“If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray. You shall repeatedly bring it back to him.”(Shemot 23:4)
The Chofetz Chaim comments on this verse how the Torah is concerned about other people’s money and that they don’t have a loss. We are obliged to return a lost animal to its owner and exert ourselves in doing so. This law also applies to returning a lost object to his owner if we can know who he is. If this is true with animals and objects, so much more we are obliged to help others find their way in life if they get lost.
The Sages (Bava Metzia 31a) say on this verse that if someone’s animal gets lost times, each and every time we find him we must return it to its owner. Similarly, says the Chofetz Chaim,if it takes times to speak to someone to return to his good ways, we should develop the patience to speak to him times.
After the death of the Tzadik of Jerusalem, Rabbi Aryeh Levine z”l, an inmate from the prison the Rabbi used to visit,came and told his son the following:”I remember how in your father’s presence, without he saying a word to preach or rebuke, we not only wanted to improve but we felt that right there we were becoming better human beings.”(A Tzadik in Our Time pg106)
Some excerpts taken from “Growth Through Torah” Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
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