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have calmed himself and drawn the strength instead of taking his
aggravation to heart?

Response: This question is discussed by the Torah prince Rabbi
Moshe Chagiz (Shtei Halechem, 15) who writes: “I shall yet write at
length, with Hashem’s help, in my response concerning that scoun-
drel who stole his colleague’s wife as well as his money and I shall
publicly prove that his confession is insufficient to purify himself
from his scourge. Now, his confession may help him for the other
sins he did in violating Torah law and going with the prostitute to
the lands of apostasy. If so, for his sins between man and G-d, if he
no longer returns to his foolish ways, his confession will certainly be
desired and accepted.

However for the robbing the money and for the physical injury to
the woman’s husband in forbidding her to him, as a result of which
he died, there is no doubt that his confession and all the sacrifices he
might offer will not help him until he appeases the dead man and his
relatives and heirs by returning what he stole and asking for forgive-
ness. And if they do not want to forgive him, that is their entitlement,
as a great many of the generation’s foremost Torah scholars have
agreed with me, as will become apparent to the public in the right
hour and time both in halachic ruling and in practice.”

Here then, he mentions that for“the physical injury to the woman’s
husband in forbidding her to him, as a result of which he died…all
the sacrifices he might offer will not help him.” According to the opin-
ion of the Mishneh Halachos – that if a person harmed his colleague
by building close to his house, as a result of which the colleague died,
the victim is considered liable for his own death – why should we
not say here too that the husband is responsible for his own death?
One can say that monetary loss or disputes between neighbors are
different, because they can be fixed, and in such cases, the party who
sustained the damage should have fortified himself and not taken it
to heart, which cannot be said in regard to a stolen wife, for which
there is no restitution.

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