Pe'ah 046

2:
Our present mishnah introduces us to the second of the four mitzvot referred to above: gleaning. What is surprising is the fact that this new topic is introduced in the middle of a chapter. For four and one half chapters we have been discussing the mitzvah of pe'ah and now suddenly, in the middle of chapter 4 and with no apparent logical connection, the topic changes from pe'ah to leket [gleaning].

3:
I have no explanation for this sudden change. It would seem logical that mishnah 10 should be the first mishnah of chapter 5. This change of topic in mid-chapter does not seem to bother the classical commentators, who refrain from any comment, just as the sudden change to the third topic in the middle of chapter 5 does not seem to bother them!

To be continued.

Which edition of the Mishnah are you using for the study group? Where is it available?

I respond:

It is not easy to answer this question. Perhaps a prior question should be asked: where does the text of the Mishnah come from? The Mishnah was first edited by Rabbi Yehudah, the President of the Sanhedrin, some time before his death in the year 217 CE. (For the sake of convenience we can say that it was published at the start of the third century CE.) No handwritten codices of the mishnah have come down to us. All the manuscript copies of the text that we have are part of the manuscripts of other works – in particular those of the Babylonian Talmud and that of Eretz-Israel. However, the text of the Mishnah in those manuscripts is not uniform (in minor details) – neither when comparing the text as given in the various manuscripts nor even internally within each manuscript itself (where the text of a mishnah is given more than once).

All modern versions of the Mishnah derive directly from the first printed edition. The Mishnah was first printed in Naples, Italy, in 1492. This was an edition of the Mishnah together with Rambam's commentary, so the text is heavily influenced by the text given by Maimonides (and since verified by comparison with the handwritten copy of his commentary salvaged from the Cairo Genizah by Rabbi Solomon Schechter over 100 years ago). This Neapolitan text was the basis for all the editions that came later. One edition, from the Justinian press in 1546/7, makes a valiant attempt to clean up the text and resolves obvious faults. A similar attempt was made by the printer of the Talmud of Eretz-Israel which was published in Venice, Italy, in 1548/9.

But the 'mother' of all modern mishnah texts is the rescension of Rabbi YomTov Lippmann Heller. This text accompanied his critical commentary which was published in Prague 1617 (and reprinted in Cracow in 1643). Unfortunately, later printers were not so scrupulous in their typesetting and many errors crept into later versions of the mishnah – to this very day.

Now to try to answer Joel's question. The translation that I give of each mishnah is based on Rabbi Heller's text ('Tosefot YomTov') slightly altered here and there by reference to Rambam's text (almost 500 years older than Heller's). In our present tractate on a very few occasions my translation has been influenced by the text of the mishnah as given in the talmud of Eretz-Israel.

Any modern text of the Mishnah will be based on the text of Rabbi Heller. There are many versions available in many languages. In the case of many translations a slavish adherence to the forms of the language of the original make difficult reading. In my own translation I have tried to present the text of the mishnah in clear modern English – as idiomatic as the original Hebrew text will permit.

I take this opportunity to wish everybody Gemar Ĥatimah Tovah and well over the fast.