This week’s parasha contains one of the most astonishingly strange moments in a book generally bursting with them. It merits being read in full, but for the hurried, here’s a condensed version: If a man, possessed by “a spirit of jealousy,” suspects his wife of being unfaithful, he is to bring the wayward woman to the priest. The priest is to expose the woman’s hair and warn her that if she’s indeed guilty of the deed, her thigh will rupture and her belly will swell up. Then, the priest is to take some holy water, mix in some dirt, write a curse on a piece of paper, immerse the paper in the sludgy mixture until the ink runs, and then serve the foul concoction to the suspected adulteress. She drinks it up; if she is innocent, the potion will have no effect.
Without much thought, one would be forgiven for thinking that the Torah has it backwards: Whether they dwell in dusty tents in the Sinai desert or in room 2806 of the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan, men—historically, psychologically, genetically—are the ones more inclined to cheat. The ritual, therefore, should have been awarded to women wishing to control their husbands; imagine, for example, Maria Shriver dragging Arnold away from the governor’s mansion and straight to the nearest kohen for a healthy dose of drinking drek.