Congregation Beth El

When I lived in Jerusalem years ago, I heard the story told at a Shabbat dinner, of a young Jewish couple, Sarah and David, who had taken time off from college to travel together to an ashram in India, where they lived for a year. I think the story goes that the couple broke up towards the end of the year, and Sarah left to return to the States. There she got interested in Judaism, and first visited, then later moved to Jerusalem. She and David did not keep in touch. For years, she lived in a women’s yeshiva, where the students study ancient Jewish texts, and though she went out on dates, she never met someone who felt right for her. Then one day, she found a wallet on the ground and because she learned in yeshiva, she knew that Jewish law obliges you to return a lost object, no matter what it takes. So she found an address in the wallet and set out to return it. When she walked into the apartment, she saw David there. He had also moved to Jerusalem a few years after she did. They fell back in love of course, married, and, as our host who was telling the story said, “they live right around the corner down the street! You can go there for Shabbat dinner next week…”
It’s a romantic story, but it hinges on a very practical element: the return of the lost wallet. There is a big distinction between Jewish law and common law when it comes to the issue of lost objects. Common law generally doesn’t put any duties on us to protect the property of strangers; you can see someone’s lost property and just walk right on by. The finder can do whatever she wants including keeping the object or choosing not to pick it up. By contrast, Jewish law requires that one who sees a lost object is duty-bound to pick it up and return it, and if the person they’re returning it to is not there, then they need to bring it home and care for it, and wait until the owner comes home. The origin of this law is in the Torah:
If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your fellow. If your fellow does not live near you or you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home and it shall remain with you until your fellow claims it; then you shall give it back to him. You shall do the same with his ass; you shall do the same with his garment; and so too shall you do with anything that your fellow loses and you find; you must not remain indifferent (Deuteronomy 22:1–3).
Rabbi Marc Wolf teaches that the rabbis of the later eras took this commandment even farther: restoring lost property involves actively engaging ourselves in the return. He shares this ancient rabbinic teaching:
When Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair was living in city of the south, some men came there to work. They had two measures of barley they left with him which they forgot when they went away. Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair sowed the barley year after year and harvested it and stored it. After seven years the men returned and when Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair recognized them, he said to them, ‘Come take your storehouses full of grain.’ From the faithfulness of Man you can learn the faithfulness of God (Deuteronomy Rabbah 3:3).
So not only did Rabbi Pinchas keep the barley for them faithfully, he ‘invested’ it for them, and reminded them to come collect it. There are many stories about crazy rabbis running after people who tried to throw something out, trying to return it to them. People take this commandment very seriously. Jewish tradition devotes pages and pages to the fine points of returning lost things: is it just any object you see, from what point does one become a finder, what if there are no identifying marks, etc.
Rabbi Wolf connects this zealousness for returning lost objects to this time in the calendar of preparing for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the holiest time of the year in our tradition. It is in this preparatory period where we do soul-searching about how we can treat others better, and how we can get back on the right path for each of us. The Hebrew term for this is teshuvah, which is usually translated as ‘repentance,’ but literally means ‘return.’ It is this time of year that we try to return ourselves to God. We are the lost objects in question.
In Jewish law, if the owner still holds out hope of finding something, then we must return it. There is a restorative passion in Judaism: so much of the tradition talks about return, restoration, and fixing of the world. Rebbe Nachman says that Judaism devotes so much time to the laws of finding lost objects, because that’s all we do in life. To be human is to be a finder of lost objects, both literally and figuratively. In this respect, we learn that we are all on the same team, as it were, in that we’re commanded to look out for one another. To quote the Torah, we must not remain indifferent.