[Avodah] Fw: Returning Merchandise

[Joseph C. Kaplan]

Sorry; I accidently sent this to Areivim instead of Avodah.

Joseph
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Joseph C. Kaplan 
To: Eli Turkel 
Cc: Areivim 
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 1:56 PM
Subject: Returning Merchandise


RET asks:

"I bought a camera from a major distributor in the US. The camera didn't arrive.
When I complained they sent a replacement. Several months later the
original camera was delivered by the US post office (yeah USPostal service).
Is there a chiyuv to return the second (actually the original) camera."

I don't know the answer but let me tell a true story.  The principal of a MO high school was interviewing rebbeim.  One of the questions in the interview was what would the rebbe do if a student asked the following question:  I went to a store and the salesgirl, who was not Jewish (and the store is owned by non-Jews as well) gave me significantly too much change.  What should I do?

A number of the rebbeim being interviewed took this as an opportunity to show their Torah knowledge and discussed with great erudition gezel akum.  The one who got the job, however answered:  send the money back to the store owner with a cover letter explaining what happened and say that you are a high school student in a Jewish school and you were taught that returning the overpayment is the right and moral thing to do.

Joseph Kaplan

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