Parsha Poster #35 – Naso: A jealous cocktail Speak to the Israelites and say to them: If any m

Parsha Poster #35 – Naso: A jealous cocktail

Speak to the Israelites and say to them: If any man’s wife is suspected of committing adultery and being false to her husband… The priest shall administer an oath to the woman, saying to her, “If a man has not laid with you, and you have not defiled impurity under your husband, you will be free from this bitter cursed water. But if you have become defiled … God will make into a curse and an oath among your people, causing your organs to rupture and your belly to distend.” … The priest shall write these curses on a parchment and dissolve them in the bitter waters. He shall make the woman drink the bitter cursed waters, and the cursed waters shall begin to act.
— Num. 5:12, 19-21, 23-24

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How to Sail

Scrape the curse off the parchment. Stir the broken letters into a jar of water. Make a woman drink it: thus said Elohim. But why: thus said Molly, twelve years old. Now I was the teacher. We sat there, two black flames in a room of white fire. We were sailing on a wind that passed through the open window of a room next to the marketplace, two thousand years ago.

Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, composer, performer and Torah teacher. Her poetry book, DIVINITY SCHOOL, won the 2015 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. Alicia tours internationally with her band, Girls in Trouble, an indie-folk song cycle about the complicated lives of Biblical women.