The Sotah Ritual: A Defense of Magical Thinking

May 31, 2011 by Anna Batler

Continued from Page 1

In traditional Jewish law, nothing has replaced the sotah ritual. Mamzers and abandoned wives are still a relevant categories in Israeli family law, just less protected by the lack of a magic ritual escape hatch. In Jewish family law as it is applied in contemporary Israeli society, there is no process, magical or otherwise, for legitimizing the mamzer or forcing a husband to give his wife a divorce. We are left with Bronze Age laws and Information Age sensibility. Approaching the texts of our tradition with our post-enlightenment and post-modern thinking, it is easy to forget that the ancients believed in magic. When the magic is abandoned and only the brutality of the law remains, it is the vulnerable members of our society who suffer.

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About Anna Batler

Anna Batler is a writer and an attorney based out of Washington, D.C. She writes about faith, feminism, spirituality, and religious identity at Sotah.net. She also writes a weekly feminist Bible commentary at GatherTheJews.com.

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