 | To accuse another is a big deal spiritually, and we all do it more than we realize. Even when we do not express a negative judgment, harboring one alters one's energetics. Leveling the accusation aloud can be more "honest," and also more impactful on the relationship. This week's Torah portion goes there in the most intimate and impactful of ways. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Parashat Nasso 5785 (2025)
We all do it. In ways loud and soft, expressed and not, we judge other people.
"Judge not, lest ye be judged," teaches the Christian Testament (Matthew 7:1), with a close equivalent in Jewish life: "Do not judge another until you reach their place" (Pirkei Avot 2:4). Of course, nobody actually reaches another's place: we never truly walk a mile in anyone else's shoes. Therefore, spiritual life teaches, we shouldn't judge other people.
Yet we do. Absent profound commitment to an exacting spiritual practice – and maybe even then – the mind's perpetual motion can't help but observe, survey, analyze, compare and blame. We are wired to judge, even though spirituality cautions us not to.
I have skin in this game. I dedicate my secular career to the Judiciary, so it's my job to judge the merits of a controversy, the credibility of a witness, even the rightness or wrongness of what someone does or doesn't do. From there it's just a short leap to judging people – which we're not supposed to do.
But why not? Torah doesn't quite say outright, but strongly implies answers in this week's portion. The context is perhaps the most impassioned accusation one can make of another – marital infidelity – embedded in what seems like such misogyny that many moderns would rather pretend this part of Torah away. Yet precisely so, in it lies deep wisdom for our times.
In ancient Near East cultures, men could divorce women for any reason or no reason at all. In family matters, women had no formal power. Along came Judaism with partial correctives. One was the ketubah (wedding contract), the first document of Western "women's lib," which guaranteed women rights both in the marriage and in the event of divorce
Another corrective was the Sotah trial of Leviticus 5. On first read, the Sotah trial seems like something backwards out of the Salem witch trials, or maybe Monty Python's Holy Grail. But bear with me: like many judgments, not everything is what it first appears.
In the Sotah trial, when a husband accused his wife of infidelity, the wife was made to stand in public before God, be abjured by the priest, and drink a potion of barley water mixed with dust from the the floor of the Mishkan, This potion, the woman was told, would cause her belly to distend if she were guilty, but have no effect if she were innocent. And the woman was made to say, "Amen, amen!"
What a wacky ritual! What's the spirituality of that? It seems the very opposite of spiritual!
Torah in its day was about changing society one step at a time – and here, Torah's method was downright ingenious given its time. If the woman confessed before she drank, then the couple divorced and proceedings stopped. If she went through with the ordeal and became distended, then she was exiled. But in most circumstances, nothing happened. And if nothing happened, then the husband could never divorce the wife or accuse her again.
And that was the point. By accusation and judgment, relational power inverted: gone was the Near East's male dominance. Instead, henceforth the accused woman controlled. Knowing this risk, the husband would be hesitant to accuse his wife, even in a fit of jealousy, because the fact of the accusation would be public and diminish him. As Talmud put it, it was as if the husband drank bitter waters, which then remained with him forever.
That was the point. Our spiritual ancestors understood that accusing and judging someone was a big deal – such a big deal that a relationship ... even one as intimate and putatively lifelong as a marriage ... could not stay the same.
Nowadays we tend not to see healthy relationships in power terms, but always I counsel couples heading for the wedding canopy that the greatest threat to a relationship is power imbalance, because there lies the path of resentment and diminishment. It can be much the same in any relationship: accusations and negative judgments tend to be toxic.
To judge another is to alter the relationship, almost always for the worse, yet rarely do our fast moving minds take relational impacts into account. We think we know why someone acts as they do – but often we're wrong. We think we know the whole story – but often we don't. We think we see clearly – but often we're wrong. We think there's no cost to judging another – but nearly always we're wrong.
That doesn't mean we must turn blind eyes. Torah calls us to rebuke another if we're sure they have gone astray, but not to shame or spew hypocrisy (Lev. 19:17). If we must judge, we must do so only "from the side of merit" (Pirkei Avot 1:6) – bending over backwards to judge favorably, giving the benefit of doubt, and first making very sure that we ourselves are pure. (Of course, nobody is 100% pure, just as nobody ever truly walks a mile in another's shoes.)
Try living that way for a month, or even a week, and see what happens inside you. You might find that you've been drinking plenty of bitter water – and that life can be far sweeter.
Parashat Nasso 5785 (2025)
We all do it. In ways loud and soft, expressed and not, we judge other people.
"Judge not, lest ye be judged," teaches the Christian Testament (Matthew 7:1), with a close equivalent in Jewish life: "Do not judge another until you reach their place" (Pirkei Avot 2:4). Of course, nobody actually reaches another's place: we never truly walk a mile in anyone else's shoes. Therefore, spiritual life teaches, we shouldn't judge other people.
Yet we do. Absent profound commitment to an exacting spiritual practice – and maybe even then – the mind's perpetual motion can't help but observe, survey, analyze, compare and blame. We are wired to judge, even though spirituality cautions us not to.
I have skin in this game. I dedicate my secular career to the Judiciary, so it's my job to judge the merits of a controversy, the credibility of a witness, even the rightness or wrongness of what someone does or doesn't do. From there it's just a short leap to judging people – which we're not supposed to do.
But why not? Torah doesn't quite say outright, but strongly implies answers in this week's portion. The context is perhaps the most impassioned accusation one can make of another – marital infidelity – embedded in what seems like such misogyny that many moderns would rather pretend this part of Torah away. Yet precisely so, in it lies deep wisdom for our times.
In ancient Near East cultures, men could divorce women for any reason or no reason at all. In family matters, women had no formal power. Along came Judaism with partial correctives. One was the ketubah (wedding contract), the first document of Western "women's lib," which guaranteed women rights both in the marriage and in the event of divorce
Another corrective was the Sotah trial of Leviticus 5. On first read, the Sotah trial seems like something backwards out of the Salem witch trials, or maybe Monty Python's Holy Grail. But bear with me: like many judgments, not everything is what it first appears.
In the Sotah trial, when a husband accused his wife of infidelity, the wife was made to stand in public before God, be abjured by the priest, and drink a potion of barley water mixed with dust from the the floor of the Mishkan, This potion, the woman was told, would cause her belly to distend if she were guilty, but have no effect if she were innocent. And the woman was made to say, "Amen, amen!"
What a wacky ritual! What's the spirituality of that? It seems the very opposite of spiritual!
Torah in its day was about changing society one step at a time – and here, Torah's method was downright ingenious given its time. If the woman confessed before she drank, then the couple divorced and proceedings stopped. If she went through with the ordeal and became distended, then she was exiled. But in most circumstances, nothing happened. And if nothing happened, then the husband could never divorce the wife or accuse her again.
And that was the point. By accusation and judgment, relational power inverted: gone was the Near East's male dominance. Instead, henceforth the accused woman controlled. Knowing this risk, the husband would be hesitant to accuse his wife, even in a fit of jealousy, because the fact of the accusation would be public and diminish him. As Talmud put it, it was as if the husband drank bitter waters, which then remained with him forever.
That was the point. Our spiritual ancestors understood that accusing and judging someone was a big deal – such a big deal that a relationship ... even one as intimate and putatively lifelong as a marriage ... could not stay the same.
Nowadays we tend not to see healthy relationships in power terms, but always I counsel couples heading for the wedding canopy that the greatest threat to a relationship is power imbalance, because there lies the path of resentment and diminishment. It can be much the same in any relationship: accusations and negative judgments tend to be toxic.
To judge another is to alter the relationship, almost always for the worse, yet rarely do our fast moving minds take relational impacts into account. We think we know why someone acts as they do – but often we're wrong. We think we know the whole story – but often we don't. We think we see clearly – but often we're wrong. We think there's no cost to judging another – but nearly always we're wrong.
That doesn't mean we must turn blind eyes. Torah calls us to rebuke another if we're sure they have gone astray, but not to shame or spew hypocrisy (Lev. 19:17). If we must judge, we must do so only "from the side of merit" (Pirkei Avot 1:6) – bending over backwards to judge favorably, giving the benefit of doubt, and first making very sure that we ourselves are pure. (Of course, nobody is 100% pure, just as nobody ever truly walks a mile in another's shoes.)
Try living that way for a month, or even a week, and see what happens inside you. You might find that you've been drinking plenty of bitter water – and that life can be far sweeter.
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