by Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com

This is to settle an argument between two Talmidei Chachomim who may see this.

The Sefer Chasidim (No. 454) states that a person should not do charity with something that is dangerous. It once happened that a person was given a pair of shoes of a meis, a dead person; he wished to give it to a poor person as charity. They told him, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

It seems clear from this Sefer Chasidim that one is prohibited from using the shoes of a dead person, on account of some sort of danger. There are various minhagim about this halachah in terms of whether one may use other shoes that the deceased had worn. Most people observe the custom to refrain from all shoes that belonged to a person who is now deceased, not just the ones worn at death.

However, in Sefer Shut Atzei HaL’vanon, the author, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Tzirelson (1860-1941), claims that an error has crept into the Sefer Chasidim and the text should read meisa- and the meaning is not to take the skin of a dead cow (that died on its own see Rashi) and that the sefer Chasidim is based on the Gemorah in Chullin 94a.

This position is also that of Rav Yechiel Michel Tokachinsky in his Gesher HaChaim (Vo. I p. 58) and that of Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank whom he quotes.

Rav Chaim Kanievsky zatzal in Taamei D’Kra (Dvarim 29:4) however seems to understand the Sefer Chasidim like the original text of the Sefer Chassidim in that the pasuk in regard to shoes changes the tense from plural to singular.  He references the Sefer Chassidim in the unchanged text.

The shoes in the above picture were not that of an actual deceased person and was taken in the late 1930’s.

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