Archives for October 2010

Tractate Peah, Chapter 3 Tosefta 41 [If] the owner [of the field]2 was standing in the city3 and he said, “I know4 that [my] workers are forgetting a sheaf in such and such a place5 [in the field],” and they (i.e. workers) [really] forgot it [there, then] it is not6 [considered to be] Shikcha (forgotten sheaves), [because the owner still knows about it and did not forget it].7 Rebbi Shimon Ben Yehuda says in the name of Rebbi Shimon, “Even if other people were passing by on the road [next to the field] and they saw the sheaf that they (i.e. workers) have forgotten, it is not [considered to be] Shikcha until it gets forgotten by all people, [including the passersby.]”8

מסכת פאה פרק ג תוספתא ד בַּעַל הַבַּיִת שֶׁהָיָה עוֹמֵד בָּעִיר ואמר יודֵע אֲנִי שֶׁהַפּוֹעֲלִים שְׁוכֵחִין עוֹמֶר בְּמָקום פְּלונִי וּשְׁכָחוּהוּ אין שכחה. רבי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן יְהוּדָה אוֹמר מִשּׁוּם רבי שִׁמְעוֹן אֲפִילו אָחֵרִים עוֹבְרִין בַּדֶּרֶךְ וְרָאוּ אֶת הָעוֹמֶר שֶׁשְּׁכָחוּהוּ אין שיכחה עד שישכחוהו כל אדם.

Notes:

1. Mishna Peah 5:7 states that if the field workers forgot a sheaf in the field, but the owner of the field somehow knew that it was left there, or vice-versa, the owner forgot, but the workers still know about it, then that sheaf is not considered to be Shikcha and it still belongs to the owner. Our Tosefta expands on that law. The reason for this law is learned out from verses in Talmud Yerushalmi (Peah 5:6, Daf 27b). The Torah says (Devarim 24:19), “When you will harvest your harvest in your field and you will forget a sheaf …” “Your harvest” implies that the harvest belongs to you and is a reference to the owner of the field. “When you will harvest” implies the person who is actually harvesting, meaning the workers. Therefore the Yerushalmi concludes that the Torah requires both the owner and the workers to forget the sheaf in the field and not just one of them. It should be noted that one could easily explain this verse in a different fashion that the Torah requires the sheaf to be left for the poor only of the owner of the field is harvesting his own field himself, but if he hired workers to do it then it would not apply, since the Torah specifically says “when you harvest your harvest in your field”, you, the owner, and not someone else. However, the Yerushalmi does not interpret the verse that way for a simple reason that if that would be the case then there would almost never be gifts to the poor since most of the time the owner hired workers to harvest his field and did not do it himself. There must have been a tradition for this law that presupposed this Derasha (derivation from the verse).

   It should be noted that there are conflicting readings in the manuscripts of this Tosefta which contradict each other. I have chosen the reading that makes most sense in the context.

2. Literally: “the owner of the house”.

3. The city is not meant here literally. The Tosefta choses the city as a place located far away from the field where the owner does not really have a way of knowing about what is going on in his field.

4. It really makes no difference how the owner knows this or if he is just merely guessing. The Tosefta even implies that he is guessing, because later on it says “and they (i.e. workers) [really] forgot it [there …]”, meaning that it just happened to have worked out to be true, but the owner could have been wrong. Since the owner guessed correctly it is considered to be that he now knows about the forgotten sheaf which disqualifies it from being considered as Shikcha.

5. It is not clear from the Tosefta if knowing the exact location in the field of the forgotten sheaf is a requirement for the fulfillment of this law or not. Technically the owner could just guess that somewhere in the field there is a forgotten sheaf without guessing its exact location. However, it seems to me that the reason the Tosefta adds that the owner specified its exact location and did not just generalize, is in order to prevent the owner from guessing on purpose that the workers forgot sheaves in the field and by doing so make those sheaves not qualify for Shikcha, thus robbing the poor people from their share. Therefore, in order to prevent this legal trickery by the owners of fields, the Tosefta requires that the owner specifies the exact location of the sheaf and only if that location turns out to be correct then it would not be considered Shikcha. But if the owner generalized without being able to specify the location of the sheaf then that would not be enough to make that sheaf not Shikcha and the poor people would still be allowed to take it.

   You may wonder how the poor people would know that the owner still remembers that the sheaf is still in the field thus barring them from taking it. It seems to me that this particular problem would be the responsibility of the owner himself. Mishna Peah 4:5 mentions that there were specific set times during each day when the owners would allow the poor to enter their fields to collect gifts to the poor. Also, it was mentioned in Tosefta Peah 2:6, note 4, that the owner really has to give permission to the poor to enter his field to collect the gifts and they cannot enter the field otherwise. Based on that, I would like to suggest that if the owner knows that there is a sheaf in his field that the poor may confuse for Shikcha, but really it is not Shikcha, then he either must not allow the poor to enter his field until he retrieves that sheaf, or he must declare that sheaf to be ownerless, so that when the poor take it they do not violate the prohibition of theft. The owner would also be required to ask his workers if they forgot any sheaves in the field and only when they tell him no then he can allow the poor to enter the field.

6. I have quoted the text the way it appears in the Vienna manuscript. However, in the Erfurt manuscript instead of the words  אין שכחה(it is not Shikcha) it says, הרי זו שכחה (it is Shikcha). The printed editions follow the Erfurt manuscript. Even though all commentators come up with various reasons how logically this reading makes sense, I would like to illustrate from the wording of the Tosefta that the Vienna manuscript reading is the correct one. The following statement of Rebbi Shimon Ben Yehuda begins with the word “even”. That implies that his statement adds a more extreme case to what the Tosefta has already said. He cannot be arguing the opposite of what the Tosefta said, because then it would not make any sense to begin his statement with the word “even”. Since in all manuscripts his case is an example of a sheaf not being Shikcha that means that the statement of the Tanna Kama is also about a sheaf which is not considered to be Shikcha.

7. This statement of the Tanna Kama is in agreement with the law stated in the Mishna, but the Tosefta adds an important detail and that is the owner can even guess that there is a forgotten sheaf in his field and not just know it for a fact, and as long as he is right then that sheaf is not considered to be Shikcha. From the Mishna alone we would assume that he owner must know this for a fact and guessing would not change the status of the sheaf.

8. The reason that the passersby must also not know about the sheaf is because if they saw it then they can remind the owner or the workers that they forgot a sheaf in the field and that they should go back and get it, and therefore it is considered as if the owner or the workers know about it. It is difficult to understand this statement of Rebbi Shimon Ben Yehuda, because it is not clear how this situation can take place in reality. If the passersby saw it, but kept on going and did not tell the owner or the workers that they saw that sheaf then there is no way for the owner to stop the poor from taking it since he does not know about it himself. This would mean that by taking that sheaf the poor would violate the prohibition of theft inadvertently and there is no way to mend the situation. If that would be the case then this law would serve as stumbling block for the poor, which would be a violation of the prohibition of Lifnei Iver (not putting a stumbling block in front a blind person), which forbids doing things which will cause other people to violate prohibitions. See Vayikra 19:14 and Talmud Bavli Avodah Zara 6a-b. But if the passersby told the owner or the workers then this case is the same as the case of the Tanna Kama and of the Mishna since the owner or the workers now know about the forgotten sheaf and Rebbi Shimon Ben Yehuda does not add anything new.

   In order to resolve this problem it is critical to understand what the status of a sheaf being Shikcha implies. If a sheaf qualifies to be Shikcha then two unrelated things apply to it. One is that the poor people may take it as a gift to the poor. But the other thing, no less important than the first, is that the owner is forbidden to go back and get it. This is explicitly stated in the Torah (Devarim 24:19), “When you will harvest your harvest in your field and you will forget a sheaf in the field, do not go back to take it.” You may wonder how this is possible. If the owner forgot the sheaf then he does not know that he can go back and take it, because he does not know that he sheaf is there. Obviously, the prohibition applies by creating a cutoff point between the sheaf qualifying as Shikcha and the owner finding out about it later on and wanting to go get it. Once the sheaf has been declared Shikcha even if the owner finds out about it later he cannot go back and get it, and if he does so he will violate this prohibition from the Torah. This key point is clarified by Rebbi Shimon Ben Yehuda’s statement. He says that you may think that once the owner and the workers forgot about the sheaf and decided that now they can allow the poor to enter the field, it obtains the status of Shikcha and therefore if later on, before the owner physically allowed the poor to enter his field to collect the gifts to the poor, some passersby come to the owner and tell him that they saw a forgotten sheaf in the field then it is too late and the owner is not allowed to retrieve anymore. Rebbi Shimon Ben Yehuda clarifies that that is not correct and really if passersby saw a forgotten sheaf and went and told the owner about it, even if he has already decided that he is done harvesting and the poor may go into his field and collect their gifts, he is still allowed to go back and retrieve that sheaf since that sheaf has never obtained the status of Shikcha, because the passersby who saw it prevented it from being so.

   However, this law does not impact the poor in any way and does not create a situation where they end up stealing from the owner even if that sheaf never became Shikcha. The reason is because if the passersby never told the owner about it, even though it is not officially Shikcha, it is still considered to be Hefker (ownerless), since the owner does not expect to get it back, because he just assumes that all sheaves that are left in the field at this point are Shikcha and therefore he gives up on getting it back. This is a classic case of a concept of Yiyush (forgoing of one’s ownership of an object) as described in Talmud Bavli Bava Metzia 21b-22b. Since the owner does not know that he can ever get this object back and the object does not have on it any specific marking on it that implies that it belongs to the owner then we assume that he has given up on it and relinquished his ownership over it, which would automatically make the object ownerless, thus allowing anyone to take it.

   In conclusion, Rebbi Shimon Ben Yehuda’s main point is to teach us that even if the owner has completed the harvest and already decided to allow the poor into his field to collect the gifts he may still go back to retrieve that particular sheaf as soon as he finds out about it from the passersby.

   I would like to suggest that if the poor have already entered the field and while they are there collecting the gifts the owner finds out about this sheaf from the passersby then he would not be allowed to go back and retrieve it. The reason being because from that point on he has not relinquished his ownership over it (Meyayesh) since he knows about it, which would make that sheaf not ownerless, thus preventing the poor from taking it and causing a potential situation of theft on their part if they get to that sheaf first. Therefore it would make sense that the status of that sheaf being Shikcha gets frozen and cannot be reversed once the poor have entered the field even if later on passersby find it and report about it to the owner. The same would apply if the poor themselves go back to the owner and tell him that they found a sheaf in the field that he forgot, the owner would not have any power to force them to return that sheaf to him, because even though now he found out about it, its status already has been frozen as Shikcha once the poor have entered the field.

Tractate Peah, Chapter 3 Tosefta 31 We do not give Maaser Ani2 (Tithe of the Poor) to Non-Jewish poor people,3 but we do give them Chulin (ordinary)4 [food], which has been tithed5 [instead of the Maaser Ani] as a nice gesture.6

מסכת פאה פרק ג תוספתא ג אֵין נוֹתְנִין מַעֲשֵׂר עֲנִי לַעֲנִיֵּי גוֹיִם אָבָל נוֹתְנִין לָהֵן חוּלִּין מְתוּקָּנִין לְשֵׁם טוֹבָה.

Notes:

1. Since the previous Tosefta mentioned a law pertaining to gifts to the poor and Non-Jews so this Tosefta states another regarding the same subject. It is not related to any Mishna.

2. For a description of what the tithes are and in particular what Maaser Ani is see above Tosefta 1:6, note 7.

3. Maaser Ani, just like Maaser Sheni (Second Tithe), has a special holiness to it which places on it certain limitations. For example, its recipient was not allowed to use it to repay a debt or give it away as charity to someone else. See Tosefta Peah 4:16. Also, the produce of Maaser Ani had to stay in the Land of Israel and was not allowed to be taken outside of it. See Sifri (Reeh 110). There are other restrictions as well which will be described in Tosefta Peah 4:16. Due to this holiness the produce of Maaser Ani could not be given to a Non-Jew since holy objects were not allowed to be handled by Non-Jews.

It should be noted that Maaser Ani was proactively given by the owner of the produce to the poor after he has separated all of the tithes, as opposed to other gifts to the poor which were simply left in the field and the poor would go themselves and collect them. Therefore with regard to Maaser Ani the owner had a choice to whom to give it to.

I would like to point out that Chasdei David and Minchat Bikkurim explain that the reason that the owner of the produce could not give it to the Non-Jew was not because Maaser Ani has any special holiness to it, but rather because the Torah gave a special privilege to the Jewish poor to take it and protected this privilege by not allowing it to be given to the Non-Jews. This explanation is not correct, because if this was true then all gifts to the poor, including Leket (fallen stalks), Shikcha (forgotten sheaves) and Peah (corners of the field) would only be allowed to be given to Jews since the Torah wanted to protect their privileges of collection. However, Mishna Gittin 5:8 explicitly states that Leket, Shikcha and Peah can be given to poor Non-Jews.

4. Chulin refers to any ordinary object that does not have any special holiness to it.

5. Literally: fixed. Since produce that was untithed could not be eaten once it was tithed it was considered to be “fixed for eating”. Produce that was originally owned by a Jew had to be tithed even if later on it passed through the hands of a Non-Jew. Therefore, Jews were not allowed to give or sell to Non-Jews untithed produce (Tevel) for the fear that the Non-Jew may sell it or give it to another Jew and that Jew will think that he does not have to remove any tithes from it since it came from the Non-Jew, when in reality he does have to remove all of the tithes since the produce originally came from a Jewish farmer. See Tosefta Demai 1:11 and 1:13.

6. Since the general law is that Non-Jews are allowed to take gifts to the poor (see Mishna Gittin 5:8) they are welcome to come by to the granaries together with poor Jews and collect Maaser Ani as well. However, since Maaser Ani cannot be given to Non-Jews due to a technicality in its status the owners were encouraged by the Rabbis to give the Non-Jewish poor a crop donation of the same size as Maaser Ani, but from the owner’s regular crops that do not have any holiness to them. For amounts of Maaser Ani donations for various crops see Mishna Peah 8:5 and Tosefta Peah 4:2.

Tractate Peah, Chapter 3 Tosefta 21 We do not hire Non-Jewish workers [to harvest the fields],2 because they are not well versed3 in [leaving] Leket (fallen stalks), [Shikcha (forgotten sheaves), and Peah (corners of the field)].4

מסכת פאה פרק ג תוספתא ב אֵין שׂוֹכְרִין פּוֹעֲלֵי גוֹיִם לְפִי שֶׁאֵינן פְּקִיעִין בַּלֶּקֶט.

Notes:

1. The Tosefta states a new law regarding gifts to the poor. It is not related to any Mishna.

2. As long as the Non-Jews harvest the produce for a Jewish owner of the field the produce remains obligated in all of the gifts to the poor, since they are acting as the messengers of the Jewish owner, and it is considered as if the owner himself is doing the harvesting. Unlike if the Non-Jews harvest for themselves, even if they are stealing produce of a Jew from his field, then all of the harvested produce in that field is exempt from all gifts to the poor, since it was not harvested for a Jew. See Mishna Peah 2:7 and Talmud Yerushalmi (Peah 2:5, Daf 13b).

3. The word פְּקִיעַ (Pekiya), or as sometimes it is spelled פָּקִיעַ (Pakiya), is a variant of the word בקי (Baki) or בקיא (Bakiya), which means “to be an expert” or “well versed” in something. According to Michael Sokoloff it is a specific variant in the Babylonian Aramaic dialect. See Michael Sokoloff, “A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic,” Bar Ilan University Press, 2002, p. 230, entry בקיע. However, this is not so clear to me as this word appears in multiple Palestinian sources, such as this Tosefta, Tosefta Pesachim 2:2 Vienna Manuscript and Geniza Fragment G2 TS E2 139, Tosefta Yoma 2:5-6 Vienna Manuscript and Geniza Fragment, Bologna State Archive 375, and Tosefta Ohalot 17:12 Vienna Manuscript. It is not really clear why these Toseftot would use a Babylonian Aramaic word and not the more common Palestinian word בקיא (Bakiya).

4. The Tosefta uses Leket as an example, but the same law would apply to Shikcha and Peah as well as is apparent from the discussion in Talmud Yerushalmi (Peah 2:5, Daf 13b).

   In Talmudic times the Jews had a general distrust of the Non-Jews, especially in religious matters, so it was not even an option to consider for the Jewish owner of the field to give explicit instructions to his Non-Jewish workers to leave gifts to the poor, since they were not trusted to follow them. Therefore the Rabbis simply forbade Jewish field owners to hire Non-Jewish workers to do the harvest.

Tractate Peah, Chapter 3 Tosefta 11 [If a poor worker] received [a one time job]2 to harvest a field, [then] his son cannot glean [the gifts to the poor right] after him [before other poor people will have a chance to glean that field].3 Rebbi Yossi says, “His son may glean after him.”4 But sharecroppers,5 and [regular] tenants,6 and a person who sells his standing crops to his friend7 in order [that his friend should] harvest them,8 [in all of these cases] his (i.e. the sharecropper’s, or tenant’s, or friend’s) son can glean [the gifts to the poor right] after him [before other poor people will have a chance to glean that field].9 If there were [in the field] poor people who are not fitting [to be allowed] to glean10 [the gifts to the poor, then] if the owner of the field can prevent them [from gleaning], he is allowed to do so, but if [he is] not [able to prevent them from gleaning,11 then] he should leave them alone [and let them glean anyway] because of peaceful relations [between people].12

מסכת פאה פרק ג תוספתא א הַמְּקַבֵּל שָׂדֶה לִקְצוֹר לֹא יְלַקֵּט בְּנוֹ אַחֲרָיו. רבי יוֹסִי אוֹמר יְלַקֵּט בְּנוֹ אַחֲרָיו. אָבָל הָעֲרִיסִין, וְהֶחָכוֹרוֹת, וְהַמּוֹכֵר קָמָתוֹ לַחֲבֵרוֹ לִקְצוֹר, יְלַקֵּט בְּנוֹ אַחֲרָיו. הָיוּ שָׁם עֲנִיִּים שֶׁאֵינָן רְאוּיִין לְלַקֵּט, אִם יָכוֹל בַּעַל הַבַּיִת לִמְחוֹת בְּיָדָן מְמָחֶה, וְאִם לָאו מַנִּיחָן מִפְּנֵי דַּרְכֵי שָׁלוֹם.

Notes:

1. Mishna Peah 5:5 states that if a poor hired field worker made a deal with the owner of the field that he will receive a part of the harvested crops as wages for his harvesting work then that worker is not allowed to take any of the gifts to the poor from that field on which he is working. However, if the owner did not make this deal with the worker up front, but only gave him a part of the harvested crops after he finished harvesting them then the poor worker is allowed to take Leket (fallen stalks), Shikcha (forgotten sheaves) and Peah (corners of the field) from that field. The reason for this law is that the Torah explicitly says (Vayikra 19:9 and 23:22) that the owner of the produce is not allowed to glean his own produce. But in this case the worker acquired the harvested produce at the moment of cutting it off, which is the same time as the obligation of the gifts to the poor fell on the produce, so if he would glean it then he would be gleaning his own produce. However, if the owner of the field gave a portion of the harvested produce to the worker only after he finished harvesting it then as the produce was cut off it still belonged to the owner of the field and therefore by the time the worker takes it he is gleaning the field owner’s produce and not his own.

   Mishna Peah 5:6 states that the owner of the field is not allowed to hire workers to do harvesting work in his field on condition that one of the worker’s sons will be allowed to take the gifts to the poor from the field where these workers are working before all other poor people and in exchange for that the owner will deduce the amount of the value of these crops that the son takes from the wages of his father. The reason for this law is that the owner of the field ends up profiting at the expense of the poor people, which is considered to be stealing from the poor.

   This Tosefta states a new law regarding gifts to the poor which is a combination of the two cases discussed in the two Mishnayot mentioned above. The owner of the field hires a poor worker to harvest the crops by paying him with a portion of the harvested produce. And at the same time the worker wants the owner of the field to allow his son to glean the produce in return for a deduction of his father’s wages, or in this case harvested crops, for the harvest.

2. The Tosefta must be talking about a case where the worker received the job of harvesting the field on a one time basis. Because if it something that he does regularly that would mean that he is like a renter of the field who receives some kind of wages for his work and that case is explicitly mentioned in the next statement of the Tosefta which says that the law by such a renter is different. Also the word הַמְּקַבֵּל (Hamekabel), “one who received” or “one who accepted” implies that this was done on a one time basis as something that the person normally does not do. I am aware of the fact that in Mishna Peah 5:5 this phrase is not used in this type of connotation, but we have to remember that we are dealing with statements in oral tradition where the original statement’s meaning may have changed depending on who was interpreting it, and therefore the statement that the Mishna recorded could have been clarified by Rebbi Yehuda according to his own interpretation and not according to the original intent of whoever said it earlier.

3. It is assumed by many commentators on the Tosefta, that the obscure expression of the Tosefta “one who receives a field to harvest” is stated in the exact same context as in Mishna Peah 5:5, where it is explicitly stated by Rebbi Yehuda that the case in which the Mishna prohibits a poor worker to glean the field for the gifts to the poor as he is harvesting it, is only if his wages constitute part of the harvest. And it is implied by the Mishna that if his wages will be paid in cash and he must return all of the harvested produce to the owner of the field, then he would be allowed to glean as he harvests, because he is not gleaning his own crops, but rather the field owner’s crops. So therefore our Tosefta must be in agreement with the Mishna regarding the reasoning for this law and therefore it also must be talking about a case where the poor worker is supposed to receive a portion of the harvest as his wages, and not cash. I would like to reject this explanation and suggest that the Tosefta does not specify on purpose what the worker is getting paid for his services in order to teach us that it does not matter what he gets paid, a portion of the harvested crops or cash, because according to the Tanna Kama of our Tosefta in both of these cases his son would not be allowed to glean after his father as his father is harvesting the crops.

   Also it is assumed by many commentators that the Tosefta is talking about either a son who is a minor (below the age of 13) and therefore anything that he acquires automatically belongs to his father or a son who is an adult but relies on his father to support him and therefore anything that he acquires automatically belongs to his father. And since his father is not allowed to glean the crops that he is harvesting and getting paid with, because they belong to him, then also his dependent son is not allowed to glean after his father since then the father will end up acquiring those gleanings for himself. The reason they explain the Tosefta this way is because Talmud Bavli (Bava Metzia 12a-b) quotes a Beraita similar in context to this Tosefta and explains that that Beraita must be talking about a son who is either a minor or is supported by his father, because if the son was an adult and not supported by his father then he would acquire the gleanings himself and that would not be a problem since the son himself is poor he is not any different from any other poor person, even if his father is rich and is not eligible for gifts to the poor.

   I would like to reject all of these explanations and suggest that the Tosefta does not need to be limited to any of the above mentioned cases. The Tosefta could be even talking about a worker who is getting paid in cash and his son who is poor and is gleaning after him is an adult and does not depend in anyway on his father. The reason that the Tosefta prohibits the son to glean after his father is not because the father ends up acquiring gleanings from his own produce, but rather because this situation constitutes a conflict of interest in a case which involves a not poor person trying to benefit his own family. And the Tosefta is quoting an argument between the Rabbis all of whom tried to protect the poor in a dire situation. It has nothing to do with legal ramifications of who acquires what and when as is the case of the Mishna or as the Talmud Bavli explains the Beraita. In order to understand what the Rabbis were trying to do by enacting these laws it is important to know the background of agricultural situation during the times of the Tosefta. As I already mentioned earlier (see Tosefta Peah 2:17, note 1) the financial situation in the 3rd century CE of farmers was rapidly degrading. Many people could not afford to farm their own fields and therefore were forced to either rent a rich person’s field for a share of the crops or a set rent payment, or had to sell their farming skills as day laborers. In all of these cases these farmers were poor people whose livelihood was very unstable. Therefore if such a farmer, even if he himself did not need gleanings, had a son who was so poor that he had to rely on gleanings, prohibiting his son from getting first dibs on the gleanings could undermine the financial stability of the whole family. The rabbis were very sensitive to this situation and tried to ameliorate it in any way possible. In order to get a better feel for the agricultural and financial situation of Jews in the 3rd century CE in the Land of Israel I strongly recommend to the reader to read Daniel Sperber’s book, “Roman Palestine, 200-400, The Land.”, Bar-Ilan University, 1978, because without a clear understanding the background of the times it is pointless to try to understand the severity of the laws discussed in this Tosefta.

   It should be noted that harvesting fields by hand is a back breaking job and was usually done by the poor sector of society, since if anyone who was rich enough that he could afford not to do it would not do it. In our case, since the father received this job on a one time basis, as opposed to doing this as his regular job, it is assumed by the Tanna Kama that he himself is not a poor person. We do not know why he accepted to do it in this particular case, but whatever that reason may be it is not because he needs the money or the crops. If that is true then it would constitute a conflict of interest for a so-called “rich” father to push forward his poor son to collect the gleanings and by doing so diminish the amount of gleanings from the other poor people. In this case the Rabbis felt that if the father is well off then he can at least provide something to his poor son that it is not necessary to give the son a privilege to glean first before the other poor people. And therefore the Tanna Kama prohibits the son from gleaning after his father’s harvest, before all other poor people, in this particular case. However, on other cases, where it is clear that the father himself is also poor, since he is renting the field or he does not even have a field under any conditions and he has to buy standing crops from a field owner and harvest them himself, then even the Tanna Kama was lenient and allowed the poor son to glean after his father’s harvest, since it was clear that these gleanings are crucial to the financial stability of the whole family, and if the son would not get first dibs on the gleanings then it is very possible that the next day the father will have to support him completely, something that he cannot afford to do, and therefore the whole family will collapse.

4. Rebbi Yossi disagrees with the Tanna Kama, because he feels that there is no way that a well to do person will agree to harvest someone’s field without being desperate for the income, which makes him poor. And therefore even in this odd case the son may glean after the father’s harvest based on the reasoning explained in the previous note.

   It should be noted that this is the end of Rebbi Yossi’s statement. The following statement is made by the Tanna Kama, which not disputed by anyone. This is evident from the way Rebbi Yossi’s statement is phrased. If he would have made the following statement also then the next phrase would not begin with the word “but” and would not repeat the phrase “his son may glean after him”. The reason I have pointed this out is in order to refute the explanation of the Minchat Yitzchak who attributed the following statement to Rebbi Yossi as well and changed the text of the Tosefta without any reason in order to avoid the problems with his explanation that I have pointed out.

5. An Aris, spelled in Hebrew either אריס or עריס, is a sharecropper. There is some dispute to the etymology of the Hebrew word Aris. It is possible that it comes from the Greek word ούρος (Uros), meaning “guardian” or “overseer”, and has been adopted into Hebrew with a more precise meaning. Perhaps this is also the reason why the spelling of this word varies eithers with an Aleph or with an Ayin, since it is a foreign word and it was never clear how it should be pronounced and spelled. However, others dispute that idea and claim that it is an original Hebrew word. For a discussion of this matter see Eliezer Ben Yehuda, “Milon Halashon Haivrit Hayeshana Vehachadasha”, Vol. 1, p. 391, footnote 1, entry אריס, and Alexander Kohut, “Aruch Hashalem”, Vol. 1, pp. 297-298, entry אריס.

A sharecropper is a tenant laborer who rents another person’s field and instead of paying rent and keeping all of the produce, gets to keep a part of the produce for himself and return a part of the produce to the landowner. This type of an arrangement was safer for the tenant and involved more risk for the landlord. During a bad year when the crop yield is very low, the tenant would give away a percentage of the crops to the landlord, but at least he would get to keep some of the crops for himself. If he was to pay a set sum of money as rent, it would be possible for him to owe the landlord more money than the crop that he harvested that year, which would put him into great debt. At the same time the landlord took a risk that although in a good year he may end up with a large profit from the percentage of the crops that he gets, in a bad year he may end up with almost nothing, if the yield of the crops is really low. However, during the 3rd century CE the financial and agricultural situation in the Land of Israel was so bad that many landlords did not have a choice, but to agree to a sharecropping deal with their tenants, since doing it any other way would simply make the tenant become in such debt that he would have to sell himself into slavery.

6. A חָכוֹר (Chachor), or sometimes spelled חָכוּר (Chachur), or חָכיִר (Chachir), is a regular tenant who pays rent to the landlord using money. In this case, since he is renting a field he pays a set amount of money as rent and gets to keep the entire crop for better or for worse. This word is an original Hebrew word meaning “tenant” or “renter” and comes from the root חכר (Chakar) which means “to rent”.

7. “Friend” is a common way in Talmudic literature to refer to another Jew.

8. The reason why a field owner would sell standing crop is essentially to minimize his risk during the harvest. There are multiple problems that can go wrong with the crops during the harvest and storage of harvested crops, such as sudden bad weather and bug infestations. So in order to minimize his risk the field owner would sell his standing crops to someone else who will deal with the harvest. This technique is even implemented today by some farmers. For example, see fact sheet “Selling Standing Barley as Greenfeed or Silage”, Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food, July 2008, http://www.agriculture.gov.sk.ca/Default.aspx?DN=ead45559-907f-4d09-b601-467b65c10f04, Last accessed on September 27, 2010.

9. As was already mentioned above in note 3 the reason that the Rabbis have allowed the son to glean after his father’s harvest is because in all of these cases the father is considered to be a poor individual and compromising his even poorer son’s livelihood may throw the father into even greater poverty where the father would have to glean and beg himself.

10. It is not clear from the Tosefta why some poor people would not be eligible to glean. Minchat Yitzchak explains that this is talking about Non-Jewish poor people who are not eligible to collect the gifts to the poor prescribed by the Torah. However, that seems to be incorrect, because Tosefta Peah 3:3 implies that all gifts to the poor that do not have any holiness to them, which would include Leket, Shikcha and Peah (unlike Maaser Ani, which has holiness to it), can be given to poor Non-Jews. Also if the Tosefta would have been talking about Non-Jews then it would have stated so explicitly as it does in various places. Chazon Yechezkel explains that it is talking about Jewish poor who are suspected of theft and therefore the owner does not want to allow them to glean in his field, because he is afraid that they will steal some of his crops. This explanation also does not fit very well, because the fact that a poor person is a suspected thief does not make him not eligible to collect the gifts to the poor. Also, if that was the meaning of the Tosefta it should not have used the expression “not eligible”, but rather should have said “if the field owner is concerned that they will steal from him”.

    I would like to suggest that the Tosefta is talking about Jewish poor people who are really not eligible to collect the gifts to the poor, because they are simply not poor enough. Mishna Peah 8:8 explicitly states that a person who has in his possession at least 200 Zuz (זוז) cannot collect gifts to the poor, because he is just not poor enough. However, that does not mean that he is rich by any means. In order to understand how much money that really was we have to convert it into today’s terms. A Zuz is a general Aramaic term for the main coin of the day. It comes from the Akkadian word Zuzu, which is a reference to a weight called Zuzu or as it was called later in Aramaic Zuz. The name for the weight seems to originate from the Akkadian word Zazu meaning “to divide”, perhaps because weights were used to divide the measured produce into specific amounts. After have been replaced by coins the word Zuz became a general reference to a common coin. See Michael Sokoloff, “A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic,” Bar Ilan University Press, 2002, pp. 173-174, entry זוז, and “The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language”, 4th ed., Houghton Mifflin, 2006, entry zuz. So when it is used in the Mishna it is referring to the Roman Denarius since all of the rabbis of the Mishna lived in the Roman Empire. When it is used in the Talmud Bavli in statements of Babylonian Amoraim it is referring to a Sassanian Drachma which was the money of Sassanian Persian Empire. See Daniel Sperber, “Roman Palestine 200-400 Money and Prices”, Bar Ilan University Press, 1991, p. 31 and p. 145.  A daily wage for a grain silo worker in the Land of Israel in the 2nd century CE was 1 Denarius (or as it is known in Talmudic literature “Dinar”)  per day. See Tosefta Bava Metzia 6:5. That means that 200 Denarii was a wage for 200 days, which is about 8 months worth of work if we assume a 6 day work week. Judging by today’s standard a silo worker earns the minimum wage or close to it, so 1 Denarius per day was a sort of accepted minimum wage of the 2nd century CE Roman Palestine. If we would convert that into today’s terms the Federal Minimum Wage in the United States as of July 24, 2009 is $7.25 per hour, which would be $7.25 * 9 work hours per day = $65.25 per day. In 200 days a silo worker nowadays would earn $13,050. According to the Mishna this would be the threshold of poverty that would make a poor person eligible to collect the gifts to the poor. It should be noted that the Mishna requires that this money has to be in the person’s possession and not just be his salary, since in ancient times job security was non-existent and a day laborer did not know if he will be working the next day or not or if he will actually get paid. Whether the same would apply in today’s standards is debatable since many people who are employed have some sort of job security and assume that they will retain their job for the near future with all kinds of protections in place, such as severance pay. Also it is not that common to find a person today who would have $13,050 in cash as his savings. For all practical purposes we can compare the threshold of the Mishna of possession of 200 Zuz to an individual today in the United States who has a steady job earning $7.25 per hour and has more than one mouth to feed.  I have ignored taxes from my calculation on purpose since a resident of the Roman Empire also had to pay taxes which greatly varied by locality and therefore it is simply not fare to compare tax rates from then to today.

11. The Tosefta does not specify in what way the owner is able or not to prevent these non-eligible poor people from gleaning. However, I am convinced that it is referring to a peaceful method, since it concludes its statement that for the sake of peace the owner should not prevent them. The Tosefta must be referring to a simple verbal protest by the owner against these people collecting and if they ignore him then he just should let them glean anyway.

12. The 200 Zuz threshold that the Rabbis have enacted was intended to make sure that there will be enough gifts to the poor for the real poor. It is the same as today the government not allowing people whose income is above a certain threshold to collect food stamps. However, the Rabbis were not interested in causing fights between people in order to enforce this law. Therefore if non-eligible poor simply ignored the owner’s verbal request not to glean the owner had to let them glean anyway and not put up any resistance.