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20.10.12

I learned Books of Ethics (Musar) along with the Talmud.  This set of books  set of books were written in the middle ages and are meant to distill the basic ethics of the Talmud.

I once heard say that whenever one is asked for charity, he should always give and mot ask about who is asking. This is derived from a law in the Shulchan Aruch about Purim. It so happened that I was in a certain city playing the violin on the street. In this city there were anti Semites.
Eventually other beggars stated asking me for money as I was playing the violin. There was one German fellow who also used to ask me for money. He thought that since I was playing Mozart that I must like Germans. In fact he is wrong. I just happen to like Mozart. However since he is poor and he he was asking for money so according to this idea of always giving to a poor person I had to oblige. Once he heard his friends in the center of town scheming to rob and kill me, and warned me and  introduced me to the head of the Mafia in that area and told him to keep watch out for me. It so happened that the head of this Mafia was also of German extraction [though he spoke  only Russian].
That was the end of that problem.

After this I thought to myself of the verse cast your bread on the face of the waters and in the space of many days you will find it again.