Keep the donkey, not the jewel!

There’s an anonymous Mishnah at Avot 5:13 that says a lot about our attitude towards property.

אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בָּאָדָם: הָאוֹמֵר שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, זוֹ מִדָּה בֵינוֹנִית, וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים זוֹ מִדַּת סְדוֹם.

שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי, עַם הָאָֽרֶץ.

שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלָּךְ וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלָּךְ, חָסִיד.

שֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי, רָשָׁע

There are four types of people: One who says: "What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours" — this is a neutral quality; others say that this is characteristic of Sodom.

One who says: "What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine" is a boor. 

One who says, "What is mine is yours and what is yours is yours" is a chasid (i.e. a really good and kind sort person).

And one who says: "What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine" is wicked.

Merely okay, or something better?

A midrash (Devarim Rabbah on Ekev, 3:3; Yalkut Shimoni on Mishlei, 947) tells a story of Shimon ben Shetach that is usually a little embellished in the telling. The Wikipedia version, slightly edited, reads like this:

Shimon ben Shetach … lived in humble circumstances, supporting himself and his family by conducting a small business in linen goods. Once his pupils presented him with a donkey which they had purchased from a gentile merchant. Using the legal formula prescribed by the Talmud, they said "When we pay you, this donkey and everything on it is ours." After receiving the gift, Shimon removed the saddle and discovered a costly jewel. The students joyously told their master that he might now cease toiling since the proceeds from the jewel would make him wealthy—the legal formula of the sale meant that the jewel was now his property. Shimon, however, replied that even though the letter of the law said they were right, it was clear that the seller had no intention of selling the jewel along with the animal. Shimon returned the gem to the merchant, who exclaimed, "Praised be the God of Shimon ben Shetach!"

[Incidentally, in the two versions of the midrash cited above, the contract is made not by the talmidim but Shimon ben Shetach himself, and there is no mention of the use of any Talmud-prescribed formula. Moreover, the term ‘gentile merchant’ is not used.  The seller is described simply as an Ishmaelite, i.e. an Arab. Another version of this tale is found in Talmud Yerushalmi, Bava Metzia, halachah 5, daf 8a. There the students of Shimon ben Shetach buy the donkey for him so that he will no longer have to earn his living by selling flax. In all three versions cited here, the jewel is not found under the saddle but is tied to the donkey’s neck].

What does this story have to do with our mishnah? Quite a bit, since we have to ask whose jewel is the rabbi giving the merchant—his own or the merchant’s? If the former, he is giving away what he owns and is therefore a chasid. If the latter, he is returning it to its rightful master and only qualifies for being an average sort of person at best.

The addition of the story that the talmidim bought the donkey with the stipulation that its owner passes title to “the donkey and everything on it” provides a reason for letting us say that, since the jewel would then be gifted to Shimon ben Shetach and therefore belonged to him, by gifting it to the merchant he was being a chasid. However, there is a simpler way to achieve the same objective. Where a person who parts with an object that belongs to him loses hope of recovering it, this abandonment of hope (yi’ush) effectively renders that item ownerless—and thus capable of being acquired by the next person who comes to possess it.  On this basis the rabbi, on acquiring the jewel through yi’ush and then returning it to the merchant, would qualify under our mishnah as a chasid.

Is it wrong to be average?

What is so bad about just being regarded as an average, neutral sort of person, neither favouring oneself over others nor promoting their interests at one’s own expense? One answer is that, even if you are neither a tzaddik nor a rasha, and indeed treat others as you would yourself, this neutrality does not foster the positive value of love between fellow human beings (“Love your neighbour as yourself”: Leviticus 19:18) that lies at the very core of the Torah.

Another reason to prefer to be a chasid is that neutrality is actually a form of fatalism: a person can believe in God but still say: “Everything that happens in this world is the way God wants it. He created the mazal for each of us; our fate is in the stars. If God wanted anyone else to have my money/house/car He would have given it to them in the first place.” This attitude, which reflects a view of a static world in which it is impermissible for any individual to affect the material wellbeing of another, is unacceptable in terms of Jewish thought. One might have thought that the litmus test of a person’s human quality is not what he thinks but what he does and that a bad attitude, in and of itself, is not as important as how a person acts. The mishnah therefore comes to tell us otherwise: in this case anyone who has this attitude to life is not merely misguided: he is evil, a rasha.

Yi’ush: abandoning hope

The Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel Wisser, in Artzot HaShalom) posits another scenario that brings this Mishnah into the context of yi’ush. Take the case of Reuven and Shimon who are travelling together, each with their own goods.  A thief comes along and steals the property of them both. Shimon abandons hope of ever recovering his property; Reuven however perseveres and later recovers both his and Shimon’s goods. As a matter of halachah, Reuven doesn’t just get his own stuff back. He is now also the rightful owner of the goods that used to belong to the despairing Shimon. If he returns the stolen items to Shimon, this is an example of “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours” in a positive sense. But, explains the Malbim, if Shimon seizes his former property back by force on the basis of “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours”, even though he has said exactly the same thing as Reuven, he has demonstrated the middah of Sodom.

 An obvious question here is why voluntarily giving the recovered property back to its original owner is only a middle-of-the-road middah and not regarded as an act of chesed. The answer suggested by R’ David Sperber (Michtam leDavid al Masechet Avot) is that Reuven only returned the goods to Shimon after the latter contemplated litigation and had approached a Bet Din with a view to instituting legal proceedings.

 There’s a further twist to the question of yi’ush.  Let us say that the Ishmaelite donkey vendor had totally lost hope of recovering his precious jewel. Overjoyed at receiving it back against all odds, he utters the words "Praised be the God of Shimon ben Shetach!" and we all rejoice in the kiddush Hashem: the jewel that by law belonged to the rabbi is returned to its original owner, and both are happy.  Now, if at any later stage in his life the donkey seller loses another jewel, particularly if he does so in an area in which there is a Jewish population, he will recall that his previously lost jewel was returned by a righteous Jew and he will likely continue to nurture the hope that another worshipper of the same God will come across it and return it to him. There will be no yi’ush and, if any Jew does return it, he will only fall within the category of “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours”.  He will not be a chasid but an ordinary, unexceptional citizen.

 What about the students?

 There still remains the problem of the talmidim of Shimon ben Shetach. I am surprised that, if they knew our mishnah at Avot 5:13, they should have been so keen for their teacher to retain the jewel, sell it and live off its proceeds. He was after all a man whose attitude towards material wealth and well-being must surely have been familiar to them.

 Midrash does not name these students and it is likely that, given the difficult conditions under which Torah was studied during his lifetime, he may not have had many. We do however know that two talmidim he shared with Yehudah ben Tabbai went on to became the Nasi and Av Bet Din in their place: they were popular and outstanding personalities, Shemayah and Avtalyon, and there is nothing to connect them with this midrash.

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