Sota 20: Women Turning Green, Menstruating; Women's Sexual Desire

It is not enough that the waters of mar, bitterness, are representing the misery in a relationship.  The waters must be literally bitter.  Wormwood or something similar is added to the water before the sota drinks.  

And what happens if she is guilty?  A new Mishna teaches that immediately (before she is even finished drinking?) her face will turn green, her eyes will bulge and her veins will protrude.  But if this does not happen, sickness could come upon her later - up to a few years later.  While Ben Azzai tells us that a person is obligate to teach his daughter Torah so that she has merited a rely punishment.  However Rabbi Eliezer says that "Anyone who teaches his daughter Torah is teaching her tiflut, promiscuity.  Rabbi Yehoshua says that a woman would prefer one kav of food and a sexual relationship to nine kav of food and abstinence.  Eh said that a foolish man of piety and a conniving wicked person and an abstinent woman perish and those who injure themselves because of false abstinence are those who erode the world.  

Commentary teaches that women are not commanded to learn Torah and so women might read the words of Torah as nonsense.  The rabbis debate about what women are suppose to be learning:  these last suggestions apply only to the Oral Torah, what we are now learning, and not to Torah or another Jewish topics.   As well, we learn that there is a connection between the word that is used for promiscuity and that used for foolishness or worthlessness.  Other connections through word roots are used to explain some of the other concepts further.  

The rabbis engage in a relatively lengthy conversation about what can be added to the ink used for a sota compared to what can be added to other inks.  Copper sulfate and other substances are used relatively frequently, it seems, to ensure that the words in a Torah scroll cannot be erased.

In discussing the fact that it is forbidden to use one sota's (or wife's) document for another woman, the rabbis surprisingly use the example of Leah and Rachel, our foremothers.  Would they use Avraham or Isaac as examples of people who would need to undergo a humiliating ceremony?  Again we are reminded that women, even righteous women, are regarded less respectfully than men.  

At the end of our daf, the rabbis decide that a sota is removed immediately from the Temple when she is ill.  And the rabbis do not believe that she is leaving because of the prohibition against having a primary source of ritual impurity at the Temple.  Instead it is because a woman might unintentionally menstruate either because of the long term stress that causes muscles to relax and menstruate or because of extreme trauma that does the same.  

Today's daf allows us to see a number of examples of women's disadvantaged status in the ancient Jewish world.