Ki Setzei - Intentionally forgetting
Regarding the mitzvah of שכחה, Hashem promises למען יברכך which the commentaries
explain that if you leave a forgotten bundle for those less fortunate, you will
be blessed with a lot more produce and income to forget for the poor. Rashi
states, if this is the reward for unintentionally giving to the poor, all the
more so one who does so intentionally will be rewarded. Rashi then adds, from
here we see that if a pauper gained a livelihood from one who dropped a sela
from his hand, he will be rewarded.
A few questions arise.
- If it
is intentional, then it seemingly is the mitzvah of tzedakah - charity -
and not שכחה at all!
- When
Rashi learns the lesson to one who drops a sela, how do we see it from
here - the intentional case learned from the kal v'chomer, this should be
attributed to the beginning of Rashi, before the kal v'chomer - that שכחה itself is rewarded even though it was
unknowing!
- A sela
is actually a lot of money and quite a heavy coin. It is about a week's
salary and approximately the weight of a few quarters glued together. Both
from its value and weight it would seem quite improbable that it would
fall unnoticed - especially as Rashi writes - from his hand!
So is this actually a case of שכחה or just a loose comparison to reward
tzedakah?
I would like to suggest that truthfully there are ways a
person could avoid and prevent שכחה from occurring in the
first place. If a farmer were to methodically arrange his haystacks or produce
in an orderly fashion like a grid, it would be nearly impossible to miss and
forget to bring one to his silos. So perhaps part of this mitzvah is actually
NOT to be so careful in the first place! Allow a bit of randomness to set the
stage for some שכחה! This is Rashi's kal v'chomer! If a person
is rewarded for doing nothing intentionally, rather he was just generally a bit
messy in his accounting and thereby something was forgotten and left for the
poor. All the more so, if someone was intentionally a bit chaotic, to allow for
some forgetfulness for the sake of the poor, how much more would be his reward!
From here we learn that if a person intentionally was not so
careful and had a HANDFUL of coins in his hand - easily allowing for even a
heavy and valuable coin to unintentionally fall, when a pauper finds it and
provides for himself from it, the שוכח is certainly
rewarded.
This may serve as a lesson for the many of us who already
subscribed to give generously to a tzedakah, we can intentionally add some שכחה - set up a random amount of extra change to be charged to the
credit card. An amount you won't even notice at the time it "drops".
But that small additional שכחה will be למען יברכך - will bring to much more income to the extent that a lot more
money would be "unnoticeable" to you and easily forgotten for the
poor!
(Perhaps this is also how we may understand the gemara that
says Moshiach will only come בהיסח הדעת. Everyone asks how is
it possible to be מסיח דעת from Moshiach? But perhaps we can say that
if we create opportunities to "forgive and forget" for the sake of
the others, and be so mindful to restrain from giving, then we will be rewarded
with so much bracha - we won't have the problems that usually keep the hope of
Moshiach constantly on our minds.)