Making A World of Difference Through The Mitzvah of Returning ©
Parashat Ki Teitzei - 2019/5779
Rabbi David Baum
I will never forget my brother’s toast at my wedding. In front of our esteemed guests, my brother said, you may know my brother David as the responsible rabbinical student, but growing up, we called him the absent-minded professor. He literally lost everything he could get his hands on.
When it comes to the art of losing or misplacing things, I am a Rembrandt. I have misplaced, on numerous occasions: my car keys; and my sunglasses; and in large parking lots, my car; and my library card, and credit cards. Thank God I have Alissa who tells me where everything is. I always breathe a sigh of relief when she returns all of my lost objects - there are few greater feelings.
This week, I heard a story of a lost item that was actually returned.
There are iconic pictures for certain generations - for the WW2 generation, I think of the U.S. flag being raised atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. For my generation, a generation that came to adulthood in 2001, it was the picture of the three firemen raising the flag at ground zero at 9/11. The photo called Raising the Flag at Ground Zero, taken by photographer Thomas E. Franklin, became the iconic image of that terrible day. Instead of Marines invading an island, the heroes of 9/11 were the first responders, fireman and police officers, who rushed into the burning buildings, many losing their lives, and then risking their lives afterward by helping to find survivors. But there’s an interesting follow up to this story. That iconic flag that became a symbol of hope and resiliency in the face of unimaginable tragedy, but it actually went missing that day.
According to the producer and director of the film Michael Tucker, The Flag, a film that told the story of the raising of the flag that day, it was either misplaced, stolen or secreted away by unknown forces in the chaos of ground zero.” Another flag was used at future remembrances, but that iconic flag was lost. 15 years later, in 2016, the flag miraculously reemerged in Everett, Washington, at a fire station. A retired Marine named Brian returned it, but his true identity was never ascertained even after an exhaustive search. He told them that he had been given the flag in 2007 by the widow of a firefighter. The flag went through exhaustive testing, both DNA and materials testing, to see if it was the same flag, and it was deemed to be authentic.
A retired New York Police Department officer who now works with the Everett Police Department held the flag as it was being packaged to return to New York City. He grabbed onto that flag, held it up to his face, smelled it, turned and looked to the detective who was there to take it and said, 'That's the smell that I remember from that day.”
Our parashah this week contains more mitzvoth than any other parashah in the entire Torah. We read about laws of what to do with female war captives, rebellious sons, marital relations, executions, runaway slaves, nocturnal emissions, no-interest loans, fair weights and measures, and more.
But there is one law that stuck out to me this week - the mitzvah of Hashavet Avedah - the returning of lost objects. In America, there’s a famous saying, “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” Fortunately, that’s not a saying in the Torah. It is the mitzvah that Brian, the man who remains anonymous until this day, fulfilled 15 years after the tragedy of September 11, 2001. In Deuteronomy 22:1 - 3 we read the following:
לֹא־תִרְאֶה אֶת־שׁוֹר אָחִיךָ אוֹ אֶת־שֵׂיוֹ נִדָּחִים וְהִתְעַלַּמְתָּ מֵהֶם הָשֵׁב תְּשִׁיבֵם לְאָחִיךָ׃
If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your fellow.
וְאִם־לֹא קָרוֹב אָחִיךָ אֵלֶיךָ וְלֹא יְדַעְתּוֹ וַאֲסַפְתּוֹ אֶל־תּוֹךְ בֵּיתֶךָ וְהָיָה עִמְּךָ עַד דְּרֹשׁ אָחִיךָ אֹתוֹ וַהֲשֵׁבֹתוֹ לוֹ׃
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.
וְכֵן תַּעֲשֶׂה לַחֲמֹרוֹ וְכֵן תַּעֲשֶׂה לְשִׂמְלָתוֹ וְכֵן תַּעֲשֶׂה לְכָל־אֲבֵדַת אָחִיךָ אֲשֶׁר־תֹּאבַד מִמֶּנּוּ וּמְצָאתָהּ לֹא תוּכַל לְהִתְעַלֵּם׃ (ס)
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.
Returning lost objects seems like a no brainer, but it’s not always so easy. For example, Alissa and I were on a cruise in the spring, our first cruise in 12 years, and as we were standing by the bar, I noticed a $50 bill sitting on the floor right in front of us. My first, honest reaction: drinks are on God! But remembering this mitzvah, we gave it to the bartender who asked if anyone lost a $50 bill. A woman came running to the bar, it was mine, I lost it, thank you! The bartender said, don’t thank me, thank this couple. She said, “There are still good people in the world.” My response, “your lucky that a rabbi is here!” We didn’t get a free drink, but I will say that fulfilling this mitzvah felt much better than all the drinks we could have purchased with that bill, and no hangover either!
But the mitzvah actually isn’t so easy to perform, and the Talmud and law codes go through examples after examples, because sometimes, it isn’t so easy to find the person who lost the object, and in fact, you might never find the person, so does the object go to the finder?
But there is a line in this passage that is really important -
But it highlights the effect on this mitzvah - the effect it has on others -
לֹא תוּכַל לְהִתְעַלֵּם׃
It is translated as, you shall not remain indifferent, but the literal translation is: you shall not hide yourself from it.
This line changes the power of this mitzvah - what is ‘it’ exactly? How can you hide yourself from an inanimate object? I believe the ‘it’ isn’t the item, but the mitzvah itself - returning.
It is probably intentional that we read about this mitzvah during this season, the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah. The main mitzvah of the high holiday season is Teshuvah. Within that word teshuvah, repentance, is the word, Shuv, which means, return.
My friend Rabbi Jeff Salkin told me a story of when he returned a lost item. A few years ago, he was in a store and he found a twenty-dollar bill on the floor. So he went to one of the salespeople and he asked him to announce that there was an ownerless twenty, and could the owner please come and claim it. The man looked at him like he was nuts and said: “Don’t you think that everyone in the store is going to come running over here?” “Maybe,” he said, “but this is what we have to do. Or at least, I am going to give it to you and you do what you need to do. But here’s the thing...as a Jew, I am obliged to try to return lost objects. That is Jewish law.”
So the salesman looked at him, smiled, and said to him, “You know something, I’m Jewish. I haven’t been to synagogue in years. And you tell me that’s Judaism – to go around looking for someone who lost a twenty?...If that’s Judaism, I gotta give it one more try.”
The 17-18th century Moroccan sage Ḥayyim ben Moshe ibn Attar, in his Torah commentary the "Or ha-Ḥayyim" riffs on the shared root of "hashevah" (returning) and "teshuvah" (repentance). He explains that these verses are really addressing our obligation to "return" Jews who are lost.
We never know what mitzvah will bring a lost Jew back home.
Returning a lost object can transform a person, and a country. The flag that was returned that day is now hanging in the 9/11 memorial in New York City, at Ground Zero. When Brian returned that flag to the fire station, it must have been very difficult - he returned to a fire station, to the memories of that horrible day, it’s not easy to return to those memories, to relive them again, and yet, it can change lives. The flag was presented by the president of the 9/11 Memorial, Joe Daniels, said the following when the flag was finally returned back to where it once proudly flew: “In the darkest hours of 9/11 when our country was at risk of losing all hope, the raising of this American flag by our first responders helped reaffirm that the nation would endure, would recover and rebuild, that we would always remember and honor all of those who lost their lives and risked their own to save others. We had always hoped this special flag and its story would be shared with our millions of annual visitors coming from around the world, and for that, we are thankful.”
There are times during the year when we hide ourselves from performing acts of loving-kindness, like the simple mitzvah of returning lost items. As the Torah says, do not hide yourself from it, because fulfilling that mitzvah can make a world of difference.
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