I had a run in with shabbos guest theft for the first time this past shabbos, one of the fellows staying at my house knew someone at shul and that someone tried to steal him away. Instead of getting violent about him trying to rain on my hachnosos orchim brigade, I shrugged my shoulders and told him that it was up to my guest. If it was my only guest of the evening, I would have made a bigger stink, but knowing that I was getting some brownie points already meant that I could share the guest with someone else. Unfortunately, my shul is full of shabbos guest theft, you see the problem with having an uber friendly shul is that everyone wants to have guests and sometimes they covet your guests.
I’m not sure how I feel about the shabbos guest theft that goes on here, I have witnessed theft from the opposite end of the spectrum. I myself have been involved in theft, because everyone wants to have my wife and I over and sometimes other people try to swoop in and steal us from our hosts. On more than one occasion someone has literally asked our hosts if they could have us and then informed us that we were coming to them, in that case I get pissed because meals are set up for a multitude of reasons usually based more on company and location than food.
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