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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.
1:
The first mishnah of chapter 7 introduces the last section of the tractate. In fact, apart from a brief mention in chapter 9, our present mishnah brings to an end our discussion of the Sotah and introduces discussions on many and varied topics of great interest. The glue that binds together all the items in this first mishnah of chapter 7 is the fact that all the declarations and statements mentioned may be recited in any language that the participants understand, and not necessarily in Hebrew. Although they are all ritual texts to be said out loud they are, in some way or other, also legally required texts and therefore the parties concerned must understand what is being said. What justifies this section being placed at the end of tractate Sotah (at the head of the last three chapters) is the first item in our mishnah, the declaration to the Sotah. (In a different order of items our mishnah could just as easily have fitted into Tractate Ma'aser Sheni or Berakhot and so forth.
2:
We need spend very little time indeed on the first item. We have discovered during our study of this tractate that at a certain point in the proceedings the officiating priest is required to administer a solemn warning and explanation to the hapless woman who is about to undergo the degradation of this ritual. When we studied chapter 2 we learned that this statement by the priest was not only to be spoken out loud to the woman but was also written down and the ink then allowed to soak into the water of the concoction so that she would be aware of the enormity of the test she was about to take: she would imbibe, as it were, into her very entrails the Divine Name which would investigate her fidelity to her husband.
The text, found in the Torah [Numbers 5:19-22] was as follows:
The priest shall adjure her, and shall say to the woman: 'If no man has lain with you, and if you haven't gone astray to uncleanness, being under your husband, then you will be free from this water of bitterness that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray, being under your husband, and if you are defiled, and some man has lain with you besides your husband, God will turn you into a curse and an oath among your people, making your thigh to fall away, and your body to swell; and this water that brings a curse will go into your bowels, and make your body swell, and your thigh fall away.'
The Torah then adds that "the woman shall say, 'Amen, Amen.'" In order for her to give her assent to this test she must understand what has been said to her; therefore the adjuration must be made in any language which she understands.
3:
Certain 'levies' [Matanot] on agricultural produce grown in Eretz-Israel must be paid by the physical removal from the produce of certain amounts to be given to certain people. There were basically two kinds of levy: Matnot Aniyyim and Matnot Kehunah – levies to be given to the destitute and levies to be given to the priesthood. For the sake of completeness I shall enumerate most of them here, even though our mishnah does not refer to all of them. ('Most' here means most of those that come from the soil, excluding other tithes and donations – of animals, for instance.)
4:
A. Levies to be given to the Destitute:
- Pe'ah: one corner of each field had to be left unharvested by the owner. It was the privilege of the destitute to enter the field when it had been harvested and to harvest for themselves what had been left in the Pe'ah [corner]. The Torah itself leaves the amount to be left up to the generosity of the owner, but the sages set the average at around 2 percent of the whole. The poor did their own harvesting of the Pe'ah to avoid the impression that what they got from the field was the result of the farmer's personal generosity: it is their privilege granted them by God, who is the real owner of the field – and not the gift of the farmer.
- Shikhechah: after the produce had been bundled into sheaves and so forth it was loaded onto carts for transportation to the granary. Any sheaves or bundles that on account of an error were not loaded, could not later be reclaimed by the owner: the forgotten bundles [Shikhechah] had become the privilege of the destitute.
- Leket (called in the vineyard and olive orchard Peret): the destitute had the right to follow after the harvesters and pick up anything that accidentally fell from their hand. (This was what the biblical Ruth did in the field of Boaz.)
- Olelot: underdeveloped grapes that were harvested in error became the privilege of the destitute.
- Ma'aser Ani: In every seven-year cycle [Shemittah] there was a levy of ten percent of what remained of the produce (after all the above 'deductions') in the third and sixth years of the cycle. This produce had to be given to the destitute person of the owner's choice.
B. Levies given to the Priests and Levites
After all the above levies had been removed the following additional levies were made:
- Terumah: this was a levy of two percent (of the remaining produce) and it belonged to the Kohen [Priest] of the owner's choice.
- First Tithe [Ma'aser Rishon]: ten percent of what produce remained belonged to the Levite of the owner's choice.
- Terumat Ma'aser: the Levite receiving this First Tithe had to give out of it a levy of ten percent to the Kohen [Priest] of his choice.
- Second Tithe [Ma'aser Sheni]: in the first, second, fourth and fifth years of the Shemittah cycle, in place of the Ma'aser Ani (#5 above), a levy of ten percent of what remained of the produce (after #7 above) had to be taken and consumed in Jerusalem or – as was more usual – it had to be 'redeemed' and its value taken and spent on food and drink in Jerusalem. (Thus the Second Tithe was geared up to boosting the economy of the Capital.)
To be continued.
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