Every morning on the way to his Talmud Torah, little Ben-Tzion would pass his father Rabbi Eliyahu’s shoemaker shop. He would call out to his father; “Abba, good morning and have a great day”!! then he would continue on his way. One day the boy changed his custom and didn’t visit his Abba at the shoemaker shop as usual. Why? What happened?
That day Ben-Tzion left the house and saw the milkman with his donkey all loaded up with milk jugs. In those days you didn’t buy milk in a bag or container like today. A milkman would come from the barn with big jugs full of milk. Even the lid of these jugs could hold a liter of milk. Each morning the milkman would make his deliveries from door to door bringing jugs of milk to the people who would pay him for the milk.
Ben-Tzion was on his way to school when he saw the milkman in front of him. His sharp eyes saw that under the big jug was a steady drip of milk coming out drop by drop from the bottom of the big jug. Ben-Tzion understood there was a small hole in the jug that was causing the milk to leak out.
“I have a mitzvah of returning a lost item!” thought Ben-Tzion. He ran to the donkey and pulled the lid off the jug and held it under thee jug to catch the leak.
The milk man was delivering his other jugs to the houses and in the meantime benTzion waited for the lid to fill up and carefully poured it back into a jug. The milkman came back and asked him; “what are you doing?” Ben-Tzion shyly answered, “I’m fulfilling the mitzvah of returning a lost item. It’s a pity all that milk should go to waste!” The milkman said it’s nothing it’s just a few drops! But Ben-Tzion said “even those few drops are money belonging to a Jew”!