on the OU dafyomi shuir a question was brought up: how can a derabanan issur of marriage (chalutza and cohen) prevent the de'oritta procedure of sotah to take place. the answer given was in the name of the rashash that the sotah process is only optional. this is what i thought of: is it possible to answer that the rabbis can nullify a torah mitzvah with a rabbinic enactment if it means only passively not doing the de'oritta.?(such as the gezara of rabbah- prohibiting the shofar,megilah and lulav on the yom tov which fell on out on shabbat)
ike sultan, west orange, NJ
Great! You were Mechaven to the Tosfos Yom Tov's answer!
However the Rashash does not agree that this is considered as uprooting passively a Mitzvah of the Torah and he gives 2 sources for this:
(1) The Mishnah (above 20a) tells us what happens to the scroll if she says she does not want to drink the water. Rambam Hilchos Sotah 2:1 writes that we never force her to drink, whether she says that she was unfaithful, or she says that she was not unfaithful.
(2) Our Mishnah (24a) states that if the husband says he does not want to make her drink he must divorce her and pay her the Kesuvah. One learns from this that the husband is not obligated to say that she must drink.
The Rashash argues on the basis of these 2 Halachos that to say a Sotah should not drink if she is a Chalutzah married to a Cohen, is not considered as uprooting even a passive Mitzvah from the Torah because we see that there is no actual obligation that the Sotah must drink, so there is nothing to be uprooted.
Rather the Rashash asserts that the Mitzvah of Sotah is an institution that the Torah gave us in order to prove, if the couple want to, that she was not unfaithful and is therefore permitted to her husband, or alternatively, divorce her husband and be allowed to marry the suspect who has now been proved innocent by her drinking and surviving. Since the Mitzvah of Sotah is for the good of the couple, if they do not desire to take advantage of it, they are permitted to forego it.
In other words, the Rashash's disagreement with the Tosfos Yom Tov is that it is not necessary to say that the Rabbis nullified a Torah Mitzvah passively - the proof for this being that the couple can also decide not to do this Mitzvah, because it is an option not an obligation, so there is nothing that requires uprooting.
KOL TUV
Dovid Bloom