The Donkey That Would Not Eat
A stolen donkey refused all food for three days, came home, and still would not eat until its barley had been tithed.
It is told that one night thieves stole the donkey of Rebbi Pinchas ben Yair and hid it in their cave. For three days the animal stood among them and would not touch anything they gave it. At last the thieves grew worried. If it dies here, they said to one another, it will rot and foul our cave. Better to send it back to its master. They turned it loose.
The donkey made its way home and stood at Rav Pinchas's gate, braying. He knew its voice at once. Open the gate for the poor creature, he told his household, for it has not tasted anything for three days. They let it in and set barley before it, but the donkey would not eat.
They came back puzzled and told him it refused the food. Rav Pinchas asked whether they had cleaned the grain, and they said they had. Then he asked whether they had separated the tithes of demai (produce whose tithing is in doubt). No, they answered; had he not taught them himself that grain bought for an animal is exempt? Rav Pinchas sighed. What can we do for this poor creature, he said, if it is strict with itself? They separated the tithes, and the donkey ate.
The sages never forgot this animal. Generations later, lamenting how far they had fallen from the giants who came before them, they said that they were not even comparable to the donkey of Rebbi Pinchas ben Yair.
Source: Talmud Yerushalmi, Demai 1:3; Midrash Bereishis Rabbah 60:8 (a similar episode at an inn is told in Talmud Bavli, Chullin 7a–7b)
The halacha did not require tithing the donkey's barley, yet in Rav Pinchas's home even the animal reached past the minimum. Pick one mitzvah you already keep, such as a brachah, netilas yadayim or checking a hechsher, and add one small step of care to it this week. Say the brachah slowly enough to hear every word, or read the label you would usually skip. When care becomes the habit of a home, it reaches everything in it.