Numbers (Bamidbar)

 What’s the cure for an overwhelming case of marital jealousy? This week’s Torah portion, Naso, recommends psychological torture and sexual humiliation. That is exactly what the Sotah ritual, the ritual of the bitter waters, amounts to. If a man suspected his wife of having gone astray, and he was caught up in a ruach...
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 Do you remember learning the Second Law of Thermodynamics in high school? I remember when I learned it—I thought it explained a lot of things, like the way my room looked when I was a teenager. For those who may have forgotten, the Second Law of Thermodynamics basically says that the universe prefers disorder to order. Energy...
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 Number 25:11. Pinchas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned my anger away from the people of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the people of Israel in my jealousy. There are many troubling aspects to the story of Pinchas, which...
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