As for carob trees – as long as they "see" one another. Rabban Gamli'el says: in my father's house they gave one Pe'ah in each direction for olives, and for all that "see" each other for carobs. Rabbi Eli'ezer bar-Zadok says in his name: even for all the carob trees they had in the whole town.
5:
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Mishnah 4, as we have seen, states that carob trees were treated differently from other orchard plants: whereas for most trees all those enclosed by a fence (stone wall) would constitute one field for the purposes of Pe'ah, the carob tree was so widely spreading that it could not be contained in an orchard. Therefore, each tree constituted a field of its own, as it were. If this status were left as it is it could be ruinous for the farmer, who would have to give a portion of each and every carob tree that he had to the poor. It seems that this was the reason that prompted custom to give a different definition of 'field' for the carob tree. |
6:
The classical commentators give variant understandings of what our mishnah means by trees that "can see each other", even though the basic intention is clear. Rambam suggests that it means that if one person standing next to a carob tree can see another person standing next to another such tree then both trees are considered to be in the same 'field' as it were, together with all others that meet that condition. Rabbi Ovadyah of Bertinoro, on the other hand, understands our mishnah as speaking picturesquely of the trees themselves being able to 'see' one another.
7:
Rabban Gamli'el is not at variance with Tanna Kamma (the unnamed authority whose general rule is stated in the first clause of mishnah 4). Rather he is illustrating the concept and extending it. The Rabban Gamli'el quoted in our mishnah must be Rabban Gamli'el of Yavneh, who was a contemporary of rabbis Yehoshu'a, Eli'ezer, Akiva and many others. He was the president of the Sanhedrin in the last decade or so of the first century CE and in the first years of the second century. His grandfather, of the same name, was Rabban Gamli'el the elder whom we shall meet in a later mishnah of this chapter, and it is obviously of him that the Rabban Gamli'el quoted in our present mishnah speaks. In other places in the Mishnah when he speaks of "my father's house" Rabban Gamli'el seems to be referring to the dynasty of Hillel in whose family the presidency of the Sanhedrin was vested for several hundred years in the first centuries of the common era.
8:
Rabban Gamli'el, in his evidence, attests to the fact that his family used to treat carob trees in the manner described by Tanna Kamma and then adds that olive trees were also treated differently. Land-owners would obviously own several olive trees and these could be widely spread in all the agricultural area that surrounded the town or village in which the farmer lived. Some of these olive trees were very ancient – and so well-known that they were even given names! The Gemara [Pe'ah 17a] states that Pe'ah for olive-trees was regulated by the local authority, which would designate areas in various directions as being a 'field' for the olive trees from which one Pe'ah would be given. This probably means that it was the local authority that defined the boundaries of north, south, east and west for this purpose.
9:
While Rabbi Eli'ezer bar-Zadok quotes Rabban Gamli'el as saying that a similar arrangement applied also to carob-trees, all the classical commentators seem to agree that his evidence is not to be credited.
Still on the subject of sumac, Jim Feldman writes:
You mention sumac as a somewhat mysterious substance. If you like the green arabic spice collection, za'arta, which is popularly eaten on various Arab breads, you enjoy sumac. It has nothing to do with the sumac trees, including poison sumac, a variant on the poison-ivy poison-oak family, that we know in the US. Za'arta is one of those foods of the poor that could be gathered from the wild herbs of the land. It turns plain bread into something of a taste treat. It normally includes some sesame. Thyme is one of its principal ingredients.
I respond:
While I am certain that what Jim writes is correct, nevertheless I am not certain that it is relevant to the mishnah which has prompted his comment. The mishnah makes quite clear that the sumac to which it refers is a tree: it is mentioned in a list of trees [Pe'ah 2:5] which is given in order to distinguish their status vis-à-vis Pe'ah from that of plants which had been dealt with in the previous mishnah.
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My cursory investigation of the Web teaches that the botanical name of the African Sumac tree is rhus lancea. At the risk of adding bandwith I include a picture of the sumac tree for the purposes of clarification. |
