By Rabbi Yaakov Marks
SAN DIEGO — “But what will they say?” Better yet ask, “What will you answer to yourself?”
You shall not see the ox or the sheep of your brother wandering and disregard them. You will surely return them to your brother. If your brother is not near or you do not know who he is, you will take it into your house and it will be with you until your brother claims it and you will return it to him. (Deuteronomy 22:1-2)
Many laws regarding the returning of lost objects are derived from these phrases. We are commanded to be diligent in returning lost objects to their owners and not allow ourselves to feign not observing them. We are required to guarantee that an equivalent monetary value to be returned if the object is perishable. The number of times the same animal must be returned is up to one hundred times. Many other laws regarding the care and concern of the finder are mandated in the law books.
The Talmud questions the need for the extra words “to him.” They seem to be superfluous. If the owner comes and proves the object is his and you return it, isn’t it returned “to him”? They learn from this extra phrase that G-d is telling us that we must also return to “him” the person himself. If a person is drowning or being attacked by robbers or animals, we must help if we have any means to. We can’t write it off as his problem and walk away. G-d is telling us that it is also our problem and we are obligated to help as much as we can.
The obligation of helping our fellow man does not stop there. Not only are we obligated to save him and return his body to him, we are obligated to return him on to the correct path. If we see a person walking in one direction and we know he wants to get to a place that is in a different direction, we need to return him to the correct path. If we know he made a wrong business decision, we are required to inform him of the facts to get him back on the right path. We are responsible to worry about the needs and benefit of our fellow man in any of his matters to return him to the proper path. Even to the extent that if the person seemingly made the bad decision knowingly we are obligated to try to get him back on the right path.
This seems to be a problem. If the care and safe keeping of our fellow man is so important, why didn’t G-d command this explicitly? Why did G-d need to teach us the laws of the treatment of a person through the laws of returning lost animals and inanimate objects?
I feel that G-d is teaching us a fundamental lesson in our interaction with other people. When an animal wanders out of the safety of his owner’s pasture into the wilderness, we don’t question the animal’s intentions. We don’t tell the animal, “you made the decision live with it”. We guide the animal back to the safety of the pasture which it came from. Even after several times we still take the animal back to get it out of harm’s way. We don’t start thinking that the animal doesn’t care so why should I care? We don’t say the animal didn’t ask for help so why should I help?
When it comes to a person we have a tendency of assuming why a person did something. We might say I could help that person, but they didn’t ask so I am not going to get involved. Many times we think that the person made the decision so now it’s his problem. If the person made the same mistake several times only G-d knows what thoughts are going through our minds. If we assume that a person did something wrong on purpose, we would for sure not want to waste our time on him.
G-d is telling us, just like by the animal we have absolutely no idea why the animal did what it did, so too by a person, we have no idea of what is going through his mind. We don’t know the pressure and stress he is under. We don’t know the strength of his desires that he is trying to control. We don’t know if he was bullied as a child or what was said to him to make him now feel inferior. We don’t know what losses have occurred that might be crushing him. G-d is telling us to look at him as a precious human life that we have the ability to alleviate some of his pain. Even after several times, we don’t know why he repeated it, we only know that a person in need needs our help again. G-d is telling us, don’t worry about why he did it worry about what you are going to tell yourself if you disregard him.
May G-d grant us the strength to see past all the excuses that our mind can make up. May we merit to help those who we see going in a wrong direction to get back on the proper path. If we have the ability to better someone’s life may we be given the warmth and kindness to stand by that person for as long as it takes until he can stay on the path of a wonderful life.
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Rabbi Marks is a life and health coach, who may be contacted via ahealthyrabbi@gmail.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter-writer’s first and last name and his/her city and state of residence (city and country if outside the U.S.)