My name is Naor Cohen, and I live in Elad. A few years ago, I was walking toward the bus stop near my home, when I suddenly found a wad of blue bills on the ground, gathered together in a rubber band. I picked it up and saw that all the bills were 200-shekel bills, and they added up to 5,000 shekels all together – a very nice sum of money. At the time, I had not learned the halachos of hashavas aveidah, and I thought that maybe a kosher find had come my way.
Ideas about what to do with the sum of money went through my mind. I knew that if you find money it is permissible to take it, but here I was not sure about it. I called a rav, who told me that I was supposed to announce the find, since the money had an identifying sign – it was bound in a rubber band, and the one who lost it could identify it using the sign and telling me the amount of money.
I wrote up signs, posted them in the area, and went on with my day.
When I returned, I came across a Yid coming out of my building, and once inside my house I learned that this was the Yid who had lost the money. “He is so happy that the loss was returned to him,” my wife related, “that he counted the money, saw that everything was there, and left me 200 shekels.”
I thanked Hashem that I was zocheh to do the mitzvah of hashavas aveidah and to withstand the nisayon. After several days, a friend called and said he had something for me, and he asked me to come to him. I came over to him, curious, and he gave me a check made out to Naor Cohen for the sum of 5000 shekels.
I saw tangibly how, if Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to give someone a sum of money, it will come to him. There’s no need for anyone to be lured to take forbidden money. He will gain nothing from it, because what is coming to him – will come. I had held back from taking forbidden money, and the exact same sum came to me in a permissible way.
