The Torah describes a seven-year tithing cycle. Years one, two, four, and five the farmer gave terumah gedolah which is 2% of his crop to the priest. Then he gave the first tithe, ma’aser rishon, 10% to the Levite. Then he separated another 10%, ma’aser sheni, the second tithe, and brought it up or the monetary equivalent to Jerusalem and ate the produce there. In years three and six instead of separating ma’aser sheni, the farmer gave this 10% to the poor, ma’aser oni. On sabbatical year no tithes were separated.
One had to know which fiscal year a
plant grew in to determine whether the tithe was ma’aser sheni or ma’aser oni
because we learned yesterday “one may not set aside teruma and
tithe from the one to the other, as one may not set aside teruma and
tithe from the new
crop for the old nor from the old crop for the new. If it was the
second year of the Sabbatical cycle going into the third year, the halakha
is: From what he picked in the second year he must set aside first
tithe, which he gives to a Levite, and second tithe, which he eats
in Jerusalem; from what he picked in the third year, he must set aside first
tithe and poor man’s tithe, which he gives to one who is needy.” (TB Rosh Hashana 12b, Sefaria.org translation)
Today’s daf TB Rosh Hashana 13 defines the maturation of trees, vegetables,
Rice,
millet, poppy, and sesame to determine its tithing year. “Rabba said: Say that the Sages said
that the tithe year of a tree follows the time of the formation
of its fruit, that of grain and olives follows the time that they reach one-third
of their growth, and that of vegetables follows the time of their picking.”
(Sefaria.org translation) While “We
learned in a mishna there: Rice, millet, poppy, and sesame that took
root before Rosh HaShana are tithed in accordance with the outgoing year,
meaning that second tithe is set aside in the first, second, fourth, and fifth
years of the Sabbatical cycle, and poor man’s tithe is set aside in the third
and sixth years, and they are permitted even if the following year is a
Sabbatical Year. If they did not take root before Rosh HaShana, they
are prohibited if it is the Sabbatical Year, and in ordinary years they
are tithed in accordance with the incoming year.” (Sefaria.org translation)
The rabbis didn’t want to
give the impression that all these tithes would impoverish the Jewish people
living in the land of Israel. They continued to praise the bounty grown in the Promised
Land throughout all of the Talmud to encourage the Jewish people to return home
from the Diaspora[1]. In
answering the question how could the Jewish people offer up the omer of barley on the second day of
Passover when Joshua and the Israelites had just recently begun the conquest, today’s
daf provides one more glowing account
of the wonderfulness of Israel.
“The Gemara answers: It should
not enter your mind to say this, as it is written: “And the people came
up from the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month” (Joshua
4:19). And if it enters your mind to say that the grain had
not grown at all before the Jewish people entered the land, could it
have reached full growth in just five days?
The Gemara
rejects this argument: Rather, what can one say? That the grain had
reached one quarter or one-sixth [danka] of its growth before the
Jewish people conquered the land? This too is difficult, as one can still
ask: Could the grain have reached full growth in just five
days? Rather, what have you to say? One could say that with regard to Eretz
Yisrael it is written: “The land of the deer” (Daniel 11:41), implying
that the grain of Eretz Yisrael ripens with the swiftness of a deer. Here,
too, one can say that “the land of the deer” is written with regard
to Eretz Yisrael and applies to the ripening of the grain, so that it can ripen
in just a few days.”
(Sefaria.org translation) Either from an agricultural reality or just one more
of God’s miracles performed for us in the land of Israel, the rabbis are saying,
“Run home and fulfill the mitzvah of aliya.”
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