If one finds a grocery chain’s shopping cart on the street or near his house and it is close to the store, he should fulfill hashovas aveida and return it to the store. If it is a hassle to do so, he may contact the store to inform them that a cart is in such-and-such location. Then, someone from the store must come pick it up, and the finder is exempt from further efforts.
Cart thieves. At this point, we will again raise the issue (see Issue 220, par. 20) of people who remove shopping carts from store property and use them to transport their purchases to their houses without permission. Then, they do not return the carts with the rationale that they are willing to forgo the five-shekel deposit they put into the cart. In truth, the cost of a cart varies between 300 and 600 shekalim. Hence, these people are actually stealing a large sum and causing great losses to the stores. Even if the carts are returned by some tzaddikim seeking to do the mitzva of hashovas aveida, the thief still violates the issur of flat-out gezeila...
Now that we are approaching Yom Kippur, these people must make a cheshbon hanefesh and fulfill the mitzva of “והשיב את הגזלה ” to be saved from the Yom HaDin, as we daven at the conclusion of Neilah, “למען נחדל מעושק ידינו .” This mitzva is much more important than buying a beautiful esrog for a similar price...
