This week is Parashat Kitesay, today also is the 23rd anniversary of the terrible attack of 9/11, and so we do take a moment to remember all the victims and all of the heroes really of that time who both on land and in the air did so much to try to save more lives. And unfortunately it really should have been a wake-up call for the West, but it wasn't. And we're kind of wonder what it'll take for the West to wake up and realize that it really is a civilizational battle. But enough for political commentary, and even though we start with Kitesay, we're going to take a look at one of the particular legislations in the section towards really the first half of the Parashat, and it's a tricky piece. Just to put this in a little bit of a context, what I've suggested for years is that the presentation and sequence of the Mitzvot that are found in the, what we call the Numa Mitzvot of Saifid Vareem, the Mitzvah speech, and Saifid Vareem really is an explication more or less in order of the Assarata de Brot, and without belaboring it, you notice that Parashat Shoftim, which is all about the power structures in the community, fits right after an expanded presentation of the calendar. The calendar, of course, is an expansion of Shabbat, and then as an expansion of Cabeira Tabeira Tamaqas, which Shoftim and the Vim and Melech and Gwen, et cetera. And that immediately takes us to the laws of war. And that is Lhotitzach. And then the expansion of Lhotinaf is a lot of the legislation regarding adultery and rape and et cetera, sexual crimes that shows up chiefly in Parashat Vareem. And there's one relatively long piece that, I'll be honest with you, I've always been mystified by, and I figured, well, why don't I share the confusion and see if we together can work something out. Here we go. Kekah ish ish shah uvai yu laha u sinayah. I'm going to translate it as we go along, but then we're going to read it again carefully. And a majority of the shear today is actually reading the text carefully and paying attention to what it says, and more critically what it doesn't say. So Kekah ish ish shah uvai yu laha u sinayah, which means if a man takes a woman and he has relations with her and he hates her. Now this is going to take us back to last week's Parashat about asher's sonay. What does this mean? Does this mean that a guy takes a wife and has relations with her? And as a result of that, hates her? Or does it mean he takes a wife and from the beginning he hated her? And that depends a lot on how we read the word sonay, which we dealt with last week. Keep that in mind as we move ahead. The sama la alilot varim, he then, and now notice the premise of the text, he then presents a story about her, which by the way, the implication is it's false, both see all that shame rah, and he publicizes a bad reputation about her, what we would call slander. Vyammar, and what's his statement? Atayshah zot la kahti, I took this woman as a wife, by kravi alaha, I came close to her, which is perhaps a euphemism for having relations, volomat sati la vittulim. I did not find her bitulim, which means, well, what I'm saying is I did not find her to be a bitulah when I married her. So now, before we go any further, let's see what it is that happened. A guy takes a woman as a wife, has relations with her, and then either, as a result of the relations, doesn't like her anymore, and is now looking to do what? He's looking to get out of the marriage, and so he tells a cock and bull story, makes up one up, and he, and he planters her, and he says, I took this one as a wife, I came close to her, and I found that she's not a bitulah. So now, what happens, volomat sati la kahti, vyammar, vittulim, vittulim, vittulim, vyammar, as aye rasara, the father and the mother of the na'arah. Now, by the way, what was she called before this? It's called then isha, which is it? The answer is perspective. From the perspective of her husband, this britain, she is an isha. From the perspective of her parents, she's an na'arah. Now why would the father and the mother of the na'arah play a role in this? You have to keep that in mind. Why are they players here? Why isn't she speaking up? And the answer likely is because of her age and her status. She's still under the eages of her parents. And so her parents are her litigants, as it were, being on her behalf. So what happens, they take, they take what? We don't know, we'll see you at vittulim, na'arah, aye rasara, they bring her bitulim out to the to the court, which is at the gate. We already saw that, so they bring it to the court. What is it? What are they bringing? So the simple read of it is they're bringing some physical evidence that she really was a bitulah. That's the simple read, vyammar, aye rasara, al-haskinim, and the father turns to the elders and says, at petin atati la ishazad, the ishah, vaisnaha, and now we connect the dots. The father of this na'arah says to the zakenim is a declaration. I gave my daughter to this man as a wife, vaisnaha, and again the same question. He turned against her and now hates her, or the whole time he was plotting. We don't know. Now you have to ask the question, why would somebody marry a girl who already intended to start this bruhah, which is why the likelier read is, he had relations with her and then didn't like her anymore and is looking to get out of it. And the father was saying, he married her in terms, that doesn't like her. And instead of being an honest guy, this jerk, instead of saying, look, it didn't work out and like her, I'm going to pay the ktubal, pay whatever is owed, instead, vihine, hussam, al-ilot d'varim lei moor, he makes up a story saying, now by the way, important note in the text, the phrase al-ilot d'varim, which could mean a story and it could mean narrating what happened, here clearly means a story, meaning a fake, because that's what the father's claim is. He's making something up. Now look back at pasucchia dallad, what's the text's perspective on it? He's making it up, in other words, the assumption the text is that this guy's a liar, and she really is virtuous. So now, vihine, hussam, al-ilot d'varim lei moor, he made up a story saying, lo matzati le vitra bitulim, meaning, who did he say it to? He said it to me, because look at the language. He came up to me and said, I did not find your daughter to be a bitulah, and vayla bitulah bitulah bitulah bitulah. But take a look, here are her bitulim, which means they are evident, they are showing some evidence of her being a bitulah. Ufarsu asseem lei, the phneasic nayaiir, and then they open up the garment in front of the elder. So taken at a graphic shot level, it would mean that, or to say, a literalist level, I don't want to say it shot. It would mean that they have some sort of garment that has her bitulim on it, and then they open it up in front of the zucchini and say, here, you see, she's a bitulah. And he's lying. Now, if that's the case, what happens, v'laq, hussig nayaiir, ahiya ta'ish. The elders take this guy, vihi sur oto, they punish him. Now we don't know what that means on the face of it. We're going to look at Kazal in a minute on all of this, v'laq, hussig, and they punish him by paying him, making him pay a hundred shkuleim. A hundred shkuleim is a huge amount of money. It's twice the value of a tuba, just in terms of the Torah's presentation. We're not talking about a hundred shkule today. Do a hundred shkule of cassif? Now, how do we read v'laq, hussig, and how do we read v'laq, hussig, hussig, hussig. There's two ways to read it. One way is they shall afflict him. How will they afflict him, v'an shu oto, by making him pay? In which case, that v'av is what we call v'av hab b'ur, explicat d'v'av, where you make a statement and then the v'av begins the explanation of the statement. They punish him. How do they punish him? Make him pay a hundred. What's Kazal's understanding, v'is r'oto a, b'is v'an shu oto me achase? What's v'is r'oto makot? This is the famous exception to the rule of ano l'oketu m'shalaym. You do not get makot and pay for the same crime. This is the exception, where he gets makot and pays for his crime. V'anat new la vi'an nah arah. Who does the money go to? The father of the girl. Why does the father of the girl get this money? It's all let's see. The kyot si shaym r'ah al-b'tulat yisrael, because what did this guy do, he slandered a bitulat yisrael. And now v'lothi'el yis r'ah, meaning this girl is now this man's wife. Well, yukal shah al-kari m'av, he's never allowed a divorce, sir, which reminds us of what legislation, the rape legislation. Now, what do these have in common? So, rolling back, when it's actually a little forward in the text, if a man rapes a nah r'ah, who's not betrothed, then he pays the 50 and he marries her. What's the reason for that? And by the way, he marries her, but we learned from shmokha pet, that means only if she or her father don't protest, if they go along with it. Why would any girl go along with it? The answer is a very simple anthropological reality, is that the situation in their day and the situation till recently, and in some parts of the world even today, is that if a girl is raped, the girl is raped, she is, I don't even want to say it out loud, but it is hard for her to find a husband. I don't want to say the way she was regarded, it's terrible, it's awful, she's the victim of one crime, and then her rest of her life is difficult, but that's the reality. And so what the Torah lays this laid, this is of course if she or her father don't want her to marry this terrible guy, or he could have been a nice guy, we just had a bad moment, but we think of him as a terrible guy, whether it's true about seduction also, then she can get out of it. But if she does, he has to marry her and can't ever divorce her. And the idea is that he ruined her chances of marrying properly, and therefore he has to take care of for the rest of his life. It's an odd position, but we have the same thing here. This guy was Mochi Seimra, publicly slandered this poor girl, lied, he's caught in the lie, he's punished terribly, and he also has to stay with her for every can ever divorce her. Of course, if she doesn't want to marry him, she couldn't say no. For father doesn't want to marry him. Now, why is the father, before we go to the other side of this, which is the much more difficult one, why is the father a player here? And the answer is, like I said before, because she's called a nara, meaning how old is she? How old is this girl? So this girl seems to be at the seam between minority and majority. Because if she's a minor, then she shouldn't be getting married. Girls get married when they just reach majority, puberty, right there, that I'm period. If she's already an adult, an independent person, her father's not a player here. But what was the reality then? When did most girls get married? Not betrothed, but married. They got married right around the age of puberty. And during that time, the father was still formally in charge of her life, contractually for Naderim, for other things. And her status is what we call nara. And so therefore here, the father is a player because it's on two levels. A, the father is really her advocate, as it were. And second thing is, the father is the one whose family and whose name is being besmirched by this guy, not just the girl. So he's a player. And that's why he's involved in this question. But isn't it also true that if this nara is going to be forced to go back to her father's house, he resumes economic responsibility for her only until she's done being a nara, which may be at this point. And then she's a bogharit. So yeah, but she's not going to leave the house. And those days they did a bogharit did not, if she didn't get married, he's not responsible. He's not responsible for her anymore financially. I mean, if you want to look at the Dean of the Gomara, we don't know what the practice was at the time. It's not what we're going to get a hint. But here's the second part is what's really difficult. And this is the part that always mystified me. Vimmehmata yaha davar hazzah. Let's say the guy's claim is accurate and true. Loning su uvatulim la nara, turns out she was not a bitulah. His claim is verified. By the way, how are they going to verify that claim? How will they verify the claim? Right. Nobody's got an answer. Again, I missed him. How are they going to verify this claim? So you would think based on the earlier Parshah, the way they'd verify the claim is either father and mother say we don't have the cloth or here's the cloth, but it's spotless. In other words, whatever the evidence was to prove she's a bitulah, we don't have. The problem, of course, is that doesn't prove anything. All it does is not prove something. You can't confirm truth based on the absence of evidence. So how is it that the statement is true? We don't know. And now what do they do? Now by the way, let's say the statement, we're somehow confirmed to be true. The girl admitted to it. What is it she's admitting to? What is it the guy's claiming? And what is it that she's theoretically admitting to? That she wasn't a virgin, meaning what? It's a human adultery. That's what she wasn't, but let's say she admits to it, admits to what? Deceiving him on the katuba. So in other words, what happened to her? Well, either was voluntary or involuntary, either way she wasn't a virgin when she got married. She had some sort of sexual encounter before the wedding with somebody couldn't even been this guy with somebody. And she didn't disclose it. And since this guy's making a claim, we assume it's not with this guy, she didn't disclose it. And therefore, she really should forfeit the tuba, right? And he should be able to divorce her scot free. Correct? Right. Okay. Very good. Now watch what happens. Not exactly just losing the tuba. She's executed. Kishasthan of Allah be Israel. What's the terrible thing that she did to get her executed? She did a terrible disgusting thing be Israel, which was Lee's note, bait aviha. Now that phrase itself is difficult. Does it mean she had some sort of improper relations while she was in the house of her father? Does it mean that she, she led the house of her father to be involved in prurient things? There's a, in the sattuajin, it sort of reads la has not bait aviha, which would have a different implication. You understand this is quite mystifying. What possible thing could happen that would then lead to a death penalty for her? Everybody looks at this and raises their, they don't understand. It's very difficult to understand. So let's take a look. The see free on the spot. We're just going to see spots of this because just to see free on this would take us more than a half hour. The see free makes the following observation, the see free, the Midrash Tanaim. The kaktari krava la wa wa tatil abitulim, meaning hareidim shizintaba bait aviha. Meaning when the guy says, la not tatil abitulim, what actually happens is he brought to a team that saw her have relations while she was in her father's house with somebody else. Now, let's finish the see free and then parent, take a look at it. The next line, the see free, is the a la bitul abitul when they counter and say, here are the bitul abitul, which means hareidim la tatil abitul. Now I want you to watch how twisted, how twisted we've gotten to make this work. When the text says, I did not find bitulim, what the guy is really saying is, here's a team that she had snoot to bait aviha, and when the parents can counter and say, here are the bitulim, what they're really saying is, here's to a team who are mazim, those to a team who say, you know what, you couldn't have seen what happened in the father's house that night because you were with us at the Rams game, right? Adim zommin. The midrash Tanaim does the same thing. Adrash Tanaim says, methi ha-davar zeh, nim tsuu a de ha-bal amat, meaning in the part that we're really struggling with, which is that if it's true, she gets killed, it means that it's true that we didn't find bitulim means it's true that the edim of the bal are true, meaning we've saved them from the hazama. Now I want you to see how much is going on behind the curtains to make this work, and rashi picks up on it right away. He says, methi ha-davar be edim uva ha-tra-ash zinta-la-khar-e-rusin. Now notice there's three qualifiers that have to happen for her to get the death penalty, but there's a fourth one that has to be assumed there also, right? Take a look. Raspam says, the same thing. She says, edim zh, zinta-kha-shin-in-kha-shah. The horseshore says, the same thing, zh, zinta-tah-tah-la-kha-shin-tah-sah. Now the ball app shot to go this way, and what does it mean? So in order to get anybody executed, in any case, what has to happen? There have to be edim, and what do the edim have to be able to testify to? That the person... That they have a warning. That they were... I should have a warning, either they or somebody else, they heard the warning. They heard the person hear the warning, acknowledge it and say, I don't care, and very, very quickly go through with this terrible act, whatever it is, shabbat, of a bizarre, it doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter. But it's all true for all across the board, and then they violated it. Which means, behind the curtains, what's going on in this story, according to midra-shah-chamim? The guy comes and makes a claim, and what's his real claim? Here I have edim that she zinta-kha, but let's think about it. How old did she have to be when she had this putative snoot? Either how old she is, or what her status has to have been? Oh, good. Good. Start with old, then get a status. Start with old. How old did she have to be to have this putative snoot? No. It could have been a few weeks before. In other words, how old did she have to be? Narrageable age. She had to be above majority, otherwise she's not liable for what she does. I can't kill her for doing something, but she's nine. So she has to be of age, which means it has to have happened quite recently. Second thing is, what's her status, Robert? Go ahead. She has to then betray us. She has to already be after kiddushin. Now notice, that is something that Rashi brings up, she's in tat-la-kha-her-eru-sin. And then the raspam and the bhoshur echo it. They don't mention the issue of age, but that's got to be assumed, which means we've got all sorts of things in the shadows that are not in the text, which means that what's the only way that this case could actually play out? The only way that this could play out would be if a girl was betrothed and subsequent to her betrothal after she reached the age of majority but somehow before the wedding night, which itself is a question, why isn't she already married? She supposedly has relations with somebody else. And there are 80 who testified to those relations and then she gets skill of her adultery. There's a little bit of a problem here that Shaddal brings up. If that's the case, who should be killed? If what I just said really happened, who should be killed? Both of them. The girl and the guy. And the guy? The guy who slept with her, right? Yeah, he's in the wedding. But he's not mentioned, is he? Why isn't he mentioned? So presumably because we don't know who he is. But if we don't know who he is, then how do we have any aid to it as to what happened? We have 80 who saw or have relations with the guy, they know who the guy is. You understand, there's a big piece missing in here. But the other piece is that the Midrash hakameem that you saw Rashi in his school, all just automatically plug into the parasha. So we're no longer talking about a cloth, we're no longer talking about the father making this clem of that claim. We're all now about Aedim and Aedim Zomim and the Aedim testifying to Adut, Hatra'a, status, she was already betrothed and age, she was already an age of majority, all things missing from this, all difficult. Make this parasha quite inscrutable, it's very difficult to parse it. Now, the Rambhaum addresses this problem in his introduction to Parashar mishnayot. The Rambhaum makes a famous statement which is contested, others don't necessarily accept it, about makhloket, it says the following. "Olam lo matsang makhlokishnaflaben hakameem, bisman minazmanim moshare viyad ravashi." We never found a makhloket. Shamar hakameem shimishi is samaye anadam ti samaye ano la mahmasha mayen bayen. Nobody ever said aayen bayen's literal. Vyamara kar shadamim go vadu kayab, and the other guy says, "No, you pay money." In other words, we all know the hakameem shimishi. "Olam lo matsang makhloket, bisman moshare viyad sadar," nobody ever suggested, "Priyad sadar" is a lemon. "Smarah hakameem shimishi, bisman shimishi," some other fruit, meaning his rule. "Olam lo matsang makhloket, bisman shimishi, bisman shimishi," some other fruit, meaning his rule. Hello, Bum, Rovat, each queen, how's it going? (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) In other words, the Ramam's basic point is the (speaking in foreign language) That's his line. Things that we have a proper tradition on, there's no (speaking in foreign language) Think about why? Because if there's a (speaking in foreign language) means we don't have a proper tradition on it. We all know what pre-eights adares, it's an ettrum. We all know that it's filling a cubed. All right, we all know it goes on your weaker hand. Nobody ever suggested differently. And now watch what he says, (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) Notice that the Ramam addresses our parasha. And he says, (speaking in foreign language) We never heard of anybody disagreeing about this parasha. (speaking in foreign language) She was already betrothed. (speaking in foreign language) Exactly what we said. (speaking in foreign language) Meaning nobody thinks that this girl's gonna get killed for anything less than willful, aware, attested to, warned, relations with another guy after she's a majority and betrothed. Even though, by the way, you see it nowhere in the parasha. And this is part of the strong argument for (speaking in foreign language) those parts of Tarashaval Peh, which are universally accepted and about which there's no makhlokut. But again, there's a great difficulty in the text. I wanna briefly show you this Ramban, 'cause the Ramban's illuminative here, illuminating here, and then suggest something as maybe a different way to look at this parasha, (speaking in foreign language) The Ramban says the following. (speaking in foreign language) The second paragraph, (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) He says, since we already have other psukiim that tell us that you can only be killed if you're already a betrothed, et cetera, there's no need for it to explicate that, right? And now, hold on a second. In the second comment to the Ramban, (speaking in foreign language) He goes, (speaking in foreign language) Remember, when (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) Right, (speaking in foreign language) He says, (speaking in foreign language) is not a literal cloth, it's a (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) Meaning things are as clear as, as a clear sheet. (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) Ramban says, you don't have to read the (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) Ramban says, you know what the ancient custom was? And still till his day, (speaking in foreign language) They bring them into a kupa, (speaking in foreign language) It's a private room, (speaking in foreign language) They check them and make sure nobody's playing any monkey business. Like, she's got a bloody cloth that she's gonna stick out. (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) This is what's called the (speaking in foreign language) Sort of the escorts of the (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) When they leave, (speaking in foreign language) after the couple separates, (speaking in foreign language) And they take the garment that she slept on as she lay on, (speaking in foreign language) And they see the (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) It's all over Talmud, this idea of the cloth. The (speaking in foreign language) And he goes on to it, which means he says, (speaking in foreign language) Shouldn't be taken as a metaphor, or as a way of saying things are clear as day. He says it's literal. They actually take the (speaking in foreign language) But this, of course, becomes difficult because then it means that the whole disagreement is about a (speaking in foreign language) Is the (speaking in foreign language) on it, in which case he's lying? Or it doesn't, in which case he's not, in which case then what happens? What happens? So you have the source sheets and you could see a number of commentators. You have Shaddal here with his challenges. The (speaking in foreign language) trying to defend the tradition. And you have the (speaking in foreign language) The comments on it. A lot of comments addressing this because the truth is this parashah becomes very difficult to take what's written in the Torah and to fit it in the halakhic model that we have of a (speaking in foreign language) majority, et cetera. 'Cause there are so many pieces that need to be plugged in for it to work. So I'd like to make a suggestion about what is, what else might be going on in this parashah. And it doesn't mean by one smidgen of an Iota that anything less than a (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) and age are necessary for it to be killed. We are aware that there are three parashot in the Torah that the Gomorabi cords isolated opinions about each one of them. (speaking in foreign language) The most famous one of course has been (speaking in foreign language) and then a (speaking in foreign language) and says (speaking in foreign language) I sat on his grave. In other words, there is a (speaking in foreign language) Then there's (speaking in foreign language) about (speaking in foreign language) that the whole thing that the Torah talks about in parashah, (speaking in foreign language) about a house having (speaking in foreign language) never happen, never will happen, never could happen, right? And then we have the famous opinion about your (speaking in foreign language) that it never happened, never will happen. Now, what's the upshot of that? Never happened, never will happen. What's the purpose of it? So you can look at it in, for right now, two ways. There's a lot of ways to go like I'm going to suggest too. One way you look at it is to say ideal versus real, meaning ideally, if a whole town goes to El Vadazarah, they'd be wiped out and this would happen. But reality is the (speaking in foreign language) legislated in such a way that it could never happen and that was their mandate so that it becomes sort of a model of theoretically what should happen, but it's not going to be practiced. And the crystal clear example of that has been (speaking in foreign language) and (speaking in foreign language) is a scary thing, (speaking in foreign language) legislated in such a way that there's only a three month window during which it can happen and has to be this much and has to be father stuff and has to be elsewhere, all sorts of claim, and by the way, both parents have to have the same voice and the same height and neither one of them can be lame or can be blind or can be mute or can be blind any of those things or deaf and they legislated in such a way that it really is impossible to have been so unwrapped. Which means that one way to look at it is to say the notion is really a correct notion. And if the kid really is that far gone, that young theoretically, we would be doing everybody a favor including him by executing it in practice. We're not going to do it. We're not going to do it for whatever reasons. And that's been several issues. What about here? Let's think about this. What is the guy, the husband, trying to do? What is the husband trying to accomplish when he says (speaks in foreign language) - How do you get out of the way? - How do you get out of the wedding, marriage? It doesn't like her or he figured he'd have a one night then, a party and now we won't have to pay a two-bye or make a statement, right? From his perspective, what's happening, it's a self-absorbed, selfish act, which is essentially, sorry to say it, he thinks a victim was crying. In other words, you know, so nobody gets hurt and I get out of this marriage that I don't want to be in. In fact, they move on. That's what he thinks. We got news for you. What you're doing is terrible. What you're doing is not victimless. What you're doing not only to this girl but to her entire family and really to the whole town is awful. And here's the implication of it. You're shooting off your mouth because you're hoping they'll believe you and get you out of the marriage without paying. If we get you out of it, the exact opposite's gonna happen. You're stuck with her. You pay a double two-bye and you get punished. And by the way, what do you think his future is in that town? Not very rosy. He's probably a pariah. Now, on the other hand, what happens if he's right? What was his purpose in making the claim? He just wanted to be rid of her. What happens if he's right? She's publicly executed. By the way, what does that do to her father's family? It makes them socially on the outskirts. What does that do to him, by the way? He's the cut-golden husband who couldn't keep his mouth shut and God's wife killed. He doesn't have a bright future either. I'd like to suggest that this entire pariah is a warning. Both parts of it, both what happens if he's lying and what happens if he's telling the truth or if it's discovered are a warning to this guy. Think long and hard about the implications of your claim and about the much more far-reaching consequences that could be coming from it way more than you are right now intending. And then, shut up. I believe that that's what's going on here. Now, that's not to say that if there really is a case of adultery, a guy should overlook it. But that's not what he's claiming and that's not where he's coming from. Notice he doesn't claim she had relations with somebody. He just claims she's not a virgin. Well, guess where that could lead to? That could lead to something far more awful and do you really want that responsibility and do you really want that future? And so even though, and we certainly have no record of this ever being actually enacted, you know, acted on, but perhaps the lesson of this particular parasha is exactly that. Think long and hard before you make the claim. Think long and hard before you make an accusation because the waves that you start may become a tsunami that will engulf you as well. And so perhaps this might be tangentially or in the shadows included among those parasha, parasha that are lohiavolonivra. But remember, I said there's two reasons for the lohiavolonivra. One of them is ideally we would do this. But remember, what's the explanation for the three of them? Why would they said? Droach for Cabelskar. What is droach for Cabelskar mean? So that means for the limonatora, you learn Torah very good. Well, there's lots of other Torah. Why this? Because there's lessons in this that you have to learn. And if you learn those lessons and internalize it, that will be your sakhhar. And we don't have to actually have to have this happen for the value of this parasha to impact on you by learning the lesson. The tremendous negative impact of Hoxach and Rav slander is something that we find goes from a person intending a small little gain for his selfish self to being a calamity for the entire community.
