LITTLE THINGS COUNT ALOT
			Dr. Russell Jay Hendel; RJHendel@Juno.Com
			© RashiYomi.Inc August 7 2008

The following analysis of a Rashi-Sforno controversy is linked to Volume 11 Issue Number 5 of Weekly Rashi. This attachment continues the new trend to analyze controversies among the early classical commentaries. This analysis also was presented as the Dvar Torah for the Women’s Institute of Torah, WIT, for Parshat Devarim, 2008. RashiYomi.Inc wishes to express its gratitude to WIT for the opportunity to disseminate Dvar Torah’s through its organization.

In this weeks' Parshah, Devarim, God warns the Jewish people against contentions with the nations of Moab and Amon. The verbal formulations of these two warnings are almost identical; they differ in one major keyword. We will explore this difference.  Dt02-09 states "....Do not harass the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle", while Dt02-19, speaking about the Amonites, states "harass them not, nor contend with them."  The major difference between these almost identical warnings is the underlined, italicized, bolded word "Battle." We are narrowly warned against contending with the Moabites "in battle" but are generally warned against contending with the Amonites (at all!).

Rashi comments: "The prohibition on the Moabites is only a prohibition of battle; but non-battle contention was not prohibited." Rashi then supplies a reason based on the incident described in Gn19-30:38. Their we find that both of Lots' daughters committed incest and had a child through him - but Moab's mother called her son Moab, which literally in English means, From-Dad, while Amon's mother called him Amon, which literally in English means, My-Nation. Rashi comments: "(Moab's) Fromdad's mother was not discrete about the affair, as reflected in the naming of the child, and therefore the Jews were only prohibited from contending in battle while (Amon's) Mynation's mother was discrete about the affair, at least in terms of the name of the child,  and therefore the Jews were prohibited from any contention."

There are at least two questions to be raised by Rashi's explanation, which is based on the Talmud, Baba Kama 38: 

Question 1) The Bible itself gives a more blatant and important reason for the differentiation between the treatment of Moab and Amon: Dt23-04 explicitly states "An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord forever." 

Dt23-05 supplies a reason for the prohibition in Dt23-04.  In presenting this verse we explicitly note the two clauses of the verse by lettering them and bold, italicize, underlining key contrastive words: 
•	"Because (A) they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when you came out of Egypt; and
•	because (B) he hired against you Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you." 
The Bible is very clear that 
•	both Amon and Moab ("they") did not give the Jews food/water  but 
•	only one of them ("he"), Moab, hired Bilam to curse the Jewish people.

 In fact Moab hired Bilam to curse the Jews who advised Moab to send their women to seduce Jewish men resulting in a plague that cost 24,000 lives (Nu22-02:05, Nu25-01:09). So we have here a simple explanation why Moab can be contended with (but not militarily): They caused the loss of 24000 lives. Why shouldn't we contend with them because of this? In fact we should have declared war on them, but God, consistent with the prohibition of warring with Moab, only required war on the Midianites and Bilam (Nu31-02,08).  

Why does Rashi omit this obvious reason for the differential treatment of Moab and Amon and instead mention some minute fact that happened several 100 years earlier/

Question 2) Does discretion (Fromdad vs. Mynation) really matter among people who are committing incest? Don't we teach our children (and hopefully ourselves) that content, not form, is important? Don't we teach them that feigning good form with bad content is hypocrisy? Does it make sense to say that God rewards a committer of incense for a mere discretion? 

I would therefore like to develop the concept that Rashi is teaching us that sincere form, even when dwarfed by major sins, is not erased, but rewarded. There are several examples of this concept: 
1)	Saying "Hello:" The book of Ruth 2:4, mentions, almost in passing, that Boaz would greet his workers "God be with you." The Talmud however doesn't pass over this verse: The Talmud (Beracoth 54a) states "A person should always greet someone else using the Divine name." True, it is little thing to say hello with God's name, but it can have a great impact. Jewish lawbooks bring down that the modern greeting, Shalom Alaychem, fulfills this Talmudic requirement since Shalom is the name of God. 
2)	The Biblical laws of charity don't just tell us to give. Rather they tell us (Dt15-07:08) 
a)	" don't be hard-hearted,
b)	don't be withdrawn, 
c)	openly openly give and 
d)	package package for him his needs." 
The Talmud and later deciders of Jewish law comment on the 4 distinct phrases: 

a)	"You must not only give you must also give with a smile; 
b)	You must not only give when asked  you must seek out the poor who may be bashful; 
c)	You must keep on re-giving (even if the poor squanders the money); 
d)	if the poor person doesn't want to take, trick him by loaning (and not asking for repayment)."
3)	As pointed out above, the daughters of Lot both committed incest yet Fromdad's mother faired worse with the Jews (as shown above) then Mynation's mother. 
4)	The evil Eglon conquered the Jews and subjugated them.. Yet when Ehud told him "I have a prophecy of God for you," Eglon stood up to receive it (upon which standing up Ehud utilized his focus on prophecy and killed him) (Judges 3:12-30). The Talmud hints here that both Eglon, who stood up, (as well as his ancestor, Balak who offered sacrifices), merited, for that slight gesture, to have the Davidic dynasty come from him (Horayoth 10b).

These 4 examples confirm Rashi's concept: A sincere religious non-action - saying Hello, smiling, being discrete, standing in respect - is always rewarded by God even if the overall person is steeped in evil. I think this has tremendous implications for us in our interpersonal relations - we should all try to cultivate the habit of doing little things - nice words, smiles, gestures, discretion - in our interpersonal relations.

We have answered Question 2. We have left to deal with the first question mentioned above: True, Rashi had a point to make. But why didn't he mention the Biblical reason for the Moab-Amon differential treatment: The hiring of Bilam and the organized seduction and the death of 24000 people. To answer this question we offer a psychological explanation.

We have seen above that the Bible only prohibits military contention with Moab - it does not prohibit non-military contention. In fact the Bible states that Moab was worried about non-military plundering: Dt22-03:04 "And Moab was very afraid of the people, ....; and Moab was distressed  ....And Moab ..., Now shall this company lick up all who are around us, as the ox licks up the grass of the field. And Balak the son of Zippor was king of the Moabites at that time." The underlined words show Moab's mistrusts. We also see here how Moab explicitly articulated its mistrusts. These articulations led to an evil plan of action: First Bilam was hired to curse the people and then he gave advice to send Moabite woman to seduce the Jews. This resulted in a plague of 24000 (8 times the death toll from the Golden calf (Comment of Rav Hirsch in his commentary)). The end product was that God declared war on Balak and the Midianites.

The primary emotion driving all this was "articulated mistrust." But low and behold the same "articulated mistrustfulness" is what gave rise to the incest acts several 100 years earlier: Gn19-31:32 states "And the firstborn said ...Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us ...Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will "

Don't we all have mistrusts and suspicions? Adult behavior requires keeping mistrusts to ourselves and trying to work things out. Frequently our mistrusts are groundless - we only have to be patient and things usually work out. Psychology, including Jewish psychology as found in the laws of bad speech, teaches that "articulated mistrust" is a primary driving force for affairs, theft and even murder. 

We now understand Rashi and can reformulate his reason for differential treatment towards Moab. The reformulated expanded Rashi would read as follows: "Of course, as the Bible itself says, Moab was differentially treated - contention is ok but not military contention - because of the hiring of Bilam, the seduction of Jewish men and the great loss of life. However, Moab was driven to this by their articulated mistrust which emotionally finds root in the articulated mistrust that led to the incest that founded Moab."

The above reading of Rashi - tying in the Biblical reason for differential treatment with the Talmudically stated reason of lack of discretion in Moab's mother - may be found in the Sforno. Sforno mentions the hiring of Bilam and the seduction; we added to this an explicit Biblical verse; Sforno is aware that Rashi omits this explicit verse and ties in the original incest act as reflective of the recent Moabite acts. We have supplemented Sforno's explanation by supplying known principles from Jewish psychology. I therefore believe Sforno was not disagreeing with Rashi but supplementing him. 

This analysis of Rashi supplies us with an important principle of interpersonal relationship (little things) as well as with tools by which to exegetically enrich Rashi.