For the source text click/tap here: Bava Metzia 33
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In returning lost objects, must a person put others’ interests before his own? The Mishna on our daf clearly rules that a person must look out for his own financial interests. Thus, a person must take care of his own property before returning a lost object to others – even to his father or to his teacher.
Nevertheless, the Mishna teaches that his teacher will take precedence over his father with regard to these laws, since his father brought him into this world but his teacher has prepared him for the World to Come.
However, if one’s father is also a Torah scholar, the finder should return the object of the father. The wording of the Mishnah does not differentiate whether the father is a greater scholar than the rebbe, or if he is less of a scholar than the rebbe. Once the father is qualified as a scholar in his own right, the halacha is that his son must give priority to his lost object over that of the rebbe.
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