[Avodah] Volunteers?

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 04:22:07PM -0400, Rich, Joel wrote:
: So you are saying if one is learning and sees a person in need of
: assistance unloading his donkey, he may stop learning to do it even
: though there is another individual equidistant who was staring off into
: space and day dreaming and is now moving towards the donkey to assist?

I'm saying there is no blanket answer.

All of our limited resource questions involve complicated
decisionmaking. You can't put all your eggs in one basket. You have to
balance what is objectively most important and what motivates you to
actually act. It's like trying to decide how much money to give various
tzedaqos, or how much to divide between tzedaqah and hidur mitzvah, or...

Your example is poor, because the problem isn't about the one-off
decision. Perhaps in this case, since he is redundant, he ought to
learn. That's different than making a general lifestyle decision to
minimize mitzvos maasiyos in favor of learning.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 8th day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        1 week and 1 day in/toward the omer.
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