Question:
When I was younger I used to steal from my friends like nosh money etc. I don’t really remember everything or from who I took what should I do about paying back? Would I have to track down people)???
Answer:
Hello,
This is not so easy, and you have all of my respect, for taking the effort to take care of this, and IY”H you will be successful. The people that you know you stole from should be contacted so that you can return the money to them. If you can track them down, that would be best. You can call them or text them, so that you remember that you owe them money from years ago. The person will most probably say, “it is so long ago, just for get about it”, great! Then you are done with that person’s debt. If they do want the money, you can make a bank transfer to their account, which is easy nowadays.
For those that you don’t remember who they are, there is a genius innovative idea, which has the backing of a number of big Dayanim, (R’ Naftali Nussbaum shlit”a and others, called “gemach vheishiv”. The way this gemach works is, that you deposit the amount of money that you owe to gemach, and the gemach will accept and acquire the money, as a messenger of the person or people that you owe money. They will lend the money to poor people, and it will be considered as if the person you owe lent the money. Then when Moshiach comes and the owner of the money becomes known, or even if the owner will become evident even years later, the gemach will give that person the money that is really now his. This way you will have fulfilled your obligation of return the stolen item to its owner, even though you can’t find him. The number to the gemach is (972) 2 538-7901.
One other point, when calculating the amount that you owe each person, you should try to approximate the total of what you stole, and then add to it, to make sure that you indeed returned all the money that was stolen.
The Vilna Gaon says that a person in such a situation that tries his best to return what he has to will be given siyata dishmaya. Let me just tell you a story that happened last week with a relative of mine, living in Kiryat Sefer. My brother-in-law was walking in the street, and he noticed a piece of paper on the floor. Upon examining it, he sees that it was from a bank, and was one of the documents of a person who just took out a mortgage. He tried calling the telephone directory, etc. but came up with nothing, and it seemed that this person didn’t even live in the city. Few days later he had to go to a certain building to deliver something to one of the people there, and he noticed that someone in that building had the same last name that was on the paper that he found! He knocked on the door, but no one answered. He did however notice that this family sold a certain product from their house, and it had their phone number. He called the number, and indeed the owner of the paper’s was the person’s father who lived in Petach Tikva. The person’s brother-in-law, (who has a different last name) who was in Kiryat Sefer, was taking the papers for the owner somewhere, and some of them fell. Here it was a person who tried his best and then Hashem sent the siyata dishmaya and the owner was found!
IY”H you will also be successful.
Best wishes
