Reward For Fairness
The Torah scholar from Bnei Brak had rented a vacation facility in a moshav near the northern border. Then came the Second Lebanese War, which made it unfeasible to go to a place so near the Hizballah guns.
Even before he consulted an authority on the halachic aspects of asking that the money he had paid in advance — a sum of $600 — be refunded, he decided to call the observant Jew from whom he had rented the place. That fellow immediately responded to his "Hello" that he is aware of why he is calling and that he need not worry about the money. A couple of days later the entire sum arrived in Bnei Brak, but did not entirely ease the conscience of the renter. He called to offer him a part of the money he had returned and was surprised to hear the reaction.
"Do you think I lost out?" said the fellow in the moshav. "I succeeded in renting out that facility for double the amount of money we had agreed upon!"
"But who would agree to pay such a sum in such troubled times?" he was asked.
The answer was that reporters covering the war found this facility ideally located.
