Sotah 070

נושא: Sotah

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

The following may be said in any language: the Sotah adjuration, the tithing statement, the Shema, the Amidah, Grace After Meals, the testimony adjuration and the deposit adjuration.

5:
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the agriculturalist must separate Terumot and Ma'aserot from each year's produce and give them to priests, Levites and the indigent as appropriate. However, people being what they are in all times and all places, we can well imagine that many neglected to make these donations during the first three or last three years of the seven year Shemittah cycle. In such a case the amount that should have been set aside must preferably be given to an appropriate recipient (in each case), or at the very least, it must be removed from the donor's house as a prelude to distributing it. This removal is termed Bi'ur, and it must be completed before the evening of the first day of Pesaĥ in the fourth or seventh year of the cycle. After removing these belated Terumot and Ma'aserot from his possession, the owner makes a special declaration. This declaration is termed Vidu'i Ma'aser.

6:
The requirement to physically remove from one's possession all undonated donations is obviously designed to make sure that the donor fulfills his duty and does not maintain in his own possession donatives that the Torah has already allocated to others. When we studied Tractate Rosh ha-Shanah I made a point about the purpose of Shemittah, but that point is also very relevant to Terumot and Ma'aserot:

In a tribal economy each household has its own piece of land which is a veritable inheritance: the family plot was passed on from one generation to the next, and in an agricultural economy it was from this plot of land that the family unit sustained itself. Anyone who did not have an ancestral plot, for any reason, was doomed to destitution. (Those who particularly suffered from this were foreign settlers [gerim], widows and orphans: that is why the Torah always singles them out for compassionate charity.) The tribe of Levi was also landless, but a different solution was found for them. This complete dependence on the ancestral plot created a compulsive sense of ownership: "my land". The Torah does not recognize private ownership of the land: the land belongs to God who leases it out, as it were, to the tribes and their members. In order to regularly reinforce this concept the farmer was required once every seven years to refrain from working his fields and to allow anyone access to them to take whatever they could find: it is not the farmer's land, but God's, and God disposes of it as God chooses.

To this we can now add that this concept was also reinforced in his consciousness by being required to divest himself of those percentages of his revenue which had been allocated by heavenly decree to other people.

7:
The Torah [Deuteronomy 26:12] stipulates:

When you have finished tithing all the tithes of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, then you shall give it to the Levite, to the foreigner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, that they may eat within your gates, and be filled.

It is this verse which is interpreted by the sages as being the basis of the requirement for Bi'ur Ma'aser, the physical removal of the as yet undonated produce – or its value at the very least.

The continuing verses [Deuteronomy 26:13-15] contain the declaration which the farmer must make at this time:

I have put away the holy things out of my house, and also have given them to the Levite, and to the foreigner, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all Your commandment which You have commanded me: I have not transgressed any of Your commandments, neither have I forgotten them. I have not eaten of it … neither have I put away of it … I have listened to the voice of my God; I have done according to all that You have commanded me. Look down from Your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless Your people Israel, and the land which You have given us, as You promised our ancestors – a land flowing with milk and honey.

All that our present mishnah states is that this declaration may be made by the farmer in any language that he understands.

8:
The next item in our mishnah is the Shema. When we studied Tractate Berakhot we spent many weeks in the elucidation of this part of our liturgy. I repeat here only a small part of the introductory rationale that I wrote then in the hope that it will now make clear why it was deemed so important for the worshipper to understand the meaning of what he or she is reciting:

The Shema, in its basic essentials, is an anthology of three passages from the Torah that are to be recited twice daily, morning and evening. The three passages are: Deuteronomy 4:6-9; 11:13-21; and Numbers 15:37-41. The purpose of the recitation is to inculcate daily into the consciousness of the worshipper certain basic elements of Jewish belief and practice… The first Parashah of the Shema starts with what is probably the most famous sentence in the whole of Jewish experience: "Shema Yisra'el Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Echad". According to tradition this first sentence should be the very first item in an infant's religious experience: the moment children can formulate a coherent sentence they should be taught to recite this line. Furthermore, according to tradition, if a person is conscious when their death is fast approaching, they should be encouraged to recite this first sentence of the Shema. And, hopefully, during all the long years between these two events the recitation of the Shema should be the most meaningful element in the worshipper's daily communion with God and express the concepts of the faithful concerning God… When we recite this one simple line we are declaring our faith in God's existence, God's unity and God's absolute sovereignty in and over all creation, which, of course, includes our recognition of the truth that we ourselves are subject to God's commandments. Without this basis of pure monotheism Judaism has no meaning.

To be continued.

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