Pe'ah 061

נושא: Pe'ah

Pe'ah 061

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

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A sheaf that is close to the fence, to a stack, to cattle or to implements and was forgotten, the school of Shammai say that this is not shikheĥah but the school of Hillel say that it is shikheĥah.

1:
It must have happened quite often that a farmer planned to transfer harvested grains from his field but for some reason or other it was not convenient for him to do so immediately. In order not to forget this load he set it down in a special place – right by the entrance in the fence that marked off his field, or next to some agricultural implement – and so forth. Bet Shammai hold that the very fact that this sheaf has obviously been set down in in a special manner is sufficient to indicate that the farmer has already laid his claim to it so it cannot be called 'forgotten'.

2:
Now this argument is a very cogent one: in other, but similar, circumstances accepted halakhah recognizes that when something has been left in an obviously particular manner it must be assumed that it belongs to someone. For example, property found in an exceptional manner can hardly be termed 'lost property': the fact that a kind of marker has been left must be accepted as an indication that the owner intends to collect this property at some later date. (To give an extreme example: if one finds a wad of banknotes carefully placed underneath a pile of stones one cannot assume that this is 'lost property'.)

3:
Since the argument is so cogent it is very strange that Bet Hillel seem not to accept it in the case described in our mishnah. It seems that Bet Hillel hold that shikheĥah applies in such a case because at the moment that the poor person comes to collect his due it is apparent that the farmer has indeed forgotten the produce – even if we must assume that he will remember it at some later date.

4:
In his great codex Mishneh Torah [Matnot Aniyyim 5:3] Rambam codifies this law as follows:

If the poor people stand in front of it [i.e. the sheaf] or cover it with straw and he [i.e. the farmer] remembers the straw, or if he claimed it in order to transfer it to town but left it in the field and forgot it – this is not shikheĥah. But if he moves it from one place to another [in the field] even if he leaves it near a fence, a stack, cattle or implements and forgets it – it is shikheĥah'.

Rambam seems to have decided the law in accordance with the view of Bet Hillel – presumably for the reason already suggested – that at this moment it is truly 'forgotten', even if we must assume that he will remember this produce later on.

David Sieradzki asks:

Could you please comment on whether a "sharecropping" arrangement – familiar from U.S. history as a somewhat oppressive economic arrangement that replaced slavery in the post-Civil War American South – was common in Mishnaic times? Are there other rules regulating it?

I respond:

I had to do some history homework here, since I am not as learned in the minutiae of US history as American citizens must be. Thanks to Google I have understood that –

without land, the former slaves were forced to work out a new relationship with their former owners. After the Civil War, because the southern economy was cash poor and Blacks demanded some type of autonomy, sharecropping developed as a replacement for slave labor. Sharecropping at first seemed to be a good bargain for the ex-slaves. The arrangement offered some freedom to work independently, and they frequently got half the crop. Landowners gave African Americans a plot of land to work in return for a share of the crops. The system quickly proved to be disastrous for both poor Blacks and Whites. Sharecroppers needed more than land to farm. They also required seed, fertilizers, and provisions to live on until the crop was harvested. To obtain these they borrowed against their share. Falling crop prices, high credit rates, and unscrupulous merchants and creditors left many croppers in debt after the harvest. The system eventually tied poor Blacks and Whites to sharecropping and an endless cycle of debt.

Assuming that the above account is correct, I do not understand why David sees something similar to sharecropping in the mishnaic account. The farmer was not entering into any kind of bargain with the poor; he was not doing them a favour. The Torah gave the poor certain rights to the farmer's crop and these rights were in no way dependent on the farmer's good will nor was it necessary to enter into any kind of bargain with him.

If a poor man chose to work as a hired hand for a farmer he was entitled to his wage just like anyone else. While it is true that if such a hired hand agreed to accept part of the crop as his payment he could not then also claim poor dues, this does not seem to me to be analogous to sharecropping since he could refuse the offer and insist on payment after he had taken his poor dues.