תנו רבנן גזל מריש ובנאו בבירה
ב"ש אומרים מקעקע כל הבירה כולה ומחזיר מריש לבעליו
וב"ה אומרים אין לו אלא דמי מריש בלבד משום תקנת השבין:
ועל חטאת הגזולה כו': אמר עולא דבר תורה בין נודעה ובין לא נודעה אינה מכפרת מ"ט יאוש כדי לא קני ומה טעם אמרו לא נודעה מכפרת שלא יהו כהנים עצבין אמרי ליה רבנן לעולא והאנן מפני תיקון המזבח תנן אמר להם כיון דכהנים עצבין נמצא מזבח בטל ורב יהודה אמר דבר תורה בין נודעה בין לא נודעה מכפרת מאי טעמא יאוש כדי קני
§ The mishna teaches that Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Gudgeda further testified about a stolen beam that was already built into a building and said that the injured party receives the value of the beam but not the beam itself. With regard to this, the Sages taught in a baraita (Tosefta, Bava Kamma 10:5): If one robbed another of a beam and built it into a building,
Beit Shammai say: He must destroy the entire building and return the beam to its owners.
And Beit Hillel say: The injured party receives only the value of the beam but not the beam itself, due to an ordinance instituted for the sake of the penitent.
In order to encourage repentance, the Sages were lenient and required the robber to return only the value of the beam. The mishna was taught in accordance with the opinion of Beit Hillel. § The mishna teaches that Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Gudgeda testified about a sin-offering that was obtained through robbery, and said that provided that it was not publicly known to have been obtained in that manner, it effects atonement for the robber. Ulla says: By Torah law, the halakha is as follows: Whether it is known or whether it is not known that the sin-offering was obtained through robbery, it does not effect atonement for the robber who sacrifices it. What is the reason for this? The owner’s despair of recovering an article that was stolen from him does not by itself enable the robber to acquire the stolen item. Since the stolen animal was not altered in any way, it does not belong to the robber, and he cannot sacrifice it as an offering and achieve atonement through it. And what is the reason that the Sages said that if it was not publicly known that the sin-offering was obtained through robbery it effects atonement? It is so that the priests not be distraught about having sacrificed an animal unfit for the altar. The Rabbis said to Ulla: How can you explain the issue in this manner? But didn’t we learn in the mishna: It effects atonement for the benefit of the altar, which indicates that the halakha was enacted for the benefit of the altar, not for the benefit of the priests? Ulla said to them: When the priests are distraught, the altar is found idle. The priests will not sacrifice all of the offerings when they are distraught. This is one explanation, but Rav Yehuda says: By Torah law, whether it is known or it is not known that the sin-offering was obtained through robbery, it effects atonement for the robber who sacrifices it. What is the reason for this? The owner’s despair of recovering an article that was stolen from him by itself enables the robber to acquire the stolen item. Once the owner despairs of regaining possession, the stolen item becomes the robber’s property and he can consecrate it. Therefore, the offering was sacrificed in a fitting manner, and it effects atonement for the robber.
Excerpt from The Torah Case for Reparations by Aryeh Bernstein, March 2018
"In this Congressional session, as in every one for over twenty-five years, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives a bill (H.R. 40), the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, with aim “[t]o address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.”
In all these years, this bill, which is this year co-sponsored by 32 Representatives, has never been brought to the House floor. This reflects the status of reparations in broad, American discourse: they’re seen as a joke. The Torah covenant tells us differently: it is not that reparations are a joke, but that they are so serious and of such massive implication as to cause national vertigo. As Coates put it, “The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter” (We Were Eight Years in Power, 202).
As Jews, if we are to take seriously our Torah, our covenant, our faith, our bris ceremonies and Passover seders, our Kiddush blessings and every time we invoke the “memory of the exodus from Egypt” — זכר ליציאת מצרים — then we cannot participate in that fear or engage in that laughter. Without the justice of reparations, we have no liberation story. Although Rep. Conyers rightfully resigned from Congress recently for his misconduct, the bill must be championed and advanced. It should be a core issue of Jewish American politics to demand that H.R. 40 be brought to the House floor and passed, that reparations be studied by a Congressional Commission. We know that liberation from slavery without reparations is a woefully incomplete liberation. Whenever as Jews we recall the liberation, whenever we read about the Mishkan, and whenever we reflect back on the United States, we must echo Coates’s poignant words: “The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say — that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt… a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.”