This week, we continue with translating the Chofetz Chaim’s Sefer entitled, “Sefas Tamim.”
Sefas Tamim, from which our foundation takes its name, focuses on the importance of honesty in word and in deed.
“Intrinsic to the sin (of theft) is the power to incite the Attribute of Strict Justice against this person and to irrevocably seal the verdict against him, and more so than any other sin. This concept is taught in Gemara Sanhedrin (108a) ‘Rabbi Yochanan said - come and see just how powerful is the sin of theft / cheating. The generation of the flood violated every imaginable sin, yet their verdict was not sealed until they opened their hands to theft, until theft became ubiquitous, as the Torah states, Bereishis (6:13) - the end of everything living in the world appears before Me, etc.’
And this is one of the reasons why nowadays the wealth of Jews is consumed, and why their wealth will only remain with them for a short period of time. This is because, in our very many sins, theft and cheating / extortion has proliferated throughout the world by men who go into the secular courts and inform them on their fellow Jews and extract their money, confident in their belief that this is money is legitimately theirs, since it was awarded to them by the courts. However, this is absolute theft, since the statutes and laws of the Torah, which are the will of Hakadosh Baruch Hu are not in agreement with this.
Therefore, as long as this person knows that from the perspective of the Torah, the truth is not on his side, but that he can be awarded a monetary verdict by informing against his fellow Jew in the Gentile court system, he should run away from such money, as one would flee from a raging fire, because it will entirely consume his money that was legitimately earned in the past, as we have written previously.”
