VOLUME 117 NUMBER 6
Elul 12, 5785
September 5, 2025
Parshas Ki Seitzei
Candlelighting Time 7:06
Hashem’s ‘desire’ to provide us with mitzvos is amazing. During the harvest when one is very occupied with reaping his crop and ingathering it into piles ready to shipped off to the silo for processing, to forget a heap of grain would certainly be a generic incident. Therefore, upon noticing the forgotten harvest he would go back and retrieve it. However, the Torah commands us otherwise. There are parameters for this mitzvah but basically we must forfeit that pile for the poor to collect later on. Certainly, a kind act but since it was done without any thinking of course there would not be any recompense for endowing the indigents in this case. However, the Torah not only rewards us but we receive a wonderful blessing bestowed upon us that we should merit success in all that we do. This is almost incredulous but it is exactly what the Torah states. Perhaps one might wonder why is this act of forgetting so incredible as to warrant such a remuneration? Furthermore, Rashi expands this mitzvah to include if one inadvertently drops a coin and someone picks it up then he is also rewarded and it is considered as though he has fulfilled the mitzvah of tzedaka.
Rav Meir Simcha questions the comparison between these two scenarios. The farmer who has forgotten the pile of grain has fulfilled the Torah’s injunction that he must not return and recover the lost heap. When a coin falls from one’s pocket and he doesn’t realize it is he really doing a mitzvah? One might contend that he is fortunate that the money went to someone in need and not simply lost or regained by another individual who doesn’t truly need the money but just perchance found it, but is that a mitzvah?
Rav Meir Simcha concludes based upon this question that the farmer is rewarded immediately upon forgetting the pile of grain and the harvest left over becomes the property of the general community of impoverished of our nation. Of course, the theme is based upon the fact that he can’t go back and repossess the pile of grain but once that principal has been established then automatically it is owned by the poor and indigent. Therefore, the farmer has fulfilled a mitzvah in the Torah by simply forgetting his grain in the field. Subsequently, our Sages extrapolate that if one unknowingly drops a coin if found by a poor person he also has fulfilled the mitzvah of charity although he has no idea whatsoever that he lost the coin and who found it!
This is truly wondrous and requires some degree of exploration to understand the depth of this mitzvah of forgetting your harvest in the field is considered a mitzvah that confers upon the individual a tremendous blessing of success in what he does! Perhaps we may suggest that this mitzvah is indicative of the very essence of the Jewish nation. Fundamentally, each and every Jew has a burning desire to serve Hashem to his fullest ability. Sometimes, we faulter due to the yetzer hora, the evil inclination whose duty is to test our commitment to Hashem. If we ‘listen’ to him and fail to serve Hashem properly then we need to strengthen ourselves. However, when we overcome those trials and tribulations, then we have climbed the ladder of success in achieving proximity to Hashem. Therefore, Hashem in His infinite attribute of generosity and kindness guides us to become closer with these types of mitzvos which bolster our realization of His compassion for us.
A BYTE FOR SHABBOS
The Torah discusses the capturing of a woman from the enemy camp that with a certain protocol one can marry her. One of the stipulations is that she should cry over the loss of her parents for an entire month. Actually, this whole scenario alludes to the evil inclination and our protocol to overcome its efforts to steer us away from serving Hashem. The month mentioned refers to this month of Elul and we must cry that we have lost our way due to the many distractions that we encounter. Ohr HaChaim
GOOD SHABB0S
