Our Gemara describes the laws of ritual purity that are particular to earthenware vessels. They are unique in that they are not susceptible to impurity from the outside but only from the inside. Furthermore, if there is a tight wrap around the mouth of the vessel, even when it is in a house with a corpse, the impurity will not enter it. This is derived from the verse in Bamidbar (19:15):

“And every open vessel, with no lid fastened down, shall be impure.”

The Biblical word for this tight wrap is tzamid pasil. 

The word tzamid indicates a tight attachment.

The verse Bamidbar (25:5) also uses this word to describe the attachment the Jews had to Baal Pe’or as this same tight bond, using a word of the same root (“nitzmadim”).

The Gemara Sanhedrin (64a) reacts to this description:

“You, the house of Israel, are not like that woman who could not bear the repulsiveness of Ba’al-Peor. It is stated with regard to the attitude of the Jewish people toward idol worship: ‘That have attached themselves [hanitzmadim] to Ba’al-Peor’ (Numbers 25:5), indicating a tight attachment, like a tightly bound cover [ketzamid patil] tied firmly onto a vessel. Yet with regard to the attitude of the Jewish people toward God it is stated: ‘But you who did cleave [hadevekim] to the Lord your God’ (Deuteronomy 4:4), i.e., the connection between the Jewish people and God is like two dates that are lightly attached [hadevukot] to one another but are not tightly pressed together.”

While this is a scathing criticism, Toras Bar Nash (Balak) sees a hidden consolation. He wonders, why does the Gemara use tzamid pasil as the linguistic proof for the definition of attachment? There are several verses which also have the root Z-M-D that they could cite. The word tzmidim means bracelets, as in Bereishis (24:22) and Bamidbar (31:50). Rather, there is a message in the choice of this verse. The vessel in this verse is in a home with the strongest level of impurity, yet because it is wrapped, the impurity remains external but is not absorbed. So too, the Jew who worships idols, deep down inside, is still a Jew.

Sanhedrin (63b) makes a psychological assertion about the Jewish motivation toward idolatry in ancient times:

“The Jewish people knew that idol worship is of no substance; they did not actually believe in it. And they worshipped idols only in order to permit themselves to engage in forbidden sexual relations in public.”

This is a pattern of human behavior that remains long after the urge for idolatry has passed. We have other vices that are rationalized through so-called moral convictions or ideas of liberalism (which is the social and psychological substitute for religion, and to my thinking, paganism).

It’s a chain of twisted syllogistic reasoning. If I believe virtuously that a woman has total choice over her body, to the extent that she can abort a child at any time under any circumstance (even though there is another living entity in her), I do not have to think deeply about the sacred responsibility of sexuality. Sexuality does not have to carry the implication of parenthood even though intrinsically it does. I can now separate it and make it a “choice” (but whose choice, the baby?!? Clearly not.)

And if I reduce sexuality and gender to happenstance of choice instead of considering that there may be a part of this that is a sacred trust and doesn’t fully belong to us, I don’t have to feel guilty about infidelity or even minor forms of sexual objectification.

Being a human being is a sacred trust and responsibility. God gives us life but it is entrusted to us, and we do not fully own ourselves. We don’t get to opt out. This basic truth of human dignity and responsibility is also under assault via the modern idolatry of liberalism. In the name of human rights, people will argue that a person can choose to end his life. This removes responsibility and the fact that we are here for a purpose. If a person can choose to end their own life, they can choose anything.

Indeed, the modern version of this Talmudic statement is that the Jewish people only worshipped the false Gods of liberalism in order to permit sexual infidelity. It’s all to assuage the guilt that we sense deep down. The human soul knows and feels the body is sacred. This deeply felt truth must be deflected and redirected via ideology in order to rationalize selfish indulgence and weakness. The truth is, we are charged to elevate the ordinary into the sacred by serving God and living and loving properly. We may not always succeed but it is far worse to rationalize this away and pretend it’s not true.