1) There is evidence from the Mishnah in Sotah (47a) that it did actually take place. We learn there that once adultery became frequent, the bitter waters ceased. It was Raban Yochanan ben Zakai who stopped the process. The reason is that the waters are effective only when the husband is free of sin, but if he is also guilty then they do not work. We learn from here that before this (in the time of the second Beis ha'Mikdash) the Sotah procedure was actually carried out.

2) There is another proof from the Gemara in Sanhedrin 71a, where Rebbi Shimon is quoted as saying that the Ben Sorer u'Moreh case -- the rebelious son -- never happened and never will happen. Rebbi Eliezer is also cited there as saying that the "Ir ha'Nidachas" case -- the entire city which worshipped idols -- never actually happened and never will happen, because if there is even one Mezuzah in the entire city, the city cannot be burned. In addition, Rebbi Eliezer b'Rebbi Shimon maintained that the case of the infested house -- Bayit ha'Menuga -- never took place.

We see from the fact that the Gemara there lists three examples of Dinim that the Torah teaches but that never actually took place that it was only these Dinim that never materialized, implying that everyone agrees that the Sotah process was a practical event that really happened. Had it never happened, the Gemara would have mentioned it as another law in the Torah that was never actualized.

3) Incidents mentioned in the Midrash Rabah did really happen and are not mythical. We see that the Midrash says "a Ma'aseh" with two sisters. The word "Ma'aseh" indicates that this was a genuine episode that actually occurred.

Kol Tuv,

Dovid Bloom

I found, bs'd, that the Sedeh Chemed (Ma'arechet ha'Mem, Klal 17:5:4, p. 56 of volume 4 in the edition that I am using) cites an opinion that the process of Sotah was very rare, and he compares it in its rarity to the cases mentioned in Sanhedrin 71a that we saw in my previous reply.

1) The Sedeh Chemed cites Rav David Shifman zt'l of Teverya who suggests that the process of giving the Sotah to drink was "Yakar b'Metzi'us" -- it was a rare occurence. Rav Shifman wrote that it was similar to the rebellious son and the city which worshipped idols, about which there is an opinion that they never happened and never will happen. Another opinion maintains that it did happen. The same applies for the Tzara'as-infested house. It may be that these opinions do not disagree about the "Metzi'us" -- about what actually happened. Rather, it is possible that when the Gemara said it never happened, this does not mean literally that it never happened at all, but in fact an exaggeration is being used and it means that it so rarely happened that it was like it never happened.

2) The Sedeh Chemed cites Halachic reasons for why the case of Sotah must have been very rare. The Gemara (Sotah 6a) states that if there are witnesses overseas who know that she was unfaithful, this renders ineffective the water-drinking process. Tosfos (6a, DH u'she'Ba'u) writes that it may be that even one witness to this effect is sufficient. The Sedeh Chemed writes that according to the Rashba who maintains that the adulterer is acceptable as one witness (because if he says to the husband that his wife was unfaithful he is believed), this now means that no Sotah will ever drink the Sotha waters because the adulterer himself can always accuse her of being unfaithful.

3) There are other proofs that the Sedeh Chemed gives to show that Sotah must have been very rare, which I will not go into at the present moment. However, the common factor is that one can say that Sotah is similar to the three cases mentioned in Sanhedrin 71a that never happened, because there are Halachos involved with them which are almost impossible to fulfill.

4) I will add that there is a hint in the Gemara in Menachos (60b) that the Sotah process did not happen very often. On the first wide line, the Gemara states concerning the Minchas Sotah that "sometimes it was not common at all." There may be different ways of understanding this Gemara, but the simple reading seems to be that it was not frequent that the Sotah process got as far as the Sotah bringing her Minchah offering.

5) There is also a very important passage in the commentary of the Ramban on the Chumash (Bamidbar 5:20). The Ramban writes that among all of the Laws of the Torah, there is no such thing so dependent on a miracle as the Mitzvah of Sotah, which is a fixed miracle that happened in Israel when the majority fulfilled the will of Hash-m, because "Hash-m was pleased for the sake of His righteousness to chastise the women so that they should not do like the immorality of the other peoples, and to cleanse Israel from Mamzerim so that they should be worthy that the Shechinah should rest among them."

6) I suggest that we also understand from the Ramban that since the majority of the Jewish people lived a moral life, it was not necessary to have to resort to the Sotah process very often. When there was a breakdown in someone's moral behavior, it was likely that the wife would admit her sin and would not actually drink the Sotah waters, and, for different Halachic reasons, the process would often not actually reach this stage. If she was guilty and actually drank the waters, she would certainly die from this, but it did not often reach this stage.

Kol Tuv,

Dovid Bloom

The Mishnah in Eduyos 5:6 (cited in Berachos 19a) and the Yerushalmi in Sotah 2:5 discusses how Kurkemis (a certain freed woman-slave) was given to drink the Mei Sotah in the times of Shemaya and Avtalyon (over 100 years before the Churban ha'Bayis, at the end of the Chashmonai dynasty). In the latter source we find that she was given to drink the waters on three separate occasions!

In both cases, Akavyah contests the story on Halachic grounds. (Our text of the Yerushalmi is that Rebbi 'Akiva' contests it, but in light of the Mishnah cited above we should probably alter the reading to Akavyah). Akavyah maintains that it was not appropriate to administer the waters in the case of Kurkemis, and thus either Shemaya and Avtalyon make a mistake by administering the waters (Rashi) or they only threatened her in order to get her to admit her guilt (which she did not do), but they did not actually erase the name of Hash-m into the water (Tosfos).

In either case, it seems that there were times in which the waters were used in practice.

Mordecai Kornfeld

Kollel Iyun Hadaf