Monica

My comment: Priesthood is based on inheritance but community leadership is based on merit. God will accept inheritance for those who interact with him [1], but for leading people, demonstrated merit is required.

[1] Priests can be disqualified under some circumstances, but the default is "in".

I find a few things interesting about this:

The lesson seems to be that we not only hold the lost item but, when that makes sense, increase its value. One could have reasonably argued that when the man showed up Chanina owed him a hen, but that's not what happened.

We sometimes hear stories of how someone abandoned what he was doing to search high and low for the owner of a lost item, and in fact the talmud has a lot to say about this -- that it is inconvenient to search for the owner doesn't excuse us from doing it anyway. In this story Chanina waits but doesn't search. It's possible that the rabbis go on to argue about how he didn't do enough (the talmud is big and contains many cross-references, so for all I know there's a discussion of this story in tractate sanhedrin or something), but in the discussion in this part of the talmud, Chanina is clearly considered to have done a good thing. (Those goats brought him other rewards before the man came to claim them.)

Chanina didn't just take the man's word for it; he asked for a sign. A man's word is important, but we needn't decline to ask for proof. That said, I wonder what kind of sign the man could have given, or how much proof it's appropriate to seek for a mere chicken. I commented to the rabbi this morning that I was curious about the sign, especially as the chicken was no longer there ("it had a little white spot below its beak..." or the like). He suggested that this might go to show Chanina's observance of details, that he could match a description of a long-gone hen. Another possibility occurred to me: any sign might have been good enough, and the point was to ask the man for something (on the theory that a cheat would demur rather than giving a sign that would turn out not to apply).

(My secondary source doesn't say why a red thread is identified with sinfulness. The only red thread that immediately comes to mind from Tanach is the one in Joshua that the two spies tell the woman in Jericho to use to signal her house so she'll be spared in the invasion -- which suggests righteousness, not sin, in that case.)

(This is a place-holder for a commentary on reading meaning into mitzvot versus "because God said so".)

In the second year after the Exodus the people begin their journey from Har Sinai, and soon they begin to complain about the lack of meat and fish like they had back in Mitzrayim. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch says that they do not complain out of nostalgia; rather, they are bored. All their needs are met with no effort on their part: manna and water are delivered daily, and they have the mishkan and divine protection. They feel, Hirsch says, as if they have no challenges. (Commentary on Num 11:1-11)

On a personal note, I have trouble understanding boredom. Yes, I've been in situations where I was bored and couldn't escape, but for the most part, I fill my days -- if not with activity, then at least with thinking. It can be a challenge sometimes to get my brain to shut up sometimes. I certainly remember the dull "are we there yet?" moments of my childhood, but I'm not sure Rabbi Hirsch isn't doing the Israelites a disservice with this interpretation. But on the other hand, they do act like whiny brats sometimes. :-)