falafel for a mitzva

Last night we hosted a Sheva Brachos dinner in our house for a cousin who just got married the night before (my speech, sans post drasha blessings to the couples).

During the dinner, one of my boys found, floating in the toilet, a 200NIS bill. He took it out and wanted to keep it. My wife asked the various people there who it might have fallen from, and eventually found the owner.

My son did not want to return it. Being that he is an eleven year old talmid chacham learning in a cheder, he came up with some good svara why he can keep it. He compared it to a case the mishna and gemara discuss in which somebody retrieves something from the mouth of a lion. he can keep it in that case because the owner would otherwise have lost it completely anyway. He said this would have been lost - flushed down the toilet, so he should be alowed to keep it.

I thought he should return, even if just for chinuch reasons. I thought it wrong to keep something that was lost at a party in our house, when we know who lost it. Also I suggested that he clearly had found it before the owner had given up hope of finding it (yi'ush) - as the owner of the money only realized it had fallen after we asked about it. Being that he found it before yi'ush, he would have to return it.

He was very upset because he really wanted to keep the money.

The one who lost the money agreed that it would be good for him to know we asked a Rav the shailoh, and whatever the Rav decides is how we would proceed.

So I asked my Rav the shailoh. The Rav answered that there are a numbers of reasons that for chinuch he should have to return it. And while the logic he used was good (comparing it to the case of the item in the lion's mouth), it is not definite that it would have been lost from the loser and from all people (maybe it would have floated and not been flushed down? maybe somebody else would have gone to use the toilet and found it?), and therefore not comparable to the case of the lion.

My son was very disappointed because he really thought he should be able to keep it. We told him that the mitzva is worth so much for than 200 shekels, and is worth even more because the nisayon is so difficult for him.

As a motivational celebration, we went out for dinner to falafel, as per his preference, and celebrated his big mitzva of hashavas aveida.

And I told him I would post it on my blog, to which he smiled and then waved his hand and 'pooh poohed' it...