Produce designated for fodder or straw are not subject to
[the law of] shikhechah. The same applies to bundles of garlic, bunches of garlic and onions. According to Rabbi Yehudah anything that grows under ground, such as 'luf', garlic and onions is not subject to
shikhechah, but the
[rest of the] sages say that they are
[subject to] shikhechah.
The law of shikhechah applies when one reaps and sheaves by night, and to the blind person. But if one's only intention was to collect the large ones [the law of] shikhechah does not apply. If [the farmer] says, "I hereby [declare] that I reap on condition that I may collect anything that I forget" – [the law of] shikhechah does apply [to what he reaps].
1:
The law of
shikhechah only begins to apply to ripened produce that has been reaped. If the produce were harvested before it ripened, therefore, the law would not apply. Mishnah 10 gives examples of this: sometimes farmers would deliberately harvest grasses before they were ripe in order that the produce serve as hay – animal fodder. Then again, they might do so in order that the grass serve as straw for binding sheaves.
2:
It seems that garlic and onions were first collected into small bunches which were then tied together into larger bundles ready for transportation. Since the bunches are not the final status of these vegetables before they are removed from the field the poor cannot claim that they have been overlooked.
3:
In mishnah 10 Rabbi Yehudah bar-Ilai holds that the relevant biblical verse [Deuteronomy 24:19] should not be wrenched from its obvious meaning: the law of shikhechah applies to whatever grows 'in your field', and he would interpret this to exclude vegetables that develop under ground ('under your field' as it were). The rest of the sages do not accept this understanding of the text – which enshrined the possibility of depriving the poor of a considerable amount of vegetable produce. The sages hold that it is perfectly justifiable to understand 'in your field' as including anything that the farmer grows in his field – be it grasses or fruits whose end produce develops above ground or vegetables whose end produce has to be dug out from under the ground. Halakhah follows the sages.
4:
One term in mishnah 10 I have left untranslated: luf. I am not at all certain that we really know what is intended by this term. One modern annotator gives nine possible meanings to the term: serpentaria, snake-root, dragon's-wort, snake-weed, tarragon, herb-dragon, Egyptian-bean, Indian-lotus, hyacinth-bean. None of these seems to agree with what the classical commentators understood by the term. Rambam, in his commentary on our mishnah, says that "it is a kind of onion without doubt". Very wisely, Rabbi Ovadyah of Bertinoro in his later commentary plays safe and writes: "Rambam says that it is a kind of onion". I, too, have played safe by leaving the term untranslated.
5:
Mishnah 11 deals with three issues. The first is harvesting that takes place under conditions of reduced visibility. One might think that when the harvester cannot see clearly what he is doing that it would be fair to waive the law of shikhechah because it would be so easy to overlook a sheaf. But the sages do not go down that path: if someone elects to harvest their crop by night (or the blind farmer even by day) they will take extra special care, and therefore the law of shikhechah should apply and the poor should not be deprived of their share of this produce.
6:
On the other hand if the farmer was using a system according to which the farm hands should first remove from the field the very large sheaves and leave the smaller sheaves to be collected later (possibly by women and children working in the fields) – this is a legitimate method and the the law of shikhechah does not apply to the smaller sheaves remaining temporarily in the field.
7:
And lastly, the unscrupulous farmer cannot make a quasi-legal declaration before he commences the harvesting of his field that he does so 'on condition that I may collect anything that I forget'. Such a circumvention of the explicit intention of the biblical verse cannot have any validity whatsoever. The Gemara of Eretz-Israel [Peah 19d] states the invalidity of this legal absurdity quite clearly:
"You cannot make a condition which would abrogate the very intention of the Torah".
This concludes our study of Chapter 6 of this tractate.
Ĥanukah Saméaĥ to everybody.
