Let's Talk About Adultery

[onionsoupmix]

I've been thinking about adultery all day. It's pretty confusing, actually.

Take Mei Sotah for example. Here's the Rambam's run down of how it works. Pretty wild.

But the craziest part is that she doesn't have to drink the water. She can refuse to drink it or admit her guilt and then she gets a divorce and loses her kesuba money. No drinking the

Comments

[onionsoupmix]

no, sotah has supposedly happened.

[onionsoupmix]

The personal agency the woman has is astounding to you? You mean compared to her husband who can have an affair with any single girl he likes and have almost no consequences? The personal agency the girl has is a choice between death or being a humiliated, impoverished banished woman.

[hamaskil]

can have an affair with any single girl he likes and have almost no consequences

Baruch Hashem shelo asani Isha ! ;)

[onionsoupmix]

Okay, historically speaking, I can agree with you. But these laws are supposed to be forever, for all eternity, that is the whole point of the "divinity" of torah misinai that the Orthodox believe in.

Yes, exactly

[anonymous]

If we understand halacha as being socially constructed, and derived in large part from ancient cultures and societies, it is indeed progressive. But the vast majority of the frum world doesn't understand it this way, it understands it as eternal and of divine origin, and not just divinely inspired. Which is pretty bloody problematic.

Sotah has supposedly happened, but has anyone supposedly died from it? Or have all women who've elected to drink the waters survived ie been innocent? (Statistically improbable, if only because some smartasses with questions like you and me would have drunk anyway.) Why isn't it happening now?

Aish attracted me powerfully a decade ago. Now, I see it as, in the words of one of my teachers, "glossy and shiny and about one millimeter deep."