Finders, Keepers, Losers, Weepers

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

Can you keep a found object? “Finders keepers, losers weepers,” right? Not according to the Talmud. It all depends on the degree of hope involved. That’s why a small section of the Talmud called Bava Metzia deals with the maintenance or loss of hope when inanimate things, like the loss of property, are concerned. The Talmud teaches that someone who finds a lost object can keep it only when the owner has given up all hope of recovery, when the owner has abandoned hope and made it ownerless. This is called ye’ush shelo medat.[1]

Then the Talmud raises another question: In what circumstances and at what point, does one abandon hope? At what point does one despair of retrieving lost property? And a further question is raised: Can one abandon hope without knowing it? Or can the finder act as if this has occurred and thus treat the object as ownerless?

And even further, can ye’ush be retroactive? What? In other words, even if we were unaware of the loss of property at the time it happened– if we had known facts that were revealed only later – could it be treated as if we would have given up hope at the time the property was lost. Finally, after much discussion, the rabbis of old decided that retroactive ye’ush did not exist! Of course, it wouldn’t be the Talmud if everyone agreed!

Let me share with you a true story, about something that happened to me, personal property that was lost. Like some rabbinic aggadot (non-halakhic narratives) that may go back two millennia, my story below,  makes its point in a rambling, round-about, humorous way. You won’t know where the story is going until it gets there!

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It was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. After I finished stuffing a turkey for a holiday celebration and, with a sigh of satisfaction, had put it in the oven for about twenty minutes per pound at 400 degrees Farenheit, and with a nicely folded foil tent over it, I began to tidy up the kitchen. That was when I noticed that my beautiful, emerald-cut diamond was missing from the ring that had marked my engagement, a ring, that, together with my matching wedding band, I never, ever took off. I had been wearing it for many years. The engagement ring was still on my finger all right, but there was a big, gaping hole in the center, where four prongs had formerly held the lovely gem.

My diamond was lost! No, I did not enter into a state of ye’ush  (resigned loss of hope), not at the beginning. I still hoped; no way would I abandon hope. I searched all over the kitchen, in every nook and cranny of the floor, the counters, for my diamond. Not too easy to find a clear diamond on a white tile floor or white counters (white, European kitchens were in vogue then), but … no diamond! I searched and washed all the dishes in the sink. Nothing had been put in the dishwasher yet, so maybe …  no, no diamond. “Oh no,” I cried. “The turkey!”

Releasing a keening sound of something that was not yet resignation, that still had a note of hope in it, I removed the turkey from the oven, and, bit by bit, removed what would have been a delicious stuffing from the turkey, examined it with a magnifying glass, kneaded each morsel carefully between my fingers. No diamond was to be found. Next, as I peered into the now empty cavity of that turkey and poked and prodded its insides (fortunately it had been deceased for some time), the sinews glistened back at me as if they were laughing. After all, the turkey had been cooking in a pre-heated oven for twenty minutes. It dripped a little here and there.

It was at this point that I began to cry. I entered a state of resignation, a state of ye’ush, but I did have the presence of mind to report the loss to the insurance company. “My diamond is gone,” I sobbed. At least some of the economic value, if not the sentimental value, was recoverable. And it did not take too much effort to report an insured loss. Now, if I had known at the time the loss occurred that the diamond could not be found, that the loss was irrevocable despite all my effort, would I have entered a state of retroactive ye’ush immediately – that is ye’ush without knowing it, ye’ush shelo medat? It would have saved me a lot of searching time!

However, my story is not finished. When I finally served the turkey to my guests at a beautifully laid table that night, there it was, my diamond, floating in the gravy, as several of my guests pointed to it with astonishment. Thank goodness nobody had swallowed it! And yes, the diamond was undamaged. Diamonds, as you probably know, can survive high heat.

Yes, I had abandoned hope prematurely when I called the insurance company! Can we ever know, I reflect now, the precise time at which hope should be abandoned? Is there a time when we should give up hope and say, “Move on now! Collect the insurance money! Forget the sentimental value! Replace the diamond!”

But that is not the end of the story. Some years later, my diamond ring, this same diamond ring was stolen. A thief, a ganaf, broke into my house by stealth and stole all my jewelry, including this ring. And, oy vay, this time I no longer had jewelry insurance. It was too expensive! Since I was living in a large, metropolitan center where one diamond is like another diamond, I realized that I probably would not recover it. Even before the police advised me that it was unlikely I would recover the ring, that the thief would have fenced it or shipped it to another country before I had even discovered the loss. There were no identifying marks because the ring was not engraved with an inscription or initials, and, in any case, the thief would likely have taken the diamond out of the ring for resale. So this time, my ye’ush was not in vain. I had to abandon hope for real.

But since, as the police said, it was already too late to retrieve my loss before I even discovered it was missing, was this not also ye’ush shelo medat—ye’ush without knowing it? In other words, if I had known, would I have given up hope of recovering it from the moment it was stolen, even before I actually knew it was stolen?

But that is not the end of the story. After I set this seemingly cyclical tale of loss and recovery and loss down on paper, I had a sudden urge to put “recovery” – hope — back into the picture when a recurring advertisement in a very reputable magazine caught my attention. National Geographic, no less, in which a company reachable on the Internet was advertising gem-quality diamonds that looked very much like the one I had lost and found and lost again. Only these diamonds were not extracted from deep in the ground through the grime and sweat of miners working in unspeakably treacherous conditions that have been the subject matter of recent movies. These advertised diamonds were cooked in a scientific lab, and, yes, they had all the properties of natural diamonds found in the ground – but with one very important difference: They were flawless, a quality almost impossible for natural diamonds to attain. And, yes, these synthetic diamonds had another favorable attribute: The price was miniscule in comparison to what a “real” diamond would cost.

The temptation was too great to resist. I selected my ring (platinum-fused silver), with the large emerald-cut center stone surrounded by smaller baguettes on the side, just like the ones my long lost ring (solid platinum) had possessed. Again, there was a difference. This time the emerald-cut stone I chose was not a diamond; it was a synthetic emerald, proudly reflecting four karats of polished green, chemical properties in the sunlight.

It is very beautiful ring but somewhat ostentatious, so I haven’t worn it yet. Maybe I never will. If I should, however, it is unlikely that anyone would realize that this artful replacement for my lost jewel is synthetic. But if an unknowing thief should attempt to steal it from my jewelry box at any time in the future, that ganaf will have gained only an object of no significant value, not compared to the multiple lives that have been lost in mines over the centuries trying to recover that sparkling “real thing” – like the one I formerly owned — from the ground.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2015, 2017. All rights reserved.

The Enduring Hope of Mrs. Mandelbaum

A Contemporary Narrative

by  Rabbi Corinne Copnick

There is a Hebrew name for the abandonment of hope. It is called ye’ush. Various fascinating perspectives – psychological, theological, ethical, and legal – can all be applied to ye’ush. It also has a related concept, ye’ush shelo medat (abandoning hope without knowing it – in other words, unconsciously giving up hope). Both concepts appear in a very small tractate of the Talmud called Bava Metzia. One may also read the passage as consciously acting on the assumption of eventual ye’ush.

What do these ideas really mean? Can one ever abandon hope? If so, under what circumstances? How does one turn the coin of despair over to the other side and become hopeful once again? The story of Mrs. Mandelbaum, who refused to give up hope, offers some clues.

When I was a young woman in Montreal, Canada, our family used the dressmaking services of Mrs. Mandelbaum, a middle-aged Holocaust survivor. We would go to her immaculate apartment, where her newly bought furniture was protected with plastic covers, and where she lived with her husband and son. There our dressmaker spent a great deal of time on her knees on the hardwood floor, as she pinned up the hemlines of her affluent clients.

When her only son reached Bar Mitzvah age, Mrs. Mandelbaum invited all her customers and also sent out invitations to fellow survivors of the horrific concentration camp experience they had somehow managed to live through to liberation. She also invited some survivors she had encountered in the Displaced Persons camp after World War II. That was where she met her husband and conceived her son. From the D.P. camp, the Mandelbaums managed to get sponsorship to Canada, where we, the Bar Mitzvah invitees, were now their only “family.” And everyone who was invited came.

The American-born guests/customers were amazed at the lavishness of the Bar Mitzvah. How could a woman of such limited means, someone they saw mainly down on her knees, afford such an elaborate celebration? Mrs. Mandelbaum knew how. She had saved every cent of her dressmaking money for more than five years in order to host this occasion.

But her fellow survivors, the ones who flew in from the U.S., from South America, from Australia, from Israel – from wherever they had found refuge after the war – were not surprised. They understood that it was the hope that one day she would have a son who would provide continuity to the Jewish people through his Bar Mitzvah commitment that kept her alive in the concentration camp. The survivor-guests had promised one another that, if they made it thr

ough the war, they would be the witnesses to the celebration. No matter where life took them, they would serve as one another’s family. They had shared a common flame of hope, and now it had come to fruition.

It was a wonderful celebration. And after the Bar Mitzvah, Mrs. Mandelbaum got up from her knees. She did not have to pin up other people’s dresses any more.

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©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2015, 2017. All rights reserved.

Miracles are What you Make of Them

Interpreting Talmudic Concepts with my Own Stories

by Rabbi Corinne Copnick

In Eastern Canada, where I was born and lived most of my life, November is a bleak month. After the brief autumn blaze of color, the trees have lost all their leaves, the skies are grey after the morning darkness, and snow has not yet come to whiten the landscape. People in Canada tend to get somewhat depressed in November. I used to alleviate these feelings by creating a beautiful image for myself: The trees were simply waiting, their bare branches upraised, to receive the snow that would fall in December. “Everything is waiting for to be hallowed by man,” Simon Noveck explains, capturing the essence of Martin Buber’s philosophy. This is how Buber felt about the relationship between God, man, and nature. And, in the final analysis, that is what hope is all about, having faith in this relationship.

Long before the technology of the internet helped anyone with a computer, tablet, or smart phone to understand what it means to be “connected,” the Jewish tradition understood that interaction. It understood that everything in creation, every action, is inter-related, and that in the spring, new shoots would come. The bare branches would have leaves again.

Faith is the flame that keeps hope alive. The Jewish religion is the story of that faith, that hope. Talmudic stories can reinforce these beliefs. The ancient rabbis understood that the ability to maintain hope in the direst of circumstances helped the Jewish people to survive. They realized that, without maintaining hope, the Jewish people would not have survived as Am Yisrael, the Jewish people.  Against the background of the destruction of the temple, the death of large numbers of Jews through catastrophic revolt, and the loss of many others to exile, the rabbis tried to pinpoint the specific point at which one abandons or does not abandon hope. With its usual precision, the Talmud tries to answer that question. The rabbis even considered whether one could abandon hope retroactively. It is also possible to consider the abandonment of hope proleptic (something held in the imagination, not in reality) rather than retroactive, at least at the time one assumes the eventual loss of hope in the future.

Rabbinic narratives stimulate thinking. Their innate creativity tends to beget new creativity: learning derived from them may be applied in original ways. It is with this thought in mind that I offer several of my own stories, inspired by Talmudic concepts, in a series of future posts. These stories appeared originally in my Master’s thesis about finding hope in the aggadic narratives of the Talmud.

© Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2015. All rights reserved.