Living with Honesty: Based on the Teachings of Harav Yisroel Belsky, zt”l, by Rabbi Moishe Dovid Lebovits and Akiva Lane (Israel Bookshop Publications 2017) is a collection of sheilas on the topic of honesty that Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, zt”l, answered during his lifetime. The approximately 500 questions and answers were compiled into book form by his talmidim. They concern everyday occurrences of modern life, such as jaywalking, aggressive driving, tipping service people, reserving domain names on the internet, and returning airport luggage carts. Just skimming through the vast variety of questions is interesting. It shows how Torah values apply to all arenas of life and are not simply relegated to theoretical learning. Another interesting point that emerges from the randomly chosen questions below is that not everything is necessarily wrong. Sometimes it is acceptable to do something that might not seem to be a hundred percent honest, because it is what is customary and expected.
The following are a few questions and answers chosen from the book, with permission of the authors.
Q: If a person expects to be involved in something that might take up lots of time at work, such as buying and selling a house, what is the correct procedure for making sure that he doesn’t exceed what is permitted? Even if it is a less time-consuming activity, such as buying a car or computer, is it necessary to inform one’s boss?
A: Everyone is allowed to spend a little time on personal things. People have a tendency to do more than what they really ought to be doing and border on doing what they shouldn’t be doing. If it’s going to take an hour a day to buy and sell a house, it’s time taken away from your employer. The best thing to do is to ask if it’s possible to use that hour and to make up for it by staying later. Five, 10, or 15 minutes a day, I suppose, could be considered “within reason.” As a rule of thumb, a person should try to make up for lost time for anything that takes more than 15 minutes.
Q: Let’s say a boy knows that his father is often late. If he depends on his father to get to an evening class on time, and he wants to be sure to get there on time, can he tell his father that it starts earlier than it really does?
A: I think the answer is yes. The boy knows that if he tells his father that the class starts at 7:10, he will never get there on time. So, he can tell his father that the class starts at 7:00 because in his father’s mind 7:00 means 7:10.
It seems from the Gemara though, that there may be a problem. It says in the Gemara that Rav had a wife who was very tough. Rav used to eat two kinds of foods, beans and lentils. When he asked his wife for lentils, she gave him beans; when he asked for beans, she gave him lentils. She always did the opposite of what he asked for, just to cause him grief. Perhaps this was because it was a distinguished household, where guests always came and went, and Rav and his wife were always busy, with a million things to do. Whatever the cause, that’s what Chazal tell us.
The Gemara goes on to say that, after many years, Rav said to his son, “Go into the kitchen and bring some lentils.” So, the son went to his mother and said, “My father wants beans.” She made lentils and gave it to him. So Rav said, “Look, the might of the son is greater than the might of the father. You were able to do what I wasn’t successful at doing for the last 20 years.” So the son said, “No I’ll tell you the truth, I asked for beans so that she would give you lentils.”
Rav said, “You shouldn’t do that. It says “Limdu leshonam daber sheker, if you tell a lie, you end up becoming a liar.”
Here, however it’s different. There are two different time zones here. If a person in Israel tells you the time is 12:30 a.m., you have to adjust and subtract seven hours. It is really 5:30 p.m. here. The same thing applies to this case. When the father is told that the class begins at 7:10, in his mind he could be thinking that he has to leave the house at 7:10. So by his son saying that class starts at 7:00, his father will think, “I should leave the house at 7:00,” and then the son will get to the class on time at 7:10. There may be some other time warp here, with the same result – that is, saying 7:00 produces a 7:10 effect in the other person’s mind. But be careful. There may be a risk that the son is violating the trust of his father.
Q: I often argue with people about the ethics of downloading music files from the internet. I say that downloading songs or copying your own songs to give to someone else, without a copyright owner’s permission or not compensating the owner, is stealing. What do you say about this?
A: Harav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, said that it’s not permitted to copy any item that is being sold by the creator of that item. Every time you copy it, you’re taking away sales from him. Anyone who downloads it, copies it, or does something else is turning someone else’s money into ashes. And that’s really the bottom line. It’s taking something from someone else.
This is one of the areas where people say, “Everyone does it, and it really should be muttar (permitted). People copy tapes and download them from the internet. Everything becomes “public domain.” There’s nothing private. People just download tapes and copy them and they’ll wipe the owner out. But even if everyone does it, it’s wrong. You’re taking away something from someone, and you’re harming him.
Sometimes people object to this argument and say, “Well, in that case, I’m probably not even allowed to copy down a piece of Torah that I heard.” But that’s not true. The Shach says, “There’s no stealing when it comes to Torah,” that is, if you copy it down for yourself.
The guideline here is whether or not what you’re doing is taking away a sale from the owner. One might say, “Oh, I would never have bought that anyway.” But in fact, you shouldn’t say that. You do like it… and you would have bought it.
However, if you buy one CD and make a copy for yourself so that you can have one in the car and one at home, that kind of copying is permitted. No one buys two of something for such a purpose, so copying the merchandise in this case doesn’t take the place of a sale. If you told a person who wanted one copy for the house one for the car then he had to buy two, he wouldn’t buy two; he would figure out a way to carry it back and forth each time. Since buying two copies for such a purpose is never done, making a copy for yourself for two locations is not taking away a sale.
Q: I want to contribute my old car to a charity, and the charity says that they will write me a receipt for tax deduction purposes for the full book value of the car. There are some major things wrong with the car that make its actual value less. Is there a problem in using this receipt on my taxes?
A: I don’t think this is a problem, because this is the standard the government uses. The government’s rules are that you should use the book value of the car, and all you are doing is following the rules specified by the government.
Q: At my company’s kitchen, I wanted to wash for bread but didn’t have a cup. There was a coffee mug there, but I had no idea whom it belonged to. Can I use it to wash for bread? Even though I will dry out the cup after using it, isn’t there a possibility that the owner of the cup could come by while I’m using it and ask why I’m using his cup? It that a potential chilul Hashem?
A: It is remarkable that you ask that, because I was at a company a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to wash for bread. I asked if they had a cup. They took me into the kitchen, and there were a lot of cups. They said, “Take one, nobody minds.” I said, “You’re sure nobody minds?” So they said, “Yes, nobody minds when people use each others cups.” I was standing there, just sort of not doing anything, so the person said, “Here, I’ll give you my cup.”
There are some people who might be concerned about others using their cup. These cups are ceramic, and if they drop, they chip. But generally speaking, I would say that there’s very little chance of chilul Hashem, very little chance of the owner of the cup being concerned.
The Gemara says that it’s not prohibited to use things that people are mevater on, objects whose owners tend not to care if they are being used by someone else. But you should try to look for a way around it anyway. I felt very uncomfortable using any of the other cups. So you should try to find an alternative but if you don’t find one, then certainly you can follow the heter to use it.
