SEPARATING THE ADULT FROM ADULTERY
46. See, for example, Maurice Lamm, The Jewish Way in Love and Marriage(San Francisco , 1980), pp. 42-48.
48. The Encyclopaedia Judaica gives testimony to the continuation of this belief when it observes that it is a practice peculiar to Reform Judaism that in“many Reform congregations, the solemn recital of the Ten Commandments is part of the confirmation ceremony which is generally celebrated on Shavuot ....” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem , 1972), Vol. 5, p. 1447. Since Shavuot is the festival of revelation, the symbolism, of course, is powerful.
49. Philipson, The Reform Movement, pp. 483-84, n. 38. See also Michael A. Meyer , Modemity, p. 257, where Meyer maintains that the Philadelphia rabbis’ concerns about“extramarital relations” were owed to the fact that adultery was as“seemingly prevalent among some Jewish men as among non-Jews .”
Si. One example is the lack of recognition—even after Rabbeinu Gershom ’s takkanah outlawing polygamy—of a married man’s intercourse with a single woman as constituting an adulterous act. Traditionalists have attempted to justify this inequality on rational grounds, such as that expressed by Mendell Lewittes, Jewish Marriage—Rabbinic Law, Legend, and Custom(Northvale, 1994), pp. 15-16:
It seems to me that there is a more profound rationale for this distinction between the man and the woman, reflecting the different intensity of emotional involvements in the sexual act. No matter what feminists might say, hormones and emotions interact. For the woman, since a single act of sexual intercourse may lead to pregnancy, it expresses a profound emotional attachment to the male partner. For her, accepting a partner other than her husband indicates a weakening of her attachment to him and portends a breakdown of the family bond. As for the man, the sexual act does not necessarily indicate a serious emotional attachment to his paramour; it may be for him a casual relationship, a fleeting submission to a carnal urge....
It is unlikely that most liberal Jews would see this reasoning as persuasive grounds to maintain the legal inequality.
Another illustration of inequity is the above-stated requirement that an adulterous wife be divorced, which was never applied to adulterous husbands.
52. The test of the“bitter waters” to which the sotah, the suspected“errant woman” was subjected is described in great detail in Num. 5:12-31, and is the focus of extensive rabbinic deliberation, largely in tractate Sotah. The purpose of the test—in which the woman had bitter waters administered by a priest, who monitored her for specific signs—was to provide a“divine proof” of the guilt or innocence of a woman who was thought to have committed adultery. While first im
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