This is an "outtake" from an article on which I am currently working, which is not yet published. The publication was not interested in including this long quotation in the article:
There is a worrisome trend in our society to adopt a very disturbing perspective, one that emerges from the following passages from a widely distributed and respected “Parashah Sheet.” From Toras Avigdor, Nitzavim-Rosh HaShanah 5779:1
Everyone knows about hashavas aveidah, the mitzvah to
return a lost item to a fellow Jew. The Torah says you have to
bring it back to him; it’s a mitzvah d’oraisah. And it
also says there, You should not avert your eyes from the aveidah;
it’s an aveirah to walk by and ignore it… So
now we can look at the gemara (Sanhedrin 76b) and see
how Chazal describe the sin of this man who is planting poison
seeds in his mind; the one who is “adding the satiated onto the
thirsty.” And the gemara says like this: What did he do? He
was walking, let’s say, past a Korean fruit store and he saw a
fruit lying on the sidewalk. An apple fell off the bin and in another
minute someone will pass by and kick the apple into the gutter. So
this man bends over, picks up the apple and puts it back on the bin.
That’s all he did. He has in his mind hashavas aveidah –
to return a lost article. And what does the Torah say about this good
fellow, this well-mannered citizen? Maybe he should get a special
commendation from the mayor? Could be. But listen to what the Torah
says about him: Hashem will not want to forgive him for what he
did. Not only that He won't forgive him; He won't desire to
forgive him. Hashem won't even desire to forgive him?! What
did this man do wrong already? He picked up the apple and put it back
on the bin – that’s all he did…
All week long the Am Yisroel is busy with mitzvos. A
frum Jew gets up early in the morning to go to shul and
then a few hours later he’s back in shul again. Elderly men,
bochurim and little children are going to shul. Back
and forth, back and forth. Shachris, mincha, ma’ariv – he
davens and he learns a little bit too. He puts a nickel in the
pushka whenever he gets a chance.
Are goyim busy with mitzvos all day long?! Ah
nechtige tug! He sees the Jew walking back and forth to shul a
few times a day; he doesn’t understand wh at’s happening. He goes
to church once a month and the priest says, “All your sins are
forgiven,” and finished. Don’t think that the Catholics or the
Protestants, even the religious ones, are the same as you, only that
the religion is different. Don’t make any mistake about that! There
is a very wide chasm between you and them. Goyim don’t
desire mitzvos; maybe they accept a few commandments of the
Torah, maybe they follow some of the Bible, but they don’t do it
with any sort of cheshek, any desire. Even if they do some
things, they’re zaht – they’re overfed; they’re not
thirsty for mitzvos. I’ll tell you what they’re thirsty
for. You walk in the streets early in the morning in a Catholic
neighborhood, a respectable upper class Catholic neighborhood, and
lying stretched out on the ground is a good Catholic. He’s drunk
and he’s been sleeping on the street all night. I walked in the
Catholic neighborhoods forty years ago and I saw that many times.
Drunk all night, fast asleep in the gutter; and then he gets up in
the morning, staggers home, and tells everybody, “Ooh wah! What a
time I had last night!” He’s proud of himself. And did they expel
him from their homes or from their churches? No! Never! It wasn’t
even considered a chisaron. Many people admired him; they were
jealous of him. It was an exploit! He would tell his friends about
it: “Did I ever tell you about the time that I slept drunk in the
gutter the whole night?!” A goy is satiated with drink! He
wants mitzvos like he wants a hole in his shoe…
And so this man, when he picks up the Korean apple from the sidewalk
and puts it back into the bin, he’s equating the overfed goyim
with the Am Yisroel, the nation that is thirsty toserve
its Creator. He equated the honor of the gentile to that of a
Yisroel. When a person does that out of the generosity of his
heart; when he thinks, “Since it’s a good thing to return a lost
apple that belongs to a Jewish fruit man, I won't be selfish just for
us alone. I’ll be generous hearted, and I’ll return it to the goy
too,” so that man has to know that Hashem won't forgive him.
Hashem won’t even desire to forgive him for that poisonous thought
in his head of equating the honor that belongs to the Jewish nation
with that of the gentiles.
Now, if you tell me that you pick it up because you want to show that
Jews are good people, darkei shalom, all right, maybe.
Everyone knows that if the cashier in the 99 cent store accidentally
gives you more than you deserve to get, so sometimes it pays to say,
“You made a mistake. You gave me too much money.” Could be. If
you have a beard and a black hat, it could be it’s a mitzvah to
say that. So if there are goyim standing around, if a
policeman is standing there, all right, pick up the apple and put it
back on the bin. Be a nice fellow so that the goyim will say,
“You see that; the Jews aren’t so bad after all.” It’s a
mitzvah to raise the honor of the Jewish people in the eyes of
the goyim.
But otherwise pass by. Because what we’re learning here is that
it’s even a bigger mitzvah to raise the honor of the Jewish
people in your own eyes! And what that means is that when you
pass by the fruit on the floor you keep going – and you remind
yourself why you’re doing that. You don’t want to be a man who
harbors poison in his mind, someone who is equating the honor of the
over-satiated with the honor that belongs only to the thirsty nation.
For a Yisroel, achicha, yes, you bend over and pick it
up. The lost object of your brother in mitzvos you’re
michuyav to return. A nation that does mitzvos, so we
do mitzvos for them – it’s an honor they deserve! But the
gentiles? They don’t want to do any mitzvos, so we don’t
honor them with our mitzvos.
Now this I admit; let’s say you found a watch in the street and now
you want to put it in your pocket. It could be you have to give it to
the police. I don’t know; it could be there’s a law like that.
Some places have a law that you have to bring it to the police
station. So if it’s a law of the government, that’s something
else. But you’re not doing it because of a mitzvah though;
you’re only doing it because of the law. But no government has a
law that you have to bend over to pick up the apple. There’s no
such thing that when you pass by a fruit stand, you must pick up the
apple and put it back – no. And so if you lean over and pick up
that Korean’s apple it’s a terrible sin. And you're also doing a
tremendously dangerous thing for yourself. If you pick it up with the
same emotion that you pick up an apple for the Jewish food store, so
the Torah says, Hashem will not want to forgive you. If you do
it because you want to do a good deed – let’s say you’re not
thinking and you have in mind the idea of hashavas aveidah –
so you’ve committed a crime, a very great crime against the
greatness of Am Yisroel. A crime?! Yes, it’s a crime. The
crime is that you don’t understand, you don’t appreciate the
greatness of the Am Yisroel…
“You are My firstborn son,” says Hashem. “You’re My only
son.” And that’s so important that it’s something we’re
expected to internalize every time we pass by the Korean fruit store.
I make it a point to pass by! I wouldn’t pick it up. I make it a
point to keep on walking and I remind myself, “Only for a Yisroel
there’s a mitzvah.” I hope you’ll try that out next
time. Because to do otherwise means that you’re planting poisonous
seeds in your mind.
Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach dealt in
linen. His students said to him: “Rebbe, desist from this trade. We
will buy you a donkey [to make an easier living as a donkey driver]
and you will not have to toil so much.” They went and purchased a
donkey from a bandit. The students subsequently found a precious
stone dangling from it. They went back to Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach
and said to him: “From now on you need not exert yourself.” He
asked: “How so?” The students responded: “We purchased a donkey
for you from a bandit and a precious stone was dangling from it.”
Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach asked: “Did the donkey’s seller know
that the stone was there?” They answered: “No.” He then said to
them: “Go return it.” The students remonstrated with Rabbi Shimon
ben Shetach: “Although theft from an idolater is prohibited, is one
not permitted to keep an object that an idolater has lost?” He
responded: “What do you think, that Shimon ben Shetach is a
barbarian? More than all the wealth of the world, Shimon ben Shetach
desires to hear [the non-Jew say]: “Berich Eloko
d’Yehudo’ei” (“Blessed
is the God of the Jews”).
