Here’s another ethical issue and Jewish source response:
Case
Jody is one of those kids who walks down the street phone booth by phone booth. At every phone booth she stops and checks for change. Every now and then she picks up an odd dime or quarter this way. One day she walks by a phone, finds more than two dollars in change and yells for joy. She starts to scoop put the money. All of a sudden a woman with a camera around her neck screams from the other side of the street, “Stop, that’s my money!” Jody says, “No way. It was sitting right here in a public phone and I found it. Your name wasn’t on it.” The woman said, “I was on the phone and saw the blue-breasted robin I had been hunting for. I hung up with my mother and went to take a picture. Now I am on my way back to get the change.” Jody said, “If that’s the case, tell me how much money there is.” The woman said, “I don’t know. I put eight dollars in quarters and started to talk. I don’t know how much change the phone gave me, but it’s mine.” The argument went on for a while.
Who should get the money?
Answer
The Mishnah gives us very clear ground rules for when we can keep something we find and when we need to try and return it to the person who lost it.
[a] In Bava Metzia 2:1 we are told: “One may just keep (without trying to return) the following loss objects: (1) scattered fruit, (2) scattered money, (3) small sheaves of grain in public areas, (4) cake of figs, (5) loaves of baker’s bread, (6) strings of fish, (7) raw wool shearings, (8) bundles of flax, (9) strips of purple wool. So says Rabbi Meir.”
[b] In Bava Metzia 2:2 we are told; “One must try to return the following lost objects: (1) fruit in a container, (2) an empty container, (3) money in a purse, (4) an empty purse, (5) a pile of fruit, (6) a pile of money, (7) three coins in a stack, (8) small sheaves of grain on private property, (9) homemade loaves of bread, (10) processed wool shearings, (11) jars of oil or wine.
Had the woman known the amount of the change, it would have been like “three coins in a pile.” Because she didn’t, it is like “scattered coins.’
[c} In Bava Metzia 2:1 we are given the basic principle. “Rabbi Judah says: ‘Everything unusual must be advertised.’” Based on the Mishnah, because the coins could not be identified, Jody may keep the money. Though that may not be the fairest thing, it is the most practical solution. However, if the woman can describe anything about the coins, Jody must give them to her.
Joel Grishaver, “You Be the Judge”, pgs. 33-34
Used with permission from Joel Grishaver
