inside story
things you never knew you never knew
Mitzvah of returning a lost
object – Hashavas Aveidah
GREEN ISRAEL
• Israel’s CO2 emissions are 11.02 per capita, half that of the
USA.
• Israel’s reverse osmosis facility at Ashkelon is the world’s
largest desalination plant.
• Over 83% of Israeli homes use solar energy for hot water –
the highest percentage in the world.
• Israeli scientists have developed a bacteria that ‘eats’ petroleum, helping to clean up oil spills on land and sea.
• An Israeli company based on a religious kibbutz is the
world’s largest producer of natural pesticides.
• Israel is one of two countries in the world whose deserts are
shrinking rather than expanding.
ISRAEL TRIVIA
• The Israeli city of Haifa has one of the smallest subway systems in the world, with a 1.8km track and only
four carriages.
• Israel’s national bird is the hoopoe.
• Israel’s national flower is the Cyclamen Persicum
(Persian cyclamen).
• Israelis consume the third largest amount of vegetables and sweets in the world.
• Israel was the first country to ban underweight models.
• Israel has 137 official beaches (but only 273km of
coastline).
• Israel’s most common street name is Hazait. It means
‘Olive Street’.
8 JEWISH LIFE n ISSUE 83
A stone on a grave
It is common practice for Jews to place a stone on a tombstone as
a mark of respect for the deceased by showing that their grave
has been visited. But, how did this tradition begin? There are
several possibilities as to its origins. It may be traced back to
Biblical times when graves were simply marked with small stone
mounds. Tombstones were not erected during this period, and
the mounds helped mark the location of the grave. Essentially,
the act of placing small stones on graves served as a way to preserve the gravesite so that as time passed, it could be found
again. Alternatively, there is a theory that the purpose of marking graves was so Kohanim should not become imbued with
corpse impurity by inadvertently stepping on or bending over a
grave. Marking graves thus became a mitzvah. Every person who
walked by helped to maintain the grave by adding rocks, so it remained a reliable marker over time. Eventually, someone
thought of adding a big rock with the personal information of
the deceased. Later, the smaller rocks were cemented together,
which made the whole grave more solid and permanent. Many
trace the origins of leaving a stone to earlier, spiritual sources. In
the Torah and the Psalms, rock is one of the metaphors for
Hashem (Tzur Yisroel). By placing a rock on the grave, we acknowledge the omniscience of Hashem in both life and death.
Inventive Israel
Established in 1976, The Zomet Institute is a non-profit,
public research institute dedicated to merging halachic
Judaism with modern life. Situated in Alon Shvut, 25km
south-west of Jerusalem, the institute comprises rabbis, researchers, engineers and economists who devise practical
halachic solutions for businesses, institutions and private
individuals. They have developed and implemented technologies that enable products such as metal detectors, security jeeps, elevators, electric wheelchairs and coffee machines to be used on Shabbos, and have developed solutions for, among others, the Israeli Ministry of Health, The
Ministry of Defence, Ben Gurion Airport and The Elite Food
Corporation. JL
text: liz samuels
In Parashas Ki Teitzei (Deuteronomy 22:1) we are told “You
shall return them to your brother.” This teaches us that if
we should discover something that obviously belongs to
someone else, and is distinguished by an identifying mark
(a siman), you should go out of your way to find out who
lost it and return it. If the one who lost it can correctly say
where the object was found, or what the object contained, this is also considered a siman.
During Temple times, there was a certain stone in
Jerusalem that people would stand on to announce that
they’d found a lost item.
Today in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, when someone loses
something, he or she calls the “lost-and-found-gemach”
to see if someone found it and registered it with the
gemach. This is an excellent way of reuniting people with
their lost property.
According to the Rambam, a doctor who heals has performed the mitzvah of hashavas aveidah, since he has returned the patient’s lost