Buying a book: the benefit of the doubt

Last week I bought a book from the second-hand shelf of my favourite local bookshop; it was a volume of ethical writings by Maimonides, replete with plenty of informative footnotes. 

When I got this tome home, I thumbed through it and spotted a printed label inside the front cover that had hitherto escaped my notice. This label proudly proclaimed that the book was the property of my local synagogue. This institution has quite a popular library of Jewish interest titles. A sign on the wall declares that these books are not to be removed from its premises.

Subsequent enquiry revealed that the synagogue was disposing of a quantity of books that were of little or no current interest to its members and functionaries and that it had passed them over to the bookshop for disposal. It did not however remove its ownership labels from these books before doing so.

My concern was this. If I had been hit by a truck on the way home from making my purchase, anyone who picked the book up off the floor would see the label and assume that I had stolen it. Though I assiduously keep all receipts and had one for this purchase too, the receipt testified only to the fact that payment had been made -- but not to what it was made for, since aged second-hand books such as mine have no barcode and are not identified by the shop's computer system at the point of sale.

Yehoshua ben Perachyah, in Avot 1:6, calls on us to judge our fellow humans favourably. However, commentators through the ages have acknowledged that there are limits. If for example I was a known book thief with a string of convictions for stealing second-hand items of Maimonidean interest, it would strain the average person's credulity to believe that I had not stolen it. Alternative scenarios can of course be scripted. I could perhaps have found the book in the street and was taking it home for safekeeping before returning it to its rightful owners, But would anyone have believed me?

The suspicion of theft does not disappear once the book is safely stored on my bookshelf. Once I have passed on to a better world than this one, my family and the executors of my estate will see the label and I will not be around to explain it away.

So what should I do? To be on the safe side I have decided to leave the label in the book, but to put a note of my own next to it, affirming that I purchased it from the local bookshop and that I have verified that it was put up for the sale by my synagogue, giving the contact details of the relevant synagogue officers who can confirm my story. After all, while I can look forward to being given the benefit of the doubt, others who have not (yet) learned Pirkei Avot may not be so swift to give it to me.