Do not withhold wages from your fellow, and do not rob. (Vayikra 19:13)
Clean Hands
I want to address a topic that the Baalei Mussar used to speak about a lot, due to its great importance, but today you hardly hear it mentioned. This is the topic of gezel, dishonest gain.
When I said I am about to talk about a really important topic, people probably thought to themselves, “Hmm, I wonder what he is going to say.” And when I said I am going to talk about gezel, I imagine that some people probably felt a little insulted. “Oh come on, does he think anyone here is a thief?!”
But the truth is I have permission from Chazal to talk on this topic, because they said:
Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav: The majority of people are guilty of dishonest gain, and the minority of forbidden gender relationships, and nearly all of speech bordering on lashon hara.
So we see that there are a lot people who don’t come completely clean of dishonest gain. It’s hard to believe, it’s hard to understand, but if you walk into a group of people, you can assume that many of them have committed misdeeds in monetary matters. If that’s what Chazal say, it must be so.
Chazal also stated that if a person has a box full of aveiros, the first one to speak up and accuse him in the Heavenly court is gezel.
What does this mean as regards us?
Let’s say a person is trying to figure out why he is not having a lot of success in his life. The first thing he should attribute his lack of success to is dishonest gain, because it is the first to speak up and accuse him in Shamayim.
However, most people, after examining themselves, usually come to the conclusion that their hands are clean. They don’t find impropriety in their financial dealings. “I didn’t steal anything!” they say to themselves.
So why didn’t Chazal see it that way?
It’s all a question of what is considered gezel, and what Chazal had in mind when they spoke about it.
Those who sit in the beis midrash and learn Torah already know that gezel is not just putting your hand into someone else’s pocket and taking out money, or deliberately damaging someone’s property. We wouldn’t even think of doing something like that.
But we live in a material world, we walk around in it, and wherever we go, we encounter other people’s property. For instance, you get on the bus and you realize that you are missing a quarter to pay the fare. You see someone there you know, and you say, “Hey, Yankel, lend me a quarter, I’ll pay you back tomorrow.” And tomorrow, they both completely forget about the quarter.
That’s gezel.
A thousand dapim of Gemara that a person learned could go down a black hole like this. Forgetting a quarter is gezel. It makes a “hole” in a person’s soul.
Gezel is Sticky
Sefer Mesilas Yesharim says an amazing thing about this. It is speaking on the trait of nekiyus, cleanliness:
Even Iyov said about himself: “If my feet have strayed from their course, and my heart followed after my eyes, and something stuck to my hands.”
See how beautiful this metaphor is. It is comparing hidden gezel to something that sticks to a person’s hands. Even if a person did not deliberately go and pick it up, and it just inadvertently got stuck to him, in the end, it is in his hand.
So it is with gezel. Even if a person doesn’t deliberately go and steal something, it is hard for his hands to remain completely empty of gezel.
We know that when we walk down the street we need to guard our eyes, and not just look at anything and everything, because if we don’t guard our eyes, there is a natural tendency to get pulled toward aveiros. This is how Hashem created the world.
The Mesilas Yesharim is telling us that this applies also to guarding our hands. Our hands have a certain invisible “glue” on them, and when we go around in the world, all sorts of things inadvertently get stuck to them. If we don’t pay attention to remove from our hands whatever got stuck on, those things will stay with us, and it is considered gezel, improper gain. This is the nature of the world. It is not something you can argue about. It is natural for things to get stuck to our hands, and the only way to avoid the sin of gezel is to always remove from our hands whatever got on them.
I will tell you a little story.
A few years ago, I was talking with a good yeshiva bachur from a good family. I asked him, “Do you have any debts? Do you owe money to people?”
He said he does. So I asked him, “How much?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
I asked him, “How much to you think it is, approximately?”
He answered, “Every once in a while I buy a soft drink or a snack, and stuff like that, I think I probably owe about eighty shekels.”
I said to him, “Think about it again and really try to remember who you owe money to.”
He thought for a moment, and said, “Oh, I also owe this guy and that guy.”
A few minutes went by, and he realized that he owes approximately 200 shekels. After another few minutes, he already owed 240 shekels...
And this was a good bachur, not a youth at risk or someone from a weak background.
Here’s another example. Someone is cleaning up the house for Pesach and finds a sefer he doesn’t recognize. He tries to remember who it belongs to, but can’t think of the owner. This is simply gezel.
How do I know it is gezel?
Because sometimes I am looking for a sefer of mine, and I don’t find it, and then I try to remember who I lent it to, and I find it hard to forgive him. How many times did I have to buy this sefer?!
We are talking about regular, normative people. They borrow a book, and sometimes they forget. It happens. They borrow a pen from a friend, and forget. It happens. This is what the Mesilas Yesharim is talking about. We have this invisible glue on our hands, our hands are sticky, and things get attached to us all the time.
You are Naturally Forgetful
Why is it this way?
Human beings have a peculiar trait: they forget things. For instance, we all remember that it used to be winter. It was really cold, maybe it was snowing where you live, and people were thinking to themselves, “Oh, I just wish summer would come already. Even if it will be baking hot, it will be such a relief to get away from this freezing weather!”
Then summer comes, and people are wiping the sweat off their brows, and longing for winter. Even if it will be freezing, the main thing is to get away from this oppressive heat and mugginess!
Such is human nature. We don’t remember.
A person can’t understand why his friend forgot to return a sefer to him: What’s the matter with him? Is he okay? Does he think that’s normal behavior or something?! The answer is yes. It’s normal behavior because people are by nature forgetful. People don’t think they will forget, but in the end they do. We don’t think we will forget the Tosfos we just learned, but a few days pass by, and we already forgot it. It’s like we have a hole in our pocket. We simply don’t remember things.
My zeideh would say, “Every Jew in America, unless he is especially careful, will over the course of his life accumulate a ‘little chazir’ in his body.” He was talking about food products with a dubious kashrus status, which in his days many people would consume.
We can apply this idea to our subject. Everyone has items that he takes from others and forgets to return. And this is nothing but gezel. If he never returns them, they will eventually accompany him to the grave.
I tell this to young bachurim: If you get into the habit at your age to avoid gezel as much as possible, you will live happy lives. Because if a person lives carelessly, he will gradually accumulate property that doesn’t belong to him. Five dollars here, five dollars there, and he broke something accidentally, etc etc. It all adds up, and he doesn’t remember that it ever happened. Years go by, and in the end, a person comes to Olam Ha’emes with a giant bag of stolen property.
This is really something to think about. The Vilna Gaon is quoted as saying that if a house has one stolen nail in it, good children won’t come from this home.
Gezel is not something to treat lightly. We know that even Yom Kippur will not atone for gezel until the person returns the misappropriated property. I think this is one of the reasons why people aren’t successful in their lives. It’s because they are holding things that don’t belong to them.
As we said, it’s all a matter of habit. Just like we need to watch over what our eyes see and our minds think about, so we need to watch over our hands. Let’s say you go into the corner grocery and accidentally break something. Go and pay for it right away.
Fix It Up
Some of the people sitting here and listening to this lecture are thinking to themselves, “Yeah, okay, it’s a nice lecture. That’s a good idea....” There is a bachur who felt a little prick in his heart. And the subject poked a hole in the heart of someone else. He feels pangs of conscience. He anxiously thinks to himself, “What am I gonna do? I mamash forgot a bunch of things like this, and now I want to make good, I want to get this stuff off my hands. But how am I going to find all the things I once borrowed from people, and remember sums of money I was lent but forgot all about?!”
Good question. What can a person actually do to rectify the sin of gezel?
First of all, it is a general problem in avodas Hashem that if we focus on the problems, it makes us feel down. And if we feel down, we don’t want to think about it anymore. And if we don’t think about it, we just keep on doing the same thing, without solving the problem.
I want to tell you something. Most of you probably know this already, but for those who don’t, this is something you need to know.
There is a story about R. Zelmeleh from Volozhin. Apparently, he was still a child at the time of the story, or perhaps a young bachur.
He was among the outstanding talmidim of the Vilna Gaon. They say he didn’t belong to the generation in which he was born. He was compared to a meteor that passes over a certain place and sheds a glow from high up. R. Zelmeleh was from a different generation. He was a tremendous gaon, a unique personality. His hasmadah and breadth of knowledge were out of this world.
So the story is that R. Zelmeleh was once sitting in the beis midrash, and someone came over and spoke to him in learning, and while they were talking, R. Zelmeleh said some word that the other person took offense to.
Afterward, R. Zelmeleh thought to himself, “Oh no, I insulted someone!” He went to look for the person, he looked and looked, but couldn’t find him. He was so pained over this incident that he fell ill.
His family saw that he was in a terrible situation and they tried to find a solution to ease his mind.
Someone came along and said, “I have an idea.” He dressed up like the person who got insulted, and came to R. Zelmeleh. But R. Zelmeleh started crying, and said to him, “I know you aren’t that person, I want to find that person, so he will forgive me!”
His family went to the Vilna Gaon and told him the story. He opened up Sefer Chovos Halevavos and started reading to them:
If a person did some sin that is hard to rectify in the way of repentance specific for it... he should accept upon himself to fulfill all the requirements and conditions of repentance that he has the strength and ability to perform. Then the Creator will treat his repentance leniently, and let him go regarding everything he doesn’t know and is out of his control. The Creator will place an exit from his sin in front of him, and provide excuses for him....
If he wronged his fellow physically or financially, the Creator will put love and goodwill in that person’s heart, bringing him to forgive the sinner for what he did to him, as it says: “If Hashem is pleased with a person’s ways, even his enemies will make peace with him.”
So we see that there is a way out even for sins such as these. We need not despair over it, but we should give some thought to it.
Treating other people’s property with proper care is a point we need to work on. You could keep a little notebook in which you jot down things you borrow and loans you take. After eight months, take out the notebook and you might see things you totally forgot about.
Although hard at the beginning, if you get used to living this way you will save yourself from a lot of aveiros, and you will attain happiness.
We all want to achieve things, we want to uplift ourselves, and David Hamelech asked a very relevant question:
Who will ascend the mountain of Hashem, and who will rise up to His place of holiness?
David Hamelech also answered the question: He who is clean of hands and pure of heart.
The first condition is to have clean hands. To check all the time if money or property that doesn’t belong to us got stuck to our hands somehow or another.
Having clean hands is one of highest and most beautiful of madreigos. Such a person is invited to ascend Hashem’s mountain and stand in His holy place.
