[Avodah] Are "Gedolim Stories" Good for Chinuch?

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

I wrote:

> When the post office clerk offered to ship the Chofetz Chayim's
> seforim for free, did he have the authority to do so? I doubt
> it. But when the CC purchased an equivalent value of stamps and
> tore them up, this is portrayed as an amazing feat of tzidkus.
> Why? Isn't this a basic act which should be expected of *all*
> of us?

I neglected to give a source for the above. Here's one version:

"When a non-Jewish railroad employee put parcels of his books on board a train for free delivery, the Chofetz Chaim tore up an amount of postage stamps sufficient to defray the loss of revenue to the government."

-- By Rabbi Nosson Scherman in the Jewish Observer and the ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications Judaiscope Series, and online at http://tinyurl.com/2avvlow and at http://tinyurl.com/2efo5rx

That version of the story is slightly different than the version I heard, in that it was not a post office clerk, but a railroad employee. It seems to me that if the railroad and post office were both run by the government, then the differences are minor, even if they weren't monopolies.

I found a different version of the story at http://tinyurl.com/2gyyp73 whose last paragraph says:

"He also says that the famous story of the Chofetz Chaim who ripped up a stamp when he found someone who would personally deliver his letter, was not grounded in Halacha.  You don't have an obligation to pay the government money when your friend delivers your letter.  The Chofetz Chaim ripped the stamp because in his great kedusha he wanted to make a Kiddush Hashem."

According to that version, if a letter was delivered by someone who was doing a personal favor for the Chofetz Chaim, then I'd agree that there was no obligation to reimburse the government. In fact, with all due respect to the author of that version, it sounds silly to me. People send letters and packages via their friends all the time. Did the Chofetz Chaim rip up stamps when he sent his Mishloach Manos, even to make a Kiddush Hashem? I doubt it; surely the story of the stamps was about a case where the Chofetz Chaim got special treatment and felt that it should not have been done for free.

Alternatively, perhaps the "someone" in that story was indeed a post office clerk, but he delivered it *personally*, instead of sending it for free through the post office. If that's what happened, then I can see how there was no obligation to pay anything, yet because he walked into the post office with the intention of purchasing a service from the government, he felt it to be a Kiddush HaShem to insure that the government would not lose out by the employee's favor.

This story was also mentioned on Avodah by listmember R' Daniel Eidensohn at http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol06/v06n044.shtml#06

Akiva Miller


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