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BEGIN WITH A GRIN

The math teacher presented one of his students with the following math problem: “If I lend your father one thousand dollars for ten months and we agreed that he would pay me back one hundred dollars a month, how much would your father still owe me after five months?”

The boy answered, “The same amount, one thousand dollars.”

Teacher, angrily: “You don’t know even the most simple math.”

Student: “You don’t know my father…”

DIVINE PAYMENT PLAN

Parshas Mishpatim is full of mitzvos. One of the main mitzvos of the parsha is the mitzva of giving tzedaka, doing chessed. This mitzva is one of the three pillars on which the world stands. As we know, as part of the mitzva of tzedaka (or gemilus chessed, without getting into the differences between them), we find the obligation to lend money to a poor or needy person.

The Rambam in Hilchos Matnos Aniyim 10:7 says, “There are eight levels in charity, each level surpassing the other. The highest level beyond which there is none is a person who supports a Jew who has fallen into poverty [by] giving him a present or a loan…” The sources for this obligation is in a verse in this week’s parsha (22:24 and Rashi), “When you lend money to My people, to the poor person [who is] with you… – Rabbi Yishmael says: Every אִם in the Torah is optional except three, and this is one of them.” R’ Yishmael teaches us that it’s not optional to lend to the poor; it’s a mitzva. It’s not “if” you lend, but “when” you lend.

Well, what happens when someone decides to lend money to the poor? The Gemara Bava Basra (10a) quotes a very powerful verse in connection with this (Mishlei 19:17), “He who is gracious to a poor man lends to Hashem, and He will repay him his reward,” and says, “If this verse hadn’t said so, it would have been impossible to say since ‘the borrower is servant to the lender,’ as it were.” It’s like saying that Hashem becomes beholden to the lender!

Some might raise an eyebrow and say we’re used to all sorts of astonishing Medrashim, so we don’t need to get worked up by another Talmudic statement that aggrandizes the importance of tzedaka and loans to the poor. After all, the rabbis want to get money out of us and that’s not so easy… So they promise us, “Don’t worry, in the end, G-d will pay you back.”

However, the Rebbe doesn’t look at the Gemara as just an allegory, a Talmudic way of speaking or a clever manipulation (G-d forbid) to get us to part with our money, but as a practical directive. The Rebbe cites the Alter Rebbe (Igeres HaKodesh 16) who treats this as (not only as practical halacha, but as) a fundamental principle of our religion. “Since we are believers, children of believers, that tzedaka is nothing more than a loan to G-d as it says, ‘He who is gracious to a poor man lends to Hashem, and He will repay him his reward,’” Being that we all give tzedaka, there’s a clear psak din that we are lenders to G-d and “the borrower is servant to the lender.” So, what can we learn from this about bringing the Geula here and now?

CALL TO COLLECT

In Rambam’s Hilchos Malveh V’Loveh, there is a long, complicated chapter that deals with the process of loan collection, what the lender should do in order to get his money back. What do you think is the first thing the lender should do? Find a lawyer, go to beis din, find witnesses and testimony?

The Rambam paskens that the first thing is… to come to collect and demand repayment! “And we do not attach his (the borrower’s) possessions right away until he (the lender) demands it (repayment).”

According to this, the first thing we need to do to bring the Geula is to demand it of G-d! After all, everything has a limit, and the time has long passed to pay back the Jewish people and bring the Geula. The usual way of looking at it is that we need to daven a lot and plead for the Geula. Who thinks in terms of our obligation to demand it?

The truth is that in light of the Rambam’s psak, we can demand the Geula and say, “Ad mosai?”

The Rambam says that if a Jew will say that he has no business with G-d to press a claim since after all, who wants to take G-d to a din Torah… he is willing to forgive the loan and that’s that, the Rebbe says, perhaps he can forgive a loan he personally made but what about what G-d owes all the Jewish people? Furthermore, since the Shechina itself is with us in exile, it turns out that G-d Himself wants to be called to judgment. He Himself wants every Jew to demand the true and complete Geula. If so, who can forgive G-d’s desire?

Additionally, this demand needs to be genuine, just as we care about our money and when we lend a significant sum of money to someone we make sure to find out how and when we will get the money back. When we demand the Geula genuinely, we won’t need to go to the heavenly court or angels in order to receive our claim. We also won’t have to use physical force or hire a collection agency, because G-d will give us the Geula from His full and holy hand!

TO CONCLUDE WITH A STORY

We will end with a terrific story about paying a loan. Rabbi Avrohom Rottenberg is a Gerrer Chassid in Bnei Brak. During the years 5717-5718 he lived across from 770 and became a mekurav of the Rebbe. He once heard R’ Yankel Lipsker (who had a grocery store) approach the Rebbe at a farbrengen with a cup of l’chaim and ask for a bracha for a friend who needed parnassa. The Rebbe thought a bit and then said, “What he needs, he has; but he is used to borrowing and not paying back. He needs to commit to returning the previous loans and not borrowing any more and he will get directly from the Aibishter.”

This Rottenberg was very moved by what he hears and firmly decided he would take no more loans, not matter what. At first, it was easy but then came his children’s weddings. The first wedding he managed to pull off somehow, but that cleaned him out. One of his sons became a chassan and he had not a cent for the expenses. The morning of the wedding when he had to pay for the bus to take his guests to the hall, he had no money to pay for it.

The minhag of Gerrer Chassidim is that the morning of the wedding, the chassan and his father go to daven wearing a spodik (a type of high shtreimel). He went with his son to the Belzer shul in Bnei Brak and was in low spirits. Then R’ Moshe Yaroslavsky, a man he did not know, went over to him and asked him if was he marrying off his son that day and how much money did he need for the wedding.

Rottenberg was taken aback and didn’t know what to say. R’ Yaroslavsky said he had just come from the Rebbe and before he left he was in yechidus. At the end of the yechidus, the Rebbe took out a big bundle of bills and said, ‘You are going to Eretz Yisrael and sometimes one meets a Jew who is making a wedding and needs money. Give this to him.’ You are the first person that I’m meeting who is making a wedding and maybe the Rebbe meant you.”

Good Shabbos!

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