Marital loyalty – Naso
The Torah portion we read this Shabbat sets out what has to be done if a spouse is suspected of “going astray”.
The analogy is the situation of the Almighty and the Jew. Just as a wife should remain faithful to her husband, so a Jew must remain faithful to God.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, in one of his books of divrei Torah, illustrates this with a Talmudic example (Sanh. 105a) which says that if a Jew goes astray, the Almighty “divorces” them, so to speak, and the errant person has no further claim on the Divine generosity.
Committing a sin against God is an indication that the sinner feels able to manage without the Almighty. However, we find in the Yom Kippur liturgy a promise that God awaits our return to Him even up to the day we die – ad yom moto yechakkeh lo lit’shuvah.
