761178743)

by Bennett, Roger (EDT)

  “The priest shall adjure the woman, saying to her, ‘If no man has lain with you, if you have not gone astray in defilement while married to your husband, be immune to harm from this water of bitterness that induces the spell.’” —Numbers 5:19

  NASO (“Lift up”)

  Numbers 4:21–7:89

  Levite labor: the Lord tells Moses to take a census of the Levite clans known as the Gershonites, the Merarites, and the Kohathites. Those aged thirty to fifty years old are tasked with hauling specific components of the Tabernacle and Tent. Moses supervises a count: there are 2,750 Kohathites, 2,630 Gershonites, and 3,200 Merarites in this age range.

  The Lord instructs Moses to ensure that any Israelite with a contagious disease—a skin rash or genital discharge—or one who has been defiled by a corpse is set outside the camp to minimize the threat of viral infection.

  the ritual of sotah

  A procedure is created to defuse a situation in which a man suspects his wife of infidelity. If he is overcome by a fit of jealousy, he has to bring her to a priest, along with a sacrifice of barley flour, so they can undergo a trial by ordeal known as sotah.

  The procedure begins with the priest taking the woman’s hair down, then placing the sacrifice into her palms. He then holds up holy water mixed with earth from the sanctuary floor, and declares that if she is innocent, the bitter water will not affect her, but if she is guilty, her thigh will sag and her belly will swell. As soon as the accused woman drinks the water, her guilt or innocence will be revealed.

  The Nazirite

  The Lord then describes the voluntary vow of the Nazirite—an Israelite who dedicates him- or herself to God by abstaining from wine, grape products, and the use of razors, and avoiding all corpses. The process by which Nazirites can choose to end their terms is also explained.

  Bless you

  The Lord reveals the words of the blessing Aaron and his sons should make over the Israelites:

  The Lord bless you and protect you! The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you!

  The Lord bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace.

  Consecration Day

  When Moses finishes setting up the Tabernacle and anointing it, he takes carts and oxen donated by the tribes and regifts them to the Gershonites and Merarites, so that they can perform their hauling duties. The Kohathites, who have the job of caring for the most sacred objects, are instructed to carry them on their shoulders. The chiefs of each tribe then bring forth more offerings—a silver bowl and basin filled with flour and oil, a gold ladle filled with incense, a bull, oxen, rams, goats, and lambs.

  Moses’ method of communication with God is then described: God’s voice will sound in the Tent of Meeting from above the ark cover between the two cherubim.

  Justin Rocket Silverman

  She did him.

  Everyone knows it. Everyone except me. My own brother calls me a fool for not seeing, and maybe he’s right. But how could I? Even now, even now I don’t want to.

  My love. The only one. I won’t believe it. And yet . . . there is something in the curl of her lips when she denies ever sleeping with him.

  Defilement. Defilement of our sacred marriage. That’s the real danger here. A union is sacred only when it is. She knows what that means. And she knows I’m not a jealous man. Ask anyone. If I had walked in on them together, I wouldn’t have responded the way other men do. There would have been no blood sprayed upon the walls. I simply would have walked away. Never looking back. Never needing to.

  It’s the unknowing that’s impossible. The nagging doubt. God does not like sexual deviance. And neither do I.

  So there is only one solution. Never did I think it would come to this. Yet as the entire village witnessed early this morning as we left for Jerusalem, I decided she was to endure the ritual of the sotah—a unique test of purity for the wayward wife.

  Some of the teenage boys yelled taunts as we walked past, until their mothers hushed them. Everyone else whispered, and the sound followed us for miles into the desert.

  We entered the bustling city and made our way to the temple gates. There we were made to wait, side by side, amid the beggars, thieves, and prostitutes.

  I looked at my wife and saw her shivering gently. It was not a cold morning. I tried to look at her eyes beneath her shawl, but her head was downcast. In shame or in fear I could not tell. It seemed fear.

  She sensed me watching her and breathed a single word: “Please.”

  I reached out and almost took her hand. To reassure her that my love was still strong. But we do not touch our women in public.

  Only the image of him in my mind succeeded in hardening my heart. Otherwise I never would have been able to risk the life of my love in this manner.

  “If you are innocent, no harm will come to you,” I told her. “If you are innocent, God will reward you with renewed fertility.”

  “I am innocent,” she whispered.

  “Then you have nothing to fear!”

  It sounded untrue even as I said it.

  The temple’s gold and silver walls became blinding in the noon sun. We were finally ushered through the outer gates and into a round chamber lit by torchlight. A small sacrificial fire burned on the stone altar.

  In no other instance does our Torah command such a trial by ordeal. God does not otherwise intervene so directly in matters of legal justice. The Creator gave us the laws, and we are left to make them work. Only in the ritual of the sotah does God judge guilt or innocence.

  It’s an enigma, yes.

  ***

  The priest looked from my wife to me, from me to my wife. Then he held out his hands for the sacrificial offering I had carried from home. It was only a small sack of coarse barley. And so cheap! Hardly fit for animals. Yet this is the only sacrifice acceptable for the ritual of the sotah, as ordained by the word of God.

  The priest accepted the barley and then commanded me to stand back against a wall. Only then did I notice the other men gathered there. They were strangers and did not meet my gaze.

  Then the priest tore off my wife’s shawl.

  She let out a sharp cry. I wanted to go to her. This was the first time any man but me had seen her naked hair since our marriage. It was shameful to her, and to me. But before I could act, two strong attendants rushed from the shadows. They held my wife on either side as the priest undid her careful braids, letting the soft brown locks fall about her face. The sight stirred an unexpected desire in me. I tried to remember the last time I’d felt it. Not since we’d accepted defeat in our attempts to have a child.

  Just then I regretted that we’d stopped trying.

  ***

  The priest bade my wife to kneel before him, and then laid the barley into her hands. From the altar he lifted a tiny clay bowl of water. It was just water. But the power of God made it more than water. In this fearsome place, water was poison.

  He reached down and gathered a pinch of dust from the temple floor, then sprinkled it into the water.

  “If no man other than your husband has been with you, this water will be harmless,” the priest intoned, his loud voice echoing along the rounded walls. “But if you have been with someone besides your husband . . . this water of bitterness will destroy your insides and make your flesh fall away.”

  My wife turned and captured my gaze. She was so pretty. I was suddenly overcome with panic. It was wrong to bring her here.

  “Amen,” she said. “Amen.”

  With that, the two attendants left my wife’s side and brought the priest a small parchment, upon which he wrote out the very same words he’d just intoned. Then he laid this parchment into the bowl of water, so that the ink bled away.

  I wondered if somehow the ink itself was the poison that could make my wife’s flesh rot. Or perhaps it was simply absorbing the name of God that made the water so danger
ous. We Jews are not in the habit of erasing God’s name from anything. In fact, doing so is against the rules.

  And my wife was going to drink the transgression.

  The priest lifted the pitiful sack of barley from her hands and held it over the sacrificial fire. The odor of singed grain filled the chamber. The smell made me think of a night with my wife back in our village, not long after our wedding. She had burned the Sabbath bread, and there was no time to make more before the sun set. She wanted to go around to the neighbors to see who might have extra, but I insisted that even her burnt bread was superior to the most moist and chewily delicious that any neighbor baked. So we sat there eating the bread, laughing as we washed it down with large pours of wine, yet still hardly able to chew. Blackened crumbs poured over the table and the floor, and I loved her then. Trusted her completely. So much that I let her see my own darkness, my own regrets. She’s the only one who has. It was expected that I would take other wives, or at least enjoy the company of unmarried women, but I didn’t want to. Because that charred husk was the best bread I’d ever tasted.

  The priest commanded my wife to lift the bowl of water to her lips.

  “Don’t do it!” I cried, charging forth. “I withdraw the accusation of adultery. It was a mistake! In the name of . . . ”

  My protest was cut short as my face plowed into the ground.

  My wife looked at me, her eyes empty and numb. The priest looked, too, his filled with scorn. I understood then that this was no longer about me. This was a private matter between my wife and God—a point driven home by the weight of the attendant’s foot on the back of my neck.

  “Remember,” the priest told her, “if you are innocent of adultery, then this same water will make it so you can conceive children. This is God’s gift to the falsely accused.”

  “Amen,” my wife whispered, and then she lifted the bowl. Her hands trembled, and she paused just as the inky water touched her lips. Perhaps praying for mercy. Perhaps cursing the day she had ever met him. Perhaps cursing the day she had ever met me. In one rushing gulp she finished the bowl clean, drinking the name of God.

  The attendant removed his foot, and I was able to stand. The chamber was filled with silence. We men stood around and watched my wife. Her eyes closed, her lips moist.

  Then it happened. The sacrificial fire on the altar suddenly flared bright and then went utterly cold. This was not supposed to be. The priest and his attendants rushed to the altar to get the flames going again. So it was only me left to watch as my wife opened her eyes.

  ***

  I may be mistaken, and to this day cannot be certain, but I believe she was smiling as she tossed the empty bowl into the dust, stood up, and strolled out of the chamber.

  I caught up with her in the courtyard outside, where she had paused to retie her braids.

  “My love!” I exclaimed, my heart filled with joy. “This is wonderful! God’s will has been done. Now we can finally have a child together.”

  She looked at me for a long moment before she spoke, her smile gone.

  “No. No, we cannot.” With that she walked away. Alone.

  Like me.

  “The people took to complaining bitterly before the Lord. The Lord heard and was incensed.” —Numbers 11:1

  B’HA·ALOT’KHA (“When you step up”)

  Numbers 8:1–12:16

  Levite labor, cont’d: the Lord describes how Aaron should light the lamps around the Tabernacle. The cleansing of the Levites is prescribed, a process that necessitates being sprinkled with water of purification, receiving a full body shave, and sacrificing two bulls. The Levites are to serve between the ages of twenty-five and fifty, after which they can still act as guards but shall perform no labor.

  A shifting Passover

  At the start of the second year of freedom, God instructs Moses to prepare to offer the Passover sacrifice; however, it is discovered that some of the Israelites are unclean because they have touched a corpse. As a remedy, God suggests that the group celebrate Passover the following month, but lets it be known that if others fail to perform the sacrifice at the right time without good reason, they will be cut off from the community.

  Sound cloud

  Once the Tabernacle is established, a cloud covers it by day, morphing into fire by night. When the cloud lifts, the Israelites prepare to follow it on their journey. Wherever it settles, they know to pitch camp.

  The Lord commands Moses to craft two silver trumpets for the priests to blow and summon the community. Long blasts are the signal to assemble at the Tent of Meeting. A single trumpet sound instructs the chieftains to assemble. Short blasts command the right flank to move forward. Further short blasts instruct the rear to shift. An additional set of signals will act to mobilize the army during a time of war; others will be used to celebrate festivals and joyous occasions.

  The order by which the Israelites embark on a journey is described, tribe by tribe—from Judah, who leads with the Tabernacle behind them, all the way through to the tribe of Dan, who act as rear guard.

  The Israelites march for three days from Mount Sinai. As the ark sets out, Moses cries these words:

  “Advance, Lord! May Your enemies be scattered, And may Your foes flee before You.”

  And when the ark stops, he exclaims:

  “Return, Lord, You who are Israel’s myriads of thousands.”

  Let them eat meat

  The Israelites soon revert to their complaining ways, moaning about the hardships of desert wandering. A furious God unleashes fire on the outskirts of camp until Moses intercedes on the people’s behalf. Tired of their manna-centric diet, the people beg for meat, nostalgic for their Egyptian diet of fish and fruit.

  The people weep. God is furious. Stuck in the middle, Moses wonders aloud what he has done to deserve a leadership role that he compares to breast-feeding an infant; he tells the Lord he would prefer to die rather than hear more complaints about the lack of meat.

  A solution-oriented God tells Moses to bring seventy elders to the Tent of Meeting so they can begin to share the burden of leadership. Moses also instructs the people to purify themselves, telling them meat will be delivered the next day. Stung by the people’s whining, God reveals a devious intention: So much meat will be provided that the Israelites will have it coming out of their nostrils until they are sick of it.

  Moses doubts God’s ability to conjure up that much meat in the middle of the desert, but the Lord snorts, reminding him there is no limit to God’s power.

  The seventy elders convene before God, who comes down in a cloud to extend Moses’ leadership abilities to them. God then summons a wind, which causes quail to blow into the camp from the sea. The people greedily gather them up, but before they have a chance to chew the meat, an angry God inflicts a plague.

  Sibling rivalry

  Moses’ own brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, spread gossip about their sibling, wondering aloud why he alone has been put in a position of leadership when he is not perfect. After all, they say, he married a Cushite woman.

  When God hears the rumormongering, he calls the three to the Tent of Meeting and descends in a pillar of cloud to validate Moses’ unique stature. Unlike other prophets, to whom God appears in visions and dreams, Moses communicates with the Lord directly, “mouth to mouth.” Moses has even been permitted to see a likeness of the Lord. Furious, God withdraws, but not before turning Miriam’s skin a deathly snow white. Moses begs God to heal his sister, but God wants her to be shamed and instructs her to leave camp for seven days.

  Eddy Portnoy

  B’ha·alot’kha reads like the biblical equivalent of Tourette’s syndrome. The narrative weaves around like slop, as if the redactor was handed a pile of scriptural detritus and told to figure out some way—any way—to string them together into a sad corned beef hash suitable for vellum.

  What do we h
ave here? Levites shaving their pubic hair, menorah-makers, trumpets, Passover, complaining, a horrific rain of dead birds, more complaining, some moving around, murder, more complaining, racism, and even a skin rash.

  What takes place here is the afterbirth of a nation. The Israelites’ national symbol, the menorah, is created. The first national music is commanded to be played. The first national holiday, Passover, is celebrated. But above all, our cardinal trait for all eternity begins to manifest itself: bitter dissent. We are portrayed as a nation of grumbling whiners, of ultracritical, nattering nitpickers of negativism, of miserable, whiny, unreconstructed nudniks. Freedom isn’t good enough. The manna isn’t good enough for our people, evidently ill-equipped to be desert wanderers.

  It’s a wonder that our national symbol isn’t an image of someone with a deep frown and a wagging finger telling a waiter to send the meal back, or that our national anthem isn’t called “It’s Not Good Enough.” An invisible deity has freed you from the bonds of slavery, given you a sacred covenant by which to live, and sustained you in the desert with copious amounts of food? But, meh! What have You done for me lately? The food was better in Egypt. From the outset, the Israelites were Olympians of complaining. Right there from our founding, this national trait was our birthright.