[An address delivered at Congregation Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia, November 24, 1962.]
Just at this moment Irvington N.J. houses a rather irate stamp collector. The facts in the case are doubtless well known to you. This man purchased a block of fifty U.S. postage stamps in which he discovered an error, which, in his estimate, placed upon them a valuation of half a million dollars, a sum which apparently he mentally spent within minutes of handing over his two dollars. His dreams were shattered by the Post Office Department, which announced that it proposed to reprint the same error, and flood the market with them, with the avowed purpose of deflating the value of the erroneous stamps. While all this was going on, there was a classic confrontation between a high Post Office official and the collector at the National Postage Stamp Show in New York. The collector is reported to have said as follows: "You took the find of the century away from me. You have put me through - and here he mentioned something which it is not fashionable to mention in pulpits any more - all week... I bought a beautiful error... and you took it away from me." To this outpouring of a bitter soul came the following laconic reply: "What did you buy? I'll tell you what. You bought two dollars' worth of United States Government stamps. And that's what you got, two dollars' worth of stamps."
Now I do not question the reasons that the Government had for closing up the collector's little gold mine. There must have been good questions of public policy involved in the decision. But I must say that the government official was being genuinely and specifically naïve when he suggested that all the collector bought was two dollars' worth of stamps. The non-collector may well gasp in astonishment when he reads of the prices that collectors are prepared to pay to obtain some treasured item. But the fact that they really do it cannot be denied. One only has to read the history of the Rosenbachs [famous Philadelphia art collectors] to see how money can truly flow like water when some rarity is involved.
There are, I suppose, several lessons that might be derived from this incident. One might be that a tussle with the Government over postage stamps is a new way to lose weight, since our collector friend lost fifteen pounds in a week. Others might be expressed by the old saws "Silence is golden," and "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched." But the true moral emerges from the real or assumed naïveté of the government official. Things are not always what they seem. If two dollars' worth of stamps could not sometimes be half a million dollars' worth of stamps, no one could have printed a million defective stamps.
The heroine of today's scriptural reading discovered this. Ostensibly a total stranger asked Rebecca: "Let me sip a little water from your pitcher." Gen 24.17 In reality he was asking: "Are you a suitable wife for my master's son Isaac?" She answered: "Drink, and I will give your camels drink also." But this is only what she outwardly said. In reality she said: "I am a kindly and helpful person, and hence a suitable wife for your master's son Isaac."
Judaism is full of items which are marked "$2" but whose worth is half a million dollars. When a Jew puts on the tefillin, the government official could say: "He is winding a strap around his arm." The collector would say: "No, he is serving his God." When the mistress of the house kindles the Sabbath lights, the government official could say: "She is lighting candles." The collector would say: "No, she is serving her God." When a congregation sits down and hears the words of Torah, the government official could say: "They are listening to a man read from a scroll." The collector would say: "No, they are hearing the words of the living God. They are quenching their thirst and satisfying their hunger. They are performing one of the greatest things in the world." It depends how you look at it. Judaism is full of things which are not what they seem; it takes that little bit of crazy enthusiasm which is as characteristic of the religious personality as it is of the collector or the Jew or the aficionado to look beyond the cold facts to the eternities that underlie them.