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Controlling Passions- Mixed Results 103

Queen Mother of Adiabne, a significant border kingdom, to commission golden tablets for the use of the sotah(M. Yoma 3:10). They were on display and so large that the light reflected from them was said to let people know that it was time to recite the shema.* The Mishnah dealt with the ritual of the sotah as everything else through straightforward statements with few alternative opinions or discussions like the later Talmuds . It sought to bring a clear description of the ritual as remembered with some major changes from the biblical description. At least one authority, Ben Azzai , stated that women had to be taught Torah so that they would understand the sotah ritual. This led to a discussion with R. Eliezer, who rejected this notion and stated that teaching a woman Torah provided sexual satisfaction, and his son Hyrcanus went even further by stating“let the teachings of the Torah be burned, but let them not be handed over to women”(J. Sotah 3:4). The debate over this made another step even more necessary, i.e., the stipulation that an appropriate and direct warning forbidding the wife to have any contact with a specific man, made before two witnesses, was necessary(M. Sotah 1:1,2). Furthermore, it was then necessary to have witnesses to the encounter. It was not clear from the text whether these were the same people as those before whom the prohibition was given. For these witnesses to the encounter, bondsmen or women, in other words, household employees, were included. The testimony of relatives was also accepted, but not if it involved a denial of her ketubah as this had implications of financial self-interest. The text decided that disputed witnesses could testify, and even a single witness to a possible sexual encounter was considered sufficient(M. Sotah 6:1, 2). The Mishnah moved the entire procedure into a court setting and out of the realm of personal, perhaps momentary, jealousy. This had several results: It caused the husband to reflect on his actions; it prepared a case against the woman with a greater likelihood that she would confess, and finally it was a safeguard against using the sotah ritual lightly and thus misusing the name of God — an important consideration for the