Administrator, Baltimore Bais Din
Reviewed by Rabbi Mordechai
Schuchatowitz, Head of the Baltimore Bais Din
In last month’s issue of Where What When, Mrs. Schor wrote an
article about situations in which someone went above and beyond to return a
lost object to its owner and thereby do the mitzva of hashavas aveida. Mrs. Schor had communicated with me and
wondered whether these people actually had a halachic obligation to return the
lost objects. The question is an important one since many of us, as Torah-observant
Jews, often encounter an object and wonder whether we should bother ourselves to
bring it home and attempt to find the owner. This article will explore the
parameters of this mitzva, with the hope that it will give some practical
guidance.
We will start by depicting two scenarios.
In each scenario, we will give an A and B version in which one detail is
changed. That detail will change the halacha. Let’s begin:
Scenario 1
A. Moshe has just finished davening
Mincha in his local shul. That shul has multiple minyanim for all tefilos,
along with many shiurim and much
activity throughout the day. He exits into the lobby and finds a used
Timberland wallet. Moshe opens the wallet but does not find any name or identification.
However, he does notice a number of scratches on the wallet, along with a stain
of paint and a broken zipper. The only item inside the wallet is a $20 bill.
B. Moshe finds only the $20 bill lying on
the floor.
Scenario 2
A. Leah stays in school late to make up a
test that she missed. After finishing, she gathers her belongings and starts to
exit the school building. As she walks down the main hallway, she sees a
pocketbook. When she opens it to look for identification, she finds a notebook
with a girl’s name and number. The same name and number is written on a label
on the inside of the pocketbook.
B. Leah finds the same pocketbook, but it
is in the school library nestled next to a shelf of books.
* * *
Let us now look at these scenarios and see
why the halacha differentiates between the A and B versions:
Scenario 1 illustrates the halachic
concept of simanim. A siman is something special and somewhat
unique to the lost item that the owner can use to prove that he/she is the
owner. In the example given in 1A, the money was found inside a wallet.
The owner can potentially identify the wallet. He/she can name the brand, for
example, and/or give identifying marks such as a scratch or stain, and the
like.
Since a wallet is an item that has simanim and can be identified by its
owner, when Moshe finds a wallet, it is a mitzva for him to pick it up and
announce what he found. This announcement and publicizing would take the form
of posting notices in the local shuls, public bulletin boards, and electronic
media. He should merely announce that he found a wallet with money inside,
without giving much description of the wallet. If someone comes forward to
claim the wallet, Moshe would ask him for simanim.
If the claimant gives accurate simanim
that identify the wallet, Moshe is obligated to return it along with the money
that was in it to the claimant.
In Mrs. Schor’s article, she described an
incident that happened to her friend. This friend was making a documentary, and
had forgotten the film for her documentary in a knapsack. In this case, the
film can be identified by a siman, in
which the claimant identifies the images on the film. In addition, the knapsack
also may have a siman. It can be
identified by its brand, marks on it, and other means of a physical
description. For that reason, the taxi driver who returned the knapsack with
the film was following the halachic obligation to return an item with simanim.
In Scenario 1B, we described a situation
where Moshe found just the money itself. Money is not considered to have a siman as, generally, there is no
specific identifying mark on currency. Halacha assumes that when an item does
not have simanim, the owner will give
up hope of retrieving the lost item because there is no way to identify it.
The state of giving up hope is called yi’ush. Once the owner has experienced yi’ush, someone who finds it afterwards
is not obligated to return it and may keep the item for themselves. Therefore,
if the money is found alone and not inside a wallet, there are no simanim. Since there are no simanim, and the item was lost in a
public area where it could not be returned to its owner, we assume that the
owner had yi’ush, and the finder may
keep the item.
There is one major caveat to this,
however. The finder may only keep an item that is lost and does not have simanim if the owner was aware that the
item fell and was lost. If the owner did not realize that the item fell, he/she
is not considered to have yi’ush,
even if the item has no simanim. The
owner must go through the process of consciously realizing that the item was
lost, and then having yi’ush because
the item does not have simanim.
The Gemara (Bava Metzia 21b) explains
that with certain items we can assume that the owner became aware that they
were lost. The Gemara explains that with something valuable, such as money,
a person will generally check to see that they still have the money in their pocket
or place of safekeeping. If it does indeed fall, we assume that the owner
checked for it and found it missing. Because the owner was aware
of the loss and also experienced yi’ush
(because the item did not have simanim)
the finder may keep the money.
In light of the above, Moshe can assume
that the owner realized that he lost the $20 bill in a public area and that he
would have no way of identifying it. Moshe can also assume that the owner
checked for the bill and realized it was lost, and therefore had yi’ush. Moshe is halachically permitted
to keep the bill.
* * *
Now let’s focus on Case 2, in which Leah
found a pocketbook. In Scenario A, the pocketbook had the name and phone
number of the owner. These can definitely serve as simanim, as the owner can identify the item as being hers. The
finder can even initiate returning the object to the owner by calling the
phone number and notifying the owner that her object was found.
The difference between Scenarios A and B
is that, in A, Leah found the pocketbook in the hall, and in B she found the
pocketbook on a shelf in the library. I believe that the reader will
intuitively realize that the pocketbook sitting in the hallway should be picked
up and returned to its owner, while the pocketbook sitting on a shelf should be
left as is. The reason for that is that if it seems that the
owner deliberately left the item in a specific place, it is not considered
an aveida – it is not lost. We can
assume that the owner left it there on purpose and will return for it. Only if
the item seems to have fallen is it considered lost. Therefore, the pocketbook
on the floor should be picked up and returned, and the pocketbook in the
library should be left alone so that the owner can find it where it was left.
We can again go back to the case in Mrs.
Schor’s article, which tells of someone who lost a siddur on a trip to Gibraltar. Even if the siddur itself has no siman,
the name, the contact information for the owner will serve as a siman, For that reason, the man who
returned it was properly doing the mitzva of hashavas aveida by
initiating contact with the owner to return the siddur.
These cases are only a small part of
the halachos of hashavas aveida. There is much more complexity to
these halachos, and a competent rabbinic authority should be consulted for
any questions. We daven to Hashem that he should help us behave with
the appropriate Torah conduct whenever these situations arise.
