Losing Finding Hoping
Losing, Finding, Hoping Ki Teitzei 5775
Rabbi Keren Gorban
About ten years ago I lost a camera. I was on a bus from New York to Boston after spending New Year’s with a group of friends, and the camera must have fallen out of my
bag. I didn’t notice until a few days later when I wanted to upload my pictures to Facebook and couldn’t find my camera. So I called the bus station in Boston, and I called the bus station in New York. And I called the bus company’s office in Boston and the one in New York, and I even called the bus company’s headquarters. Nothing. My camera, with all its pictures, had disappeared. Or, more likely, someone found it and appropriated it. After all, finders keepers, losers weepers.
In our Torah portion this week, Ki Teitzei, we find out that Jewish tradition does not like that idea of finders keepers, losers weepers—that’s called stealing. Even just letting the losers weep while they search for their belongings is still a transgression. In fact, the Torah demands the exact opposite—it says explicitly that if you come across lost property, you may not ignore it, you have to return it. On top of that, if the owner cannot be found, the finder has to keep the lost property safe until the owner comes looking. Now, it’s one thing to hold on to a lost shirt or cloak, but quite another to keep a lost cow or sheep or donkey until the owner comes to claim it. Animals require a lot of work!
And what if the owner never comes back to claim their stuff?
The rabbis of the Mishnah recognized that returning lost property is a tricky business. Not everyone who loses something is going to take the time and effort to find it again. And there are some things that are so common and so commonly lost that a finder wouldn’t even be able to identify the rightful owner if the owner came looking.
As an example, how many of you have ever lost a cheap pen or a pencil? Did you go looking for it?
And how many of you have ever found a cheap pen or a pencil? If someone came to you looking for a lost pen or pencil, would you have known without a doubt that it was that person’s?
Despite a few yeses, the common answer to both questions is no—the loser doesn’t go looking, the finder can’t be sure of the owner. So the rabbis of the Mishnah decided that there are certain lost objects that a finder can keep, knowing that the owner will never really bother to stake a claim to them. And when the owner gives up hope of reclaiming their property, the lost object becomes ownerless and the finder can legitimately keep it.
But then the rabbis of the Gemara come along. And they hear the few of you who said yes to either or both questions—you want your pen back, even if it is cheap and looks exactly like everyone else’s pen. And if you want your cheap pen back, surely you would want your hat back or your cash or your camera. It’s still yours, even though you’ve lost it, so anyone who takes it is stealing. And since taking something that belongs to someone else is stealing—one of the top things you shouldn’t do—the rabbis of the Gemara are very hesitant to let finders be keepers.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that few people actually fully give up hope of finding their lost property, no matter how slim the chance that it will ever be returned. In one of my rabbinical school classes we discussed things we had lost that we still wanted back. One of my classmates lost a teddy bear on a plane when she was little. Twenty-five or so years later and with no need whatsoever for this teddy bear, she still wants it back. Another classmate mentioned a video game that he lost nearly twenty years ago. Our professor talked about a suitcase he had lost more than thirty years ago. And I still want my camera back.
We all assume that we will never get our property back, but we still hope that it will show up. And that hope is so important that the rabbis of the Talmud were unwilling to let the practical reality of returning and finding lost property quash that hope.
This time in the Jewish calendar, the seven weeks leading up to Rosh HaShanah (this is week 5), is a season of hope. As we move closer and closer to Rosh HaShanah, we’re supposed to spend more and more time reflecting on the past year. We remember the positives of the past year and hope that the coming year will be a good one, filled with success, opportunities to celebrate, and simple pleasures. But we also remember the disappointments—mistakes made, opportunities lost, actions and words we regret. These disappointments, these transgressions, are the ways we lost sight of who we are, of who we want to be. Keeping track of these various transgressions helps us stay focused on the work we need to do to be our best, to be the truest versions of ourselves. It keeps us hopeful that, next time, we’ll do better.
Our tradition gives us a way to return when we’ve lost our way—t’shuvah.
T’shuvah—which, by the way, comes from the same Hebrew root as the word the Torah uses for returning lost property—is an active process; it doesn’t happen just because we have the ability to be better. Real t’shuvah is about finding who we are at our core. At the beginning of the service we sang the words “return to who you are, return to what you are, return to where you are born and reborn.” Who are you? What are the building blocks that come together to form you? And how have you strayed from that?
And where do you have to go to find yourself again?
Each of us has to do some course-correcting on a regular basis. For some of us, the course corrections are minor, and we can return relatively easily. Others of us have gone further astray, and return is more difficult. But the journey back to ourselves begins with the hope that we can find our path again, that we can find what we have lost. And if we still hope that we’ll find our cameras or teddy bears or suitcases, then certainly we should hope that we can find ourselves.
May this season of hope be a season of finding and returning.
