“Your child’s cup of milk is the same as my child’s cup of milk” I say to taxi drivers who wants to up prices as well as to the fish man at the open market.

How can I argue with another Jew about a few shekels when if that same person came to my house with their family I’d happily serve them food and drink worth ten times the amount of the few shekels we hondled over.

If his child has a cup of milk it’s the same as my child having a cup of milk no? Aren’t we all Hashem’s children?

I heard a moving story the other day. A woman gets on a bus with a bus ticket. It’s a child’s bus ticket only good if you’re under eighteen. She was told an adult can use it if the driver punches it two times as the price of two children’s rides equals the price of one ride for an adult.

She gets on the bus one morning hands the driver the ticket and says “Please punch two times.”

The driver punches the card one time then looks up and says “Who’s the second punch for?”

“Me.”

“Who told you you can punch two times?” he screams.

“I don’t know” she answers. She kind of remembers one of her children told her this.

“Well I do know because I’m Egged and you’re not and this isn’t allowed!”

“Okay” she says innocently “give me back the card and I’ll give you cash.”

“I already punched it!” the driver yells. He holds the card hostage not giving it back.

“I’m happy to lose a punch” she offers.

The driver refuses to give back her bus ticket.

“This time I’ll punch it” he punches the card “but don’t ever do this again in your life!” He shoves the ticket back.

Before she has a chance to process the event she looks up and sitting in the first row directly behind the driver is her son’s rebbi for the upcoming year.

She sits down trying to take the incident in stride and trying to keep up the good-morning attitude she got on the bus with. But within seconds tears course down her face. It’s bad enough to be screamed at by a bus driver but compounded by the face of her son’s rebbi staring right at her a witness to her shame is too much.

She starts to question why this happened as she already knows in life nothing’s for nothing. Then she remembers that the day before she embarrassed someone. Publicly and verbally. Not quite so loudly but still the same. And here today is her measure for measure.

She feels somewhat comforted remembering that when one doesn’t respond to public embarrassment it erases sin. The combination of the bus driver yelling at her and the rebbi witnessing her shame must have really wiped her slate clean.

Yet letting a driver a person a Jew get away with that doesn’t sit comfortably with her.

After a day of percolating she decides to take the same bus at the same hour on another day this time with exact change. She’ll tell the bus driver quietly and privately how he’d publicly shamed her to the point of tears. This way he’ll have the opportunity especially now that it’s Elul to ask forgiveness because he is a Jew and because he probably just made a mistake just like she had the day before. Although she had already forgiven him so she wouldn’t have to carry his sin around with her.

But she wanted to do it for more than those reasons. She wanted to do it for any other woman man or child who might get on this driver’s bus and be publicly shamed.

We are Jews. Your joy is my joy. Your pain is my pain. And your child’s cup of milk is my child’s cup of milk.