Sotah 011

2:
Our mishnah describes the lot of a woman who has been unfaithful: she dressed herself up in all her finery in order to allure her lover; so God's agent, the priest, clothes her in black garments, ripped apart (as we learned in mishnayot 5 and 6). She then exposed her naked body to her paramour in order to inflame his passions (poor innocent creature that he was!), so the priest, God's agent, exposes her for all to see (mishnah 6). Her adultery commenced with exposing her thigh and then her belly (a euphemism it seems for her genitalia); the Torah describes the effects of the potion of the 'cursing waters' in parallel terms:

Albert Ringer and Art Kamlet have both pointed out that this is only correct if the woman is unmarried. I hasten to clarify this point, since it is correct and pertinent. A married man who has extra-marital relations with an unmarried woman is not guilty of adultery. (But then an unmarried woman who has a sexual relationship with a married man is also not guilty of adultery. Let us call this kind of behaviour fornication, for want of a better term of opprobrium.) When one man (married or not) seduces another man's wife both he and she are guilty of adultery, which was – until the abolition of the powers of the Sanhedrin in these matters – a capital offence for both parties.

In response to a comment about ritual impurity I wrote: Are we to assume that when the Torah requires a woman to undergo a ceremony of purification after childbirth (for instance) that this is a general consideration and not a personal one? It seems difficult to me to deny that all cases of ritual defilement were problems of the individual. Possibly I have misunderstood something here.

Art Kamlet writes:

Just a thought here: Some situations in the Torah required the individual to go outside of the camp, (e.g., the red heifer, tsaharat). If only the individual would have been defiled, why leave the camp?

I respond:

Because, as we learned when studying Tractate Yadayyim, most forms of ritual impurity were considered to be 'contagious' – i.e. the ritual impurity could be passed on by physical contact (and in some cases simply by proximity).

Jim Feldman writes:

I am amazed and amused that no one has raised the question – either now or in ancient times – about forcing a woman to go back to a husband that accused her of infidelity with such force as to require her to go through this humiliating public ordeal. What marriage could survive something like that? He clearly hates her and could she but return the favor? One of the major and unforgivable flaws in orthodox Judaism, one that does and should divide the Jewish nation asunder, is the enormous disrespect for women. Since I obviously do not accept that perspective as ever reasonable: Is the woman obliged to return to her husband? I could imagine many ladies preferring to starve to death.

I respond:

We must be careful to judge predilections in their historical context. I honestly think that Jim's assumption about a woman not wanting to return to a husband who had thus treated her is historically incorrect. When we studied Tractate Sanhedrin I wrote about this. (The original context was about the victims of rape or seduction, but the outcome is the same.)

I respond:

Nowadays, strictly speaking, neither party to a marriage can force a divorce: it has to be a mutually agreed solution. The court cannot impose a divorce on the husband (who has to give the divorce of his own free will), and, since the time of Rabbenu Gershom, neither the husband or the court can force a woman to accept a divorce, but she must accept it of her own free will.