In our parasha Ki Tetze we find an extremely important commandment.
“You shall not withhold the wages of a hired worker. You shall give him his wage on his day and not let the sun set over it, for he is poor, and he risks his life for it, so that he should not cry out to thenst you, so that there should be sin upon you.”
The Torah commands not to withhold the wages of an employee who has finished his work after sunset and the employer must pay his wages until morning, unless they agreed differently beforehand. The reason for this mitzvah is not based on considerations of benevolence if the worker might be resourceless, but as an elementary duty of basic fairness for every person. Even when it comes to a rich employee, late payment of his salary, is to some extent, similar to robbery and embezzlement.
Our sages explain that the main obligation to pay the salary on the same day was said for the rich as well as the poor. But in this parasha the Torah emphasized that whoever does not pay the poor man’s wages on time, his iniquity is much greater. Because the basic injustice is joined by the enormous difficulty of the poor man who in certain occasions is ready to risk his life for his salary, and also because the of the pleas of his wife and children, who expect him to bring home bread at the end of the working day.
It is told about Rabbi Isaac Luria Ashkenazi (Jerusalén, 1534-Safed, 1572) known as Ha-Arry Hakadosh, renewed the theory of Kabbalah, who was a great Kabbalist and could recognize the good and bad deeds of a person by looking at his face.
Once on Shabbat evening before the Minha, he called one of his students who was the owner of a sewing factory and told him that he could see on his face that he was a thief. The student was amazed at what he heard, while the rabbi urged him to think about his actions. Suddenly the student remembered that last week a new worker joined the factory, whose job was to sew the buttons. That Friday, the first day that salary for that worker was distributed, the worker’s face was sullen. At that moment the rabbi’s student ran home, took his wallet and rushed to the worker’s house.
The seamstress who was already moments before lighting the Shabbat candles was amazed to see the boss of the factory standing in the doorway. When she asked him what he wanted, the factory owner entered the house and poured the contents of his wallet on the table while asking the seamstress to take the full amount she thought she deserved as her wages. To his surprise, the seamstress took a small amount of coins and said, “This is the full amount I deserve.” The owner of the factory, surprised, asked the seamstress to explain her dissatisfaction with the salary she received and the reason she added another small amount for herself.
The seamstress’s answer was no less surprising. “Because I sew the buttons on harder than other seamstresses, because I add another turn of thread, as a result I make the goods better quality, it takes longer to work and, in my opinion, I deserve a different recognition than the other seamstresses.”
When the rabbi’s student returned to the synagogue, the rabbi smiled at him and said to him, now I see in your face a special holiness that you did not withhold a wage of your workers!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Refael Cohen