The Halachos of Stealing Bagels from a Hotel Dining Room

Question

I really enjoy your column and I have the following question:

My family stayed at a kosher hotel in a place where it was nearly impossible to get hold of kosher food. On the day of our flight back, we realized that we might not have access to kosher food for many hours and thought that perhaps we could take food from the hotel dining room. However, there was a large sign in the dining room stating very clearly that, under all circumstances, it was forbidden to take food out of the dining room. Practically speaking, just about every single person in that dining room snuck out some food, so I thought that maybe this sign was just a warning, but that, as far as halacha l’maaseh, it was all right.

Before acting on my instinct, I decided to double-check, and I told the manager in charge of the dining room about our predicament and my plans for how to solve it. Surprisingly, he told me that it was an ironclad rule and that only after everyone had finished eating could I take what was left over. However, since there were many “bagel snatchers,” by the time everyone had finished, there was almost nothing left over!

I am sorry to ask such a question, but even after the manager said that this was an ironclad rule, if everyone else was taking food out of the dining room, maybe this means that their “rule” was only a warning and not really binding, and maybe it would have been permitted to take food without asking. I want to make it clear that I did not do this, but I would like to know for the future what the halacha is.

Thank you.

Nesanel

Rav Auerbach

First of all, you are to be highly commended for not being moreh heter. Even though everyone else took food without asking, you stood up against this yeitzer hora and would not take anything without asking. Human nature is to think that since everyone is doing something, it is permitted, and often this is not the case.

Chazal teach us that when it comes to the transgressions of gezel, stealing, and arayos, immorality, a person must be extremely careful, for the pull toward these areas is very strong. For this reason, no matter what, a person should never be moreh heter in the area of theft, and one should always ask a shailah, as you yourself have done.

Especially as we stand before the days of the Yomim Noraim, the days when we will be judged as to who will live and who will die, we should remember what the Shaarei Teshuvah (3:24) cites from the Medrash (Vayikra Rabbah 33:3): When a person has a se’ah full of transgression, the one that prosecutes the most is gezel.

On that note, we can deal with your question. If someone expresses that they are makpid on something — for example, in the case that you give, the hotel is makpid that you do not take any food out of the dining room — then there is no heter whatsoever to violate this. Even if every single person in the hotel ignores this rule and takes food out of the dining room, this does not change the halacha that this is considered stealing.

You are certainly allowed to ask them, and if they permit you to take food on a one-time basis, that is fine. But to disobey this rule is stealing, just like robbing a bank, and it carries with it all of the stringencies that this transgression has.

Both my father, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and my father-in-law, Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, were extremely makpid when it came to the transgression of theft. They did not like that some people justify to themselves that an act is not really stealing because the people involved are resha’im, or because of whatever other warped justifications their yeitzer hora concocts.

If a person wants to make sure that they are written into the Book of Life and the book of parnossah, the best way is to be scrupulously honest about everything that they do, especially when it comes to theft. Rav Yisroel Salanter laid down the golden rule: If it is not yours and you take it, then you have stolen.