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19 Iyar 5760 - May 24, 2000 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family
What Goes Round - Comes Round
by Rosally Saltsman

I love old things, used things that once belonged to other people, things with history and flavor. Especially things that are cheap. In North America, this penchant can be satisfied on any Sunday by visiting yard sales, garage sales, street fairs, antique shops, thrift shops, collectible shops. These are a paradise for good deals, bargains, finds and lots of fun.

In Israel, we don't have much of the latter [Rosally, why haven't you visited your local or intercity gemach! Lots of interesting things there!] but we do have bazaars with the added spiritual dimension of raising money for a good cause and the practical dimension of helping people get rid of stuff they no longer wish to possess. No, we won't call it junk. If nothing more, it once had some sentimental value.

In my new neighborhood there are a few righteous women who organize a bazaar every couple of months to provide food for needy families and for the households in the neighborhood to deposit their unwanted goods and purchase other goods which will, eventually, be unwanted and re-donated to the bazaar.

As I had just moved to a smaller apartment and it was just before Pesach, I donated bags of odds and ends in a variety of subgroups: toys - with my son's permission, of course, clothes, household goods and miscellaneous paraphernalia.

A week before Pesach, the ladies held their bazaar and I went along with my son to bargain-hunt. I left with a whole new wardrobe of `fresh' clothes which totaled twenty shekel. My son picked up a cheap set of rackets which only cost two shekel. Even though I was sure he had exactly the same set at home, I let him have them so that he would leave the bazaar feeling the satisfaction of having found something he wanted and paid for it with money that went to a good cause. Especially since he had donated so much of his own stuff to begin with.

When we got home, I tried to think where my son's own set of rackets were. Then I remembered. I had donated them to the bazaar! Actually, he had bought back his own set of tennis rackets.

There is a spiritual and universal rule that whatever good you do in the world comes back to you, sooner or later, one way or another. I never imagined the rule could work so literally, so quickly...

 

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