Q&A: Isrotel
Isrotel
Question
At the height of the coronavirus period, the hotel company Isrotel received various grants totaling 36 million shekels. When the coronavirus subsided a bit and people returned to hotels, Isrotel raised prices and filled rooms with Israelis who were effectively trapped here, and in the end it reached the best quarter in its history, with a dividend to the owners of 25 million.
Should they be asked to return the money? Or since at the time they received it because they were in a bad situation, whatever they later earned through smart business is nobody else’s concern?
Answer
You’re talking about the state. A state operates according to law, and if the money was given without conditions, it cannot demand it back. If it had been given מראש on condition that if there were profits it would be returned as a loan, that would certainly have been reasonable.
Discussion on Answer
At first you asked whether it is appropriate to demand the money back, not whether it would be proper to return it voluntarily. It is certainly proper to return it.
What would be appropriate is to throw in jail all those who handed out free money.
See Peah 5:4: “A householder who was traveling from place to place and needed to take gleanings, forgotten produce, the corner of the field, and the poor tithe—he may take them, and when he returns home he must repay, these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer. And the Sages say: at that time he was poor.”
Nice reference.
And if a friend gives a grant to another friend who got into trouble, and then the one who was in trouble pulled himself together like a man and made a fortune, shouldn’t we expect him to repay the caring and generous friend?