In between instructing us regarding Kosher food and forbidden relationships, Hashem, in our reading this week, gives us a more general instruction: “According to the behavior of the land of Egypt, in which you dwelled, you shall not do, and like the behavior of the land of Cana’an, to which I am bringing you, you shall not do, and in their statutes you shall not go. My judgments you will do, and My statutes you will guard to go in them, I am Hashem your G-d” [Lev. 18:3-4]
Rashi explains to us the difference between judgments and statutes. Judgments, he says, are set in the Torah, but had they not been said it would have been appropriate to state them. In other words, these are practical laws for interpersonal relations, without which a society cannot function. There must be basic rules such as not murdering or stealing, and consequences for those who violate them, but also rules on how to effect the sale of land or goods, and how to assess damage from accidental harm. All of these are things that any culture must have.
Statutes, on the other hand, are things that the negative voice within us questions their purpose, and which other people might criticize: not eating pork, or combining wool and linen in clothing, or undergoing purification before entering the Holy Temple. And here it says “I am Hashem,” My decree is upon you, and you are not permitted to exempt yourself. This is what Rashi tells us.
One might think, though, that it is the statutes we must follow at Hashem’s command. Indeed, when it comes to financial laws there are a host of situations where we follow the laws of the country in which we live. So we might think that the obligation to follow Hashem is limited to the statutes, but with regards to the other laws one might think it acceptable to not pay attention to the Torah’s rules.
This is where the verse tells us specifically: “My judgments you will do.” There is no difference. In every area, a Jew is called upon to live by a different standard.
It is common practice in Jewish boy’s schools to begin Talmud study in the fifth or sixth grade. And it is similarly common to begin with a particular chapter in a tractate about property ownership, that addresses objects one might find that someone has lost. A group of rabbis once went to the leading scholar of the time, Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l, to ask if it might be better to begin with something in the laws of blessings, something a child encounters every day, which would show the child that his learning has practical application.
The rabbi told them that it was critical, to the contrary, to retain the common practice. He explained that a child should never imagine that his learning is about what blessings he says and how he prays, but not how he conducts his affairs.
How, indeed, do you respond when you find a lost object? The Torah, meaning the oral instructions first recorded in the Talmud, tells us in that chapter that it depends if the owner can identify the lost property in a way that others could not. A found $20 could be from anyone, but a bag with 20 silver dollars would be unique. So in the first case the finder can keep the money, but in the second should say that he found “money” and wait for the owner to authenticate that the bag is his by describing its contents.
What do other children learn in their formative years? “Finders keepers, losers weepers!” That is not actually true, legally—if one finds an object like a wallet, American law (at least) obligates the finder to attempt to return it. But this is a law sometimes honored in the breach.
Periodically, we see a news story that actually says something nice about Jews (this alone is newsworthy in itself). Often, it is a story about someone who went out of his or her way to return a lost object, such as when Rabbi Noah Muroff bought a desk on eBay, disassembled it to get it through his office door, and discovered a bag with $98,000 tucked behind the drawers. Or the Chassid in Israel who discovered over 100,000 Shekels at a bus stop, and waited over an hour for the frantic owner to reappear.
Anyone could have kept the money, as neither owner could have proven that the money was theirs, or, in the first case, had she ever recalled that she had placed that money in the desk in the first place. But “My judgments you will do,” and the principle that the Torah taught them regarding the property of others, required that they respond to a higher standard.
Photo Credit: Esther Muroff
