Pe'ah 042

This shiur is dedicated by Sherry Fyman to mark the Yahrzeit of her mother, Glickel bat Pinchas ha'Levi v'Elka. The Yahrzeit falls today.

1:
Our present mishnah is concerned with a change of status. A non-Jew in Eretz-Israel harvests the produce of his field. Immediately afterwards he converts to Judaism. According to Tanna Kamma none of the agricultural 'poor laws' apply to him (or her) for that harvest. While Rabbi Yehudah ben-Ilai agrees with Tanna Kamma that this is true as regards most of the 'poor laws' it is not the case with the forgotten sheaf, and our new convert becomes subject to this law from the moment that he (or she) leaves the water of the mikveh upon their conversion.

2:
The reasoning that underlies our mishnah is, of course, very simple: a non-Jew is not bound by any of the commandments of the Torah. (For the purposes of our discussion here we can ignore the seven Noahide commandments.) Tanna Kamma holds that the three laws that are connected with the harvest become effective from the moment of harvesting. Since, at the moment of harvesting, the owner of the field was not Jewish he is not subject to any of the laws that apply to the produce of that harvest: Gleaning, Forgotten Sheaf and Pe'ah. Now that he is a Jew he will become subject to these laws at the next harvest.

3:
Rabbi Yehudah ben-Ilai agrees in principle that our new convert becomes subject to Torah law only from the moment of conversion. He holds, however, that the law of theforgotten sheaf does not begin to become effective until after the harvesting of the produce. Only when the reaped produce is bundled into sheaves does that law become effective – and when that happened the owner of the field was already Jewish.

4:
The law of the forgotten sheaf derives from the Torah [Deuteronomy 24:19]:

Rabbi Yehudah maintains the literal intention of the verse, which applies to cereal crops that have already been harvested and bundled for removal from the field. Tanna Kamma holds that the Torah uses the seemingly superfluous phrase "in your field" in order suggest that the law would apply not only to the "sheaf in the field" but also to the "produce in the field": if the farmer does not harvest a certain part of his field by oversight he must now leave it for the poor to reap for themselves. The outcome of this strange exposition is that Tanna Kamma holds that the law of the Forgotten Sheaf applies from the moment the produce is in the ground, whereas Rabbi Yehudah holds that it applies only from the moment of sheaving. Tanna Kamma holds that since the law applied at the moment of the harvest and since the owner of the field, being non-Jewish at that time, was not subject to these laws then he is not subject to them for this harvest at all. As we have seen, Rabbi Yehudah holds the differing view in the matter of the forgotten sheaf. Halakhah follows Tanna Kamma, of course.

5:
The Gemara [Pe'ah 18b] adds here another consideration: if the field is owned jointly by a Jew and a non-Jew these laws apply only proportionately to the extent of the Jew's share in the produce.

6:
I mention this last point in order to indicate that this matter of non-Jews converting to Judaism was a serious and viable consideration in Eretz-Israel during the first centuries of the common era. The intelligentsia of the Eastern Mediterranean were by now sufficiently sophisticated to find the traditional belief in the Olympian deities to be nonsensical. They were searching for a more substantial belief and very many found that belief in Judaism. One of the most famous of such converts was Aquila (or, more probably, Achilles) a nephew of the Roman Emperor Hadrian [76-138 CE; he ruled from 117]. There are several accounts extant of conversations in which the uncle tries to dissuade the nephew from converting to Judaism. One such account [Exodus Rabba 30:9] is illuminating:

In Peah 032, in answer to a question, I expatiated further on this matter.