[Avodah] Chillul HaShem when NJ are the observers

[Zev Sero]

On 15/11/2011 2:46 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 02:32:33PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
>> How does any of what you quote contradict this?  Everything that you
>> quote only supports my point.  The examples are all things that are
>> negative in themselves, and therefore cause right-minded people to
>> have a negative impression.  People who get a negative impression
>> from positive things, and a positive impression from negative things
>> are obviously not the standard by which this is judge.
>
> To quote RZS from Dec 2007
> <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol24/v24n110.shtml#04>, though:
>> Charging interest and failing to return lost property are not negative
>> actions, which come from or could engender bad middos.  They are the
>> normal way we should expect to interact with strangers. ...
>>            And if someone has been careless enough to lose something
>> and you were lucky enough to find it, why on earth should you expend
>> time and energy to track them down, and then give it to them?  What have
>> they ever done for you, that you should do them such favours?
>
> Four years ago you were arguing that hashavas aveidah doesn't apply
> to a nachri's aveidah because it's /NOT/ negative in itself.

It isn't.  Failing to return it is not a chilul haShem.  But for that
very reason, returning it is a kiddush haShem.  The goy has no reason
to expect you to do it; he wouldn't have done it himself, and if you
were to keep it he would accept that as perfectly normal.  So if you go
out of your way to give it to him he will feel grateful.  But he's
feeling grateful at something positive, something you're doing for
Hashem, not at something negative, such as appearing to give respect
to his religion.


-- 
Zev Sero        If they use these guns against us once, at that moment
zev at sero.name   the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will
                 return to all the places that have been given to them.
		                            - Yitzchak Rabin