Q: I own a store and among my customers is a fellow who has “sticky fingers.” On occasion, he comes into my store with periodicals, and I have strong reason to believe that he did not pay for them and has no intention of doing so. When he finishes reading them, he leaves them in my store. I have asked him numerous times to stop doing this, but my requests have fallen on deaf ears. My question is: May I read those periodicals without paying for them?
A: If you know from which store he steals the periodicals, it is obvious that you are obligated to return them. Even though you were not the thief, you still have a mitzvah of hashavas aveidah (returning a lost object). In addition, the halachah is that if you know that an item is stolen but you don’t know from whom, you are not allowed to buy it, because you are aiding someone in doing an aveirah; if he does not have a customer for his stolen items, he will have no motivation to continue stealing. The only time you are allowed to buy a stolen item is to return it to its owner, who is obligated to pay you back for it (Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 356:1-2 & 369:1).
Your query is only relevant, then, if you do not know from whom the periodicals were stolen and you have no way of determining that — and you do not compensate the thief for the periodicals, because if you do, you are encouraging him to continue stealing them. The question is, since you have no way to return them, may you read them?
The halachah is that if someone finds a lost object before yiush (when the owner despairs of finding it), and he cannot find its owner, the object must be left sitting until Eliyahu Hanavi arrives and reveals whose it is (Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 267:15).
Some Poskim say that if there was yiush shelo m’daas (the owner was not aware that it was missing, so he did not know to despair, but had he known, he would have despaired) the finder may use the lost object (Shach 260:26, following the opinion of the Rambam; other Poskim write that one should act stringently and not use the object — see Shulchan Aruch HaRav, Metzia 2).
We might think that your case is comparable to yiush shelo m’daas, because had the store owner known that the periodicals were stolen, he would likely have despaired of recovering them. Furthermore, your reading them would be a case of zeh ne’heneh vezo lo chaseir (the store owner is not losing anything from your enjoying the periodicals).
In truth, however, your case is not comparable to yiush shelo m’daas, because that applies to lost objects — not to stolen objects. The halachah is that a person — even a different person who did not steal the object — is not permitted to derive benefit from it, even after yiush. (C. M. 369:2).
If the thief sold the object after yiush, the combination of change of ownership and yiush effectively makes the object permissible for use, because the buyer was not transgressing any prohibition when he bought it if he did not know that it was stolen, which makes it comparable to finding an object after yiush (Rema ibid.).
In your case, however, there was no yiush, because the owners of the stores from which the thief stole the periodicals don’t know that he’d stolen them, and you also may not make a kinyan once you are aware that it is stolen, because one may not acquire an object that is an issur hana’ah (something from which we may not derive benefit) (Shulchan Aruch HaRav, Gezeilah 11). Furthermore, when it comes to theft, you may not derive a benefit that the owner generally doesn’t mind your deriving, because it is inappropriate to benefit from stolen goods (see Tosafos, Bava Kamma 113a, s.v. Ein, and Imrei Yaakov p. 115).
This issur hana’ah only applies, however, if you know for a fact that the periodicals were stolen, or there is a strong reason to believe that they are stolen. If there is a chance that they might rightly belong to the person you suspect is a thief, you are permitted to derive benefit from them (see Shulchan Aruch 369:3, with Sma 5 and Taz, as well as Shulchan Aruch HaRav, Gezeilah 20).
One more note: If someone finds an object, or an object was placed into his care (a pikadon), and it is getting ruined, the mitzvah of hashavas aveidah dictates that he should sell it in order to preserve the owner’s money (see Shulchan Aruch 292:17). Because in your case the periodicals will become outdated and worthless after a number of days, if you were planning to buy your own copies anyway, perhaps the best thing is for you to put their monetary value aside, to be returned to the owners when Eliyahu Hanavi identifies them; you may then keep them for yourself.
