According to the Midrash (Shemos Rabba 14:3), as mentioned by Rashi (Shemos 10:22), when the Bnei Yisrael asked the Egyptians for valuables to take with them upon leaving Mitzrayim, the Egyptians sought to excuse themselves, saying, “We don’t have anything to lend you.” The Bnei Yisrael, however, had taken advantage of the plague of darkness to inventory the Egyptians’ household effects, and repulsed this excuse by detailing the household objects and their exact locations.
Is the Egyptian excuse permissible? There are several reasons why it might be.
The first is a general understanding that when someone asks a favor, a polite refusal may involve a somewhat imprecise reply. Rav Yaakov Fisch, in his monumental work on truth-telling “Titen Emes leYaakov” (example 129, pg. 349) brings examples of Torah leaders who justify such conduct. In particular, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach ruled that if a person has a good reason to refrain from lending money to someone, he can state “I don’t have any money handy,” which is understood to mean “I don’t have any money handy for you, now.” Rav Fisch adds that Rabbi Auerbach personally conducted himself in this fashion.
According to this leniency, if the person asking a favor presses the issue and asks, “Do you really mean that you have no free funds at all?” explicitly ruling out the polite interpretation, it would be necessary to tell the truth. And this was indeed Rabbi Auerbach’s instruction.
A distinct leniency is a protective lie. As we mentioned in the column on parshat Veyechi, it is permitted to make up a cover story to avoid having to disclose information that would expose a person to undeserved consequences. One such consequence is being shamed into spending beyond one’s means to help a needy person. The Gemara (Bava Basra 8b, ruled in SA, YD 248:7) applies the Biblical admonition (Yirmiyahu 30:20) “And I will deal with all his oppressors” to the case of a person who is pressured by charity collectors to giving beyond what he should be fairly assessed. And the Rambam (Teshuvah 4:4) considers “eating from a meal which is insufficient for its host” to be “bordering on theft” (avak gezel). The case is where the host is very poor and only agrees to share his food with the guest out of shame.
The conduct of the nascent Jewish People in this Midrash equally requires justification. Intruding into someone’s privacy is generally forbidden. One halachic rubric for this is hezek reiyah – the tort of “seeing”: Neighbors are not only forbidden from paying attention to the private conduct of their neighbors but are in fact required to take affirmative measures to prevent themselves from such intrusiveness (SA, CM 154:7). Another relevant halachic category is rechilus. The usual definition of rechilus is indiscriminately spreading someone’s private information to others (as opposed to leshon hara which implies specifically defamatory information). However, Rav Yaakov Hagiz (Yad Ketana 276) concludes that spying on someone is halachically equivalent. “It seems to me that it is [already] forbidden to seek out the private affairs of one’s fellow, for what difference is there between ‘don’t go as a talebearer’ to other people and ‘don’t go as a talebearer’ to yourself”?
The ultimate harmonization of the Choshen Mishpat conduct of the Egyptians and the Bnei Yisrael seems to be as follows: the Egyptians were justified in giving a reserved reply to their Jewish neighbors, as they had a reasonable concern that the Jews might shame them into giving gifts beyond their means. But the Jews were equally justified in worrying that without proper verification of the facts, the Egyptians would give gifts that were unfairly stingy. Hence they limited their initial search and verification, and their subsequent demand, to gifts which were reasonable based on each neighbor’s wealth.
The Midrash supports the idea that our forefathers in Egypt limited their search and demand to permissible scope; it states that the Egyptians felt reassured by the fact that the Bnei Yisrael could easily have despoiled them during the days of darkness, but refrained from doing so, instead only requesting voluntary gifts.
