Daf Yomi Gittin 44
Yankel was a poor tailor who lived in Pinsk. He sewed day and night but could never seem
to make enough money to feed his family of ten.
One day, he learns of an island far away, where instead of sand, the
seashore was full of diamonds. And so he
sets off to find his El Dorado.
After months at sea, he finally arrives. Sure enough, the place is full of diamonds. He fills his pockets, his knapsack, his
hat. He can’t believe how rich he has
become. He then sets off to the nearest
restaurant and orders the finest cuisine.
At the end of the meal, he pulls a huge diamond out of his pocket, and
tells the waiter to keep the change.
‘Are you kidding me?’ says the waiter. ‘Diamonds are worth nothing on this
island! The currency here is fish!’
Crestfallen, he empties his pockets and sets out to learn
how to fish. He’s a quick learner and
in no time manages to become quite wealthy as a fisherman. After amassing a small fortune, he sends word
home to his wife to put a down payment on a mansion, because he is on his way
home with money galore.
He arrives home with three boatloads of fish. By now, they’re pretty smelly, having been in
the hold for months. Undeterred, he goes
to the bank and offers to complete payment on the house with his spoiled fish.
‘Seriously?!’ the bank manager screams at him
incredulously. ‘Why would I want your
smelly fish?’
The poor tailor walks away downtrodden. He gets home, takes off his clothing; is
getting ready to go to bed, when he hears a clunk. Out of his pocket has fallen one lone diamond
that remained from his original gathering!
His wife has never seen anything so beautiful. She picks it up, runs to the bank; and with
that single diamond, she pays off the entire new house!
Rabbi Yehoshua ben
Levi taught: If one sold his servant to a gentile, we penalize him and make him
buy the person back for even up to one hundred times the amount.
The Gemara asks: Is
one hundred a precise figure or an exaggeration?
Listen to the
following proof: Reish Lakish taught: If one sold a large animal to a gentile,
we penalize him and make him buy it back for even up to ten times the amount.
The Gemara responds:
Perhaps a servant is different though. For
every day he is in the hands of the gentile, he is removed from mitzvos.
Rashi explains: In the
gentile home, he cannot observe Shabbat and other commandments.
In days of yore, human beings were sometimes sold as
servants. How did that happen? One example provided by the Torah regarding
Jewish servants occurred when someone lacked the means to feed his family. He would sell himself and use the funds to
provide for his loved ones. Jewish servants, of course, continued to be
bound by all 613 commandments of the Torah.
Sometimes, Jews also purchased the services of
gentiles. Gentile servants loved joining
Jewish families, because they were treated as human beings, with the utmost
respect and honour. In fact, they were
such an accepted part of the family that the Torah expected them to take part
in mitzvah observance, such as Shabbos and kosher. Not all
613 mitzvos, but most of them.
Our Gemara discusses a Jewish family that sold their servant
to a gentile family. The Sages decreed
that if that ever happened, we would force the Jewish family to buy him
back. Why? Because he would no longer be able to observe
the mitzvos. In fact, they went so far
as to say that one is obligated to pay literally a hundred times the original sale
price to get him back!
Let’s give that scenario some perspective. Today, if I would want to hire domestic help,
it would cost me about twenty thousand dollars a year, at least. Now, back in the day, you didn’t just purchase
for a year; the sale was forever. And so
it would have cost substantially more.
But for argument’s sake, let’s stick with the figure of twenty
thousand. Listen to what our Sages demanded
of a person who sold his gentile servant: you would have to pay a hundred times
the amount to get him back. That’s two
million dollars!
Why would you have to pay so much? You could get a new servant for a hundredth
of the price! The reason you have to pay
that exorbitant amount is that you have now deprived him of the ability to
perform mitzvos. A gentile no less, and yet
our Sages are concerned to the tune of two million dollars! If that’s how much non-Jewish mitzvah
performance is worth, can you imagine how much the Jewish performance of a
mitzvah must be worth? Millions!! After all, Hashem gave Torah and mitzvos to
the People of Israel to observe!
So if mitzvos are so valuable, why are people negligent in
their performance? The problem is that
we live on an island full of diamonds.
Mitzvos are so easy to come by that we don’t appreciate their true
value. When we get home – after 120
years on this Earth – our loved ones will ask to see the diamonds we’ve brought
with us. And we’ll begin to cry,
realizing that we could have been Heavenly multi-billionaires, if only we had appreciated
the value of a mitzvah.
Next time you’re lying in bed, hitting that snooze button
and debating whether or not to get up for minyan, ask yourself if you would go
for a million bucks. And next time you’re
debating whether to eat a product that’s probably not kosher, ask yourself if
it’s worth the risk for a million dollars.
Once you’ve had that conversation with yourself, the results will speak
for themselves!
Mitzvos are priceless.
We don’t realize their value simply because they are found in such
abundance here. May you merit filling up
your pockets, bags and U-Hauls with mitzvos in preparation for your journey to
the Real World!
