This entry is this substack's original intent: Raf's Dvar/Riff Torah -- Recently redirected for the "Is Raf OK?" series (at the well advised impetus of sister Tanya).
Select Parsha Highlights
— On hiatus this week —
And much more.
Parshat Naso has the notable aspect of reminding us to count and be counted. Relatively minor clans, like that of Gershon, are called out and given important roles.
This idea resonates as I was just reading Klein and Thompson's account (in Abundance) of Operation Warp Speed. This effort, just a few years ago, delivered, contrary to the consensus of predictions, a useful, safe vaccine in 10 months, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and precluding hundreds of billions in hospitalization expenses.
Klein and Thompson put this effort in the context of the development of Penicillin. Pennicillin was a similar effort of massive government intervention in science, with massively positive results.
And in both cases, while we remember the names of those who made the scientific discoveries (Katalin Kariko, a long-ignored pioneer of mRNA science received a Nobel as a result of her innovative work being the key ingredient), we don't know the groups who solved the other 100 problems to produce and distribute the vaccine at scale.
In the parsha, the Gershon, Merari and Kehat clans are named, perhaps to give context: The Levites and Cohannim may be on stage, the center of attention, but they can't do their jobs without a large crew handling logistics.
The Parsha also has the Sotah ritual: What happens when a man suspects his spouse of adultery. To handle a haze of doubt and denial the Torah prescribes an odd, nonsensical-on-its-surface ritual: Some lines are written on parchment. The dried ink is dissolved in water. This is drunk by the woman. If she is innocent, nothing happens. If she is guilty, her belly distends.
I have no idea what, in those days, ink was made from.
I recently learned of an explanation of Sotah by Maimonides:
[If the woman who drinks the potion dies] the adulterer because of whom she was compelled to drink will also die, wherever he is located. The same phenomena, the swelling of the belly and the rupture of the thigh, will also occur to him.
All the above applies provided her husband never engaged in forbidden sexual relations in his life. If, however, her husband ever engaged in forbidden relations, the bitter waters do not check the fidelity of his wife.
The Talmud has an entire tractate, so named, on Sotah. Each year, I think of the "back of shul" conversation I related in this dvar two years ago.
The trial-by-tainted-water of the Sotah ritual has me thinking of the various trials people put each other through in the course of life. We aren't experts at how to treat each other. Just yesterday I was called out for sending the following text message to a family member:
When you get a chance give ______ a call
He could use some love
My error? A message like that, out of the blue, can sound ominous. The truism "texting sucks" doesn't stop the sideways slide in our emotions. I suppose it depends on my frame of mind when the message comes in.
Or what it meant the last time I received those words.
There was a time in my life when the phrase "assume positive intent" was bandied about. But I noticed that when it came to stuff that mattered, those who said it most practiced it least. Toward me, at any rate.
Texting (and email) may be a place where it may be easier to assume positive intent. As I type, I already say, "That's unrealistic, we don't stop and think when we get a text, we look the phone in the middle of doing other things, so the text lands in that frame of mind."
Context matters. To put a spouse through the Sotah ritual implies an intense level of jealousy. Perhaps even an absense of care. Some doubt it was ever done in practice.
But we know without a doubt that every complex ritual and process is created thanks to a cast of thousands. Who made a large stack of correct decisions.
This is the fundamental positive message of Abundance and of all the great science that was done related to the COVID pandemic: Focused societies and teams can create great things. Quickly. And we succeed at this whether the supporting cast is named or not.
(Thanks to A.K.)