By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for the Five Towns Jewish Home

It began with the leftover chocolate cake from the birthday party.  It then progressed to her chocolate from Amsterdam.  Her food was being stolen.  What should she do?  She asked her boss at work in her Tel Aviv office.  Her boss said, “Have you considered introducing some digestibly difficult into the food?”  Ultimately, she did not pursue her boss’s suggestion.

What the boss was suggesting is something called, “Lunch Thief Veangance,”  It is often quite effective in bringing perpetrators back to the straight and narrow path.  But is it halachacially permissible?

Believe it or not, this matter seems to be a machlokes among Poskim.  Rav Yitzchok Zilberstein in his Chashukei Chemed in Bava Kamma 69a seems to permit it based on the concept of “halitahyu l’rasha v’yamus.”  The source of this term is in the Mishnah, in tractate Maaser Shaini, where Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel rules that there is no need to mark fruits that are forbidden to eat because they were planted for natai revai or maaser so that thieves know not to eat them, because in any case eating fruit from the field without permission is theft, and there is no need to prevent the wicked from failing in another offense.

Rav Menashe Klein ob”m, in his Mishne Halachos Vol. XVII #182, however, forbids it.  In most municipalities it is also illegal – so it is best to avoid it.

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