Rashi replied: "Let
us be careful not to take measures for isolating them and thereby
wounding them. Their defection was made under the menace of the
sword, and they hastened to return from their wanderings."
Elsewhere Rashi objects to recalling to them their momentary
infidelity. A young girl was married while she and her
bridegroom were in the state of forced apostasy. Rashi declared
the union to be valid, for "even if a Jew becomes a convert
voluntarily, the marriage he contracts is valid. All the more is
this true in the case of those who are converted by force, and
whose heart always stays with God, and especially, as in the
present case, if they have escaped as soon as they could from the
faith they embraced through compulsion."
Since internal union is the surest safeguard against persecution
from without, Rashi earnestly exhorted his brethren to shun
intestine strife. "Apply yourselves to the cultivation of
peace," he once wrote. "See how your neighbors are troubled by
the greatest evils and how the Christians delight in them.
Concord will be your buckler against envy and prevent it from
dominating you." In a community, doubtless that of Chalons-
sur-Saone, in Burgundy,[127] there were two families that
quarrelled [quarreled sic] continually. The community had
intervened to stop the strife, but one of the two families
declared in advance that it would not submit to its decision.
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