An Ammmonite or Moabite (man) may not enter into the assembly of
God. They may never enter
God’s marriage group, even after the tenth generation. This is because they did not greet you with bread and
water when you were on the way out of Egypt, and also because they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharayim to curse you. Deuteronomy
23:4-5
The verse apparently
presents two reasons for the ban on accepting (male) converts from Ammon or
Moav: these tribes’ refusal to greet Israel with food and water, and the fact
that they hired Balaam to curse Israel.
My saintly teacher,
Rabbi Mordechai Rogov, notes that the first reason should pale in comparison to
the second and questions why the Torah bothers to mention the relatively minor
infraction of refusing to provide Israel’s needs.
In answering his own
question, Rabbi Rogov quotes the Midrash:
The Hebrew midwives (refused
Pharaoh’s order to kill the newborn males because they) connected themselves to
their ancestor Abraham, and said: “Abraham opened an inn and fed passersby, so
how can we kill the newborns?” Shemot Rabba 1:15
The connection
between Abraham’s kindness to others and avoiding murdering newborn babies
seems rather curious. The explanation, suggests Rabbi Rogov, is that the more
one performs acts of kindness to his fellow, the more removed he is from the
possibility of committing murder. Conversely, the more one is removed from ḥessed,
the more likely he is to disregard the sanctity of another’s life. Ultimately,
justice is rooted in ḥessed. Thus, the midwives reflected on Abraham’s
acts of ḥessed to strangers as their starting point to realize that they
must defy Pharaoh’s evil decree.
Similarly, our
verses teach that it was Ammon and Moav’s failure to meet the needs of their
kinsmen Israel, their failure to practice ḥessed, which led them to the
depravity of hiring Balaam to curse the entire nation of Israel. Indeed, we can
understand that the first reason mentioned in verse five is that which caused
the second.
No comments:
Post a Comment