Intro
Welcome to Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day with me, Josh Feigelson.
I’m grateful you’re here, and I hope you benefit from our time together.
Knuffle Bunny. If you know those words, then I don’t have to explain. If you don’t, allow me: Knuffle Bunny is a modern-day classic children’s book by Mo Willems. It tells the story of Trixie, a toddler who hasn’t spoken her first words yet. Trixie and her dad are walking through their New York neighborhood en route to the laundromat, having a blast, and Trixie is holding onto her stuffed bunny. They go through the park, past the school, and to the laundromat— and, of course, the bunny winds up getting mixed in with the laundry.
They head for home while the wash runs, and Trixie realizes she’s missing her bunny. Since she can’t articulate the problem, she uses every little kid trick there is—but her dad just interprets it as her having a meltdown. When they arrive at their apartment, Trixie’s mom immediately realizes the problem and cries out, “Where’s Knuffle Bunny?!” The family races back to the laundromat and rescues the stuffed animal—and a very happy Trixie speaks the bunny’s name, her first words.
the book and its sequels and adaptations have sold millions of copies. And I think one of the reasons this story works is that it taps into a deep experience so many of us can relate to: losing an object that’s important to us. Car keys. A wallet. A family heirloom. A favorite stuffed animal. We’ve all been there. That combination of panic, annoyance, frustration at ourselves, potentially desperation—it’s a crappy emotional combo. And it’s made even worse when we feel like the cold, cruel world out there isn’t gonna lift a finger to help us out.
But here’s some good news: The Torah is here to help! According to Judaism, it’s actually a mitzvah to return lost objects. And today, in the sixth episode of our miniseries about ethical mitzvot, we’re going to talk about it.
The Torah tells us in a couple of places that hashavat aveidah, returning a lost item to its owner, is a mitzvah. In Deuteronomy, the Torah instructs that if we find an animal of a member of our community, we have to take care of it until the owner comes to retrieve it—and we have to try to return it to them. The same goes for not only their animals, but anything that belongs to them. In Exodus, the Torah goes even further—it says there that this duty doesn’t just apply to our friends or the people in our community, but even to our enemies! (I’ll confess that I’ve always kind of wanted to write a romcom screenplay with this as the meet-cute scene.)
In the Deuteronomy passage, the Torah adds a little detail: It repeats that if we find ourselves in this position—stumbling on our neighbor’s lost item—we can’t look away. Lo hitalamta, it says—which literally means, don’t close your eyes, don’t make it so that you can’t notice something you don’t want to notice, don’t willfully ignore an inconvenient truth.
I think the Torah is picking up on something deep here. In the last two episodes about tzedakah I talked about how we naturally want to be compassionate. Our Hesed, our loving connection and compassion—it wants to flow. But we often close our eyes and harden our hearts a bit. We walk by the lost object, or the person in need, and we avert our gaze—because that way we can tell ourselves, “out of sight, out of mind—and, voila, I’m not responsible.”
Maybe I’m naive, but as I keep saying in this series, I think that deep down we all know that we’re responsible. We know that we would want someone else to return our lost wallet to us—and thus we should return theirs to them. We know we should help because we know we’re interconnected, even if our thinking minds tell us a different story. Our deeper heart-minds know the truth. The point of the Torah, the point of Jewish mindfulness practice, is to help us reground in that deeper story of connection, compassion, and mutual responsibility. That’s what I think this mitzvah is really all about.
For the last few weeks we’ve done different meditation practices. This week I want to take a little meditation break, and instead offer a practice in mussar or tikkun middot: more of a practical exercise. So here goes.
This practice is going to focus on that phrase from the Torah: lo hitalamta, Don’t look away.
I want you to take a sticky note or an index card, and write on it, “Don’t look away.” Put it up on your bathroom mirror. Maybe make another one with the same words on it and put it up by your front door. And maybe another one that you can put on your computer.
Don’t look away.
As you go about your week, make an intention to notice at least one moment a day when you feel a pull to look away: a person on the street who is struggling; someone by the side of the road holding a sign asking for help; a story in the news about people who are hurting or in pain that you might otherwise just pass by.
See if you can be aware of how the mind operates in that moment. Does your heart feel a pull to help? Does your mind tell you, “It’s not your responsibility?” I’m not asking you to act, just to notice in that moment. I’m just asking you not to look away.
And then you have a choice to make: Do you want to act, or not? You don’t have to act in every case. You may have good reasons why you can’t. But you also may have good reasons why you can, and why you want to. The point is that, at least once a day, you can try to make that choice more consciously, with greater awareness.
This may seem a little far afield from the mitzvah of returning a lost object. But I want to close this episode with one final teaching. It comes from Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, the great nineteenth century teacher of Hasidism. Rebbe Nachman had this beautiful insight: All of us are born into the world whole—but then, over time, we lose part of ourselves. And we spend a lot of the rest of our lives trying to return to our original state of spiritual wholeness.
This leads Rebbe Nachman to teach that the mitzvah of hashavat aveidah, returning lost objects, is actually a mitzvah to help others and ourselves to find those missing pieces of our spirits so that we can be whole.
So the next time you find a wallet on the sidewalk or you see a poster for a lost kitten, or the next time you encounter someone who just needs some help, remember that you’re not just helping someone recover something they’ve lost. You’re also helping them recover a lost part of themselves. And you’re doing the same thing for yourself, too.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.
ENDING
Thank you for joining us for Soulful Jewish Living: Mindful Practices for Every Day, a production of Unpacked, a brand of OpenDor Media, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. This episode is sponsored by Jonathan and Kori Kalafer and the Somerset Patriots: The Bridgewater, NJ-based AA Affiliate of the New York Yankees. If you like this show, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Check out our website, unpacked.media for everything Unpacked-related, and subscribe to our other podcasts, and check out the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Most importantly, be in touch–about what you heard today, what you’d like to hear more about, or to dedicate an episode. Write to me at josh@unpacked.media.
This episode was hosted by me, Rabbi Josh Feigelson. Audio was edited by Rob Pera and we’re produced by Rivky Stern. Thanks for joining us.