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    9. RASHI METHOD: SPREADSHEETS
    BRIEF EXPLANATION: The common denominator of the 3 submethods of the Spreadsheet method is that inferences are made from non textual material. The 3 submethods are as follows:
    • Spreadsheet: Rashi makes inferences of a numerical nature that can be summarized in a traditional spreadsheet
    • Geometric: Rashi clarifies a Biblical text using descriptions of geometric diagrams
    • Fill-ins: Rashi supplies either real-world background material or indicates real-world inferences from a verse. The emphasis here is on the real-world, non-textual nature of the material.
    This example applies to Rashis Dt11-10d
    URL Reference: (c) http://www.Rashiyomi.com/w34n7.htm
    Brief Summary: Israel is not a rain-water land but a land, like a vegetable garden, requiring supplemental manual watering.

    Verses Dt11-10:11 states
    • For the land, which you enter to possess, is not as the land of Egypt, from where you came out, where you sowed your seed, and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden;
    • But the land, which you are going over to possess, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinks water from the rain of the skies;
    Rashi interprets the two bullets contrastively: There are two types of lands:
    • Those for whom rain water is sufficient and
    • those like a vegetable garden which are watered by foot.
    Rashi supports this contrastive structure by bringing in real-world facts about vegetable gardens. Rain water, typically, is not sufficient for a vegetable garden. The rain water must be supplemented by manual watering either by foot or by shoulder-carried pails.

    We can summarize Rashi as follows:
  • For certain lands rain-water is sufficient;
  • For other lands (for example, vegetable gardens), the rain water is not sufficient and must be supplemented by manually supplied water.

    Rashi's innovation is to generalize and emphasize that
  • rain water does not suffice for vegetable gardens
  • these gardens therefore require supplemental water supplies, one example of which is watering by foot (but there are also other examples like watering by shoulder-carried pails).

Since Rashi's innovation requires bringing in real-world knowledge of vegetable gardens we classify this Rashi as Non Verse. One should note that we also used the grammer method since the sentences have a contrastive structure. Rashi weaves the real-world knowledge about vegetable gardens into the textual meaning by generalizing the details and examples so that they illustrate the intended contrast.


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