In September 2013, Rabbi Noach Muroff, a 28-year-old rebbi, found a secondhand desk for sale online for $150. When he brought it home, it was too big to fit through the door of his study, so he took it apart. Behind a drawer, he found a plastic bag containing a wad of $100 bills—$98,000 in all. The Muroffs knew it must belong to the previous owner, a non-Jewish woman named Patty. She had mentioned that she had assembled the desk herself.
Reb Noach picked up the phone and called Patty. She was shocked that someone would be honest enough to return so much money.
“That was my inheritance from my parents,” she said. “I was too overwhelmed to deal with it and I put it in the desk. When I took some out, some of it must have fallen behind the drawer. I’ve been looking all over.”
The next day, the entire Muroff family—parents and all four kids—drove to Patty’s house to return the money. Deeply moved, she gave them a reward, and a card expressing gratitude. “I do not think there are too many people in the world that would have done what you did,” she wrote.
Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky advised the Muroffs to publicize the story. They were inundated with phone calls and interview requests from national networks and talk shows. The story had a major impact.
Rav Kamenetsky explained that since every negative story involving a religious Jew receives widespread coverage, it is important to pursue similar coverage for a positive event.
Reproduced from Living Kiddush Hashem by Rabbi Shraga Freedman with permission of the copyright holders, ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications, Ltd.
