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"The Pious and the Niggard" By Hyman S.
Wolf
July 4, 1940—Hyman S. Wolf,
"The Pious and the NIggard," San Diego Jewish Review, page 2.
Thou shalt surely give him, and thy heart shall not be grieved, when thou
givest unto him; because that for this thing the Lord thy God will bless thee in
all thy work, and in all that thou puttest thy unto—Deuteronomy, XV, 10.
A Story From the Talmud—Once upon a time, a pious man, while walking along
a public highway, noticed the owner of an estate removing stones from his yard
by throwing them into the street to the discomfort of passers by. The pious man
tuned in just indignation upon the evil-doer and said: "Thou thoughtless
one, why removest thou the stones from another man's yard into thine own
road?" The man thus spoken to looked up in amazement. He thought the pious
man was drunk or crazy, for everyone knew that he was the owner of the estate,
and of which he was very proud. "Go on," he said to the pious man,
"thou knowest not whereof thou art speaking. Cant't not thou see that I am
cleaning up my own yard?" The pious man shook his head mysteriously and
went his way. As years passed, a depression set in and the once wealthy
owner of the estate lost his fortune and home. Bowed with poverty and old age,
neglected by his friends of prosperous years, he one evening passed along the
same road in front of his former estate, which belonged to his creditors. While
carried away by his thoughts, and looking at the buildings, he stumbled on a
stone and hurt his foot badly. Just then the rebuke of the pious man came
to him, and he cried bitterly in remorse and anguish, "how truthful were
the words, of that pious man: I have indeed removed the stones from another
man's yard into my own road, to my injury." You many San Diegans, who have
not contributed to the United Jewish Fund, will perhaps many years later cry out
with sorrow: "Oh! that I have spent so much for other things and grudgingly
refused my mite to the United Jewish Fund."