Shekalim 3a — the Talmud in English

Rather, one who writes a document in

the first Adar

writes “Adar”

without specification.

And in the second Adar

he writes “Adar”

the second

[second].

We learned in our Mishna: “And on the fifteenth of it”

they repair the roads, the streets, and the water reservoirs, and they perform all the needs of the public.

And the Meiri wrote: Since this time is close to the end of the year, the court would examine and investigate these matters, in order to spur and hasten their completion, so that the year might end together with its punishments.

And now, the Gemara brings a Tosefta in tractate Moed Katan, which discusses the permission to perform labor on the festival for the needs of the public.

And the beraita there specifies what the needs of the public are, and from there we learn here what the needs of the public of our Mishna are that must be performed on the fifteenth of Adar.

And according to the Gra, the beraita was not brought in order to say that all the needs of the public must be performed on the fifteenth of Adar, if they had not performed them earlier, since the words of the Tosefta refer only to the intermediate days of the festival.

And this beraita was brought only in order to raise a difficulty concerning the law of marking graves and uprooting mixed plants.

It was taught:

These are the needs of the public:

They judge monetary cases and capital cases,

and

cases of lashes.

And they redeem valuations, consecrated objects, and consecrated property.

And they give the sota to drink

who secluded herself with another man after her husband had warned her not to seclude herself with him.

And they burn the cow

the red one, in order to make from its ashes the water of purification.

And they decapitate the heifer whose neck is broken

if a slain person is found near a city.

And they pierce the ear of a Hebrew slave

who loves his master and does not wish to go free after six years.

And they purify the leper.

And they perform all these things also during the other days of the year; rather, if it happened that the judgment, or the piercing of the slave, or the decapitation of the heifer, or something similar, was delayed, they do not postpone it further. Rather, they perform it on the fifteenth of Adar.

And they remove the shoe from upon the last

which is the mold upon which they place the shoe so that its form will be made.

And they do not put them back

upon the last.

This law concerning the shoe has no connection at all to the needs of the public; rather, it is the continuation of the beraita there, which discusses the permission to perform labor during the intermediate days of the festival.

After the beraita explained the permission to perform labor for the needs of the public, it added and said that during the intermediate days of the festival it is permitted to remove the shoe from the last.

We learned in our Mishna: “And on the fifteenth of it ... they mark the graves.” And we raised a difficulty concerning it:

there

there

we learned

we learned at the beginning of tractate Moed Katan, concerning the intermediate days of the festival:

They water

during the intermediate days of the festival the

irrigated field

[a field situated on a mountain, where the rains do not remain but descend below, and it must always be watered]. For if he does not water it, he will suffer a great loss, and concerning something involving loss the Sages permitted exertion during the intermediate days of the festival.

And they mark the graves,

to mark them, during the festival, indicating that there is a dead person at this place.

And ask: For what purpose did they need to mark the graves that had been erased by the rains during the intermediate days of Passover?

And is it so that

they had not already marked

the graves

from Adar,

as we learned in the Mishna, that on the fifteenth of Adar they mark the graves?

And he answers:

And it can be resolved

[you have to resolve it] that it deals with a case where

a torrent of rains descended

after they had marked them with lime in Adar,

and washed away

the marking. And in such a case they permitted marking again even during the intermediate days of the festival.

We further learned there in the continuation of the Mishna:

And they go out

during the intermediate days of the festival

also concerning mixed plants.

And we raise a difficulty:

Had they not already gone out

to pick out the mixed plants

from Adar,

as explicitly stated in our Mishna, and for what purpose did they need to go out again during the festival? And we answer:

It can be resolved,

that it deals with a time

when the year was late

[delayed], so that the seeds were late in sprouting,

and the plants were not recognizable

yet on the fifteenth of Adar.

And in such a case they go out concerning mixed plants during the festival.

From where

is there a hint in the Torah

for the marking

of graves?

Rabbi Berekhiah

said:

Rabbi Yaakov bar Bat Yaakov in the name of Rabbi Hunya of the House of Havorin.

Rabbi Yose said it

in the name of

Rabbi Yaakov, son of Rav Acha, in the name of Rabbi Hunya of the House of Havorin, and Rabbi Uziya, son of Rav Nechunya of the House of Havoran:

It is written concerning the leper sent outside the camp: [Leviticus 13]

“He is impure, impure shall he call,”

so that the impurity will call to you with its mouth

and announce itself,

and say to you: Withdraw

from me!

And the calling of the impurity is done by marking the graves, for then a person notices and withdraws.

Rabbi Ila in the name of Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman

said: From here: It is written [Ezekiel 39]

“And those who pass through the land will pass through, and when one sees a human bone, he shall build a marker beside it.”

For in the future Israel will make markers on the bones of the corpses cast about.

Thus, concerning a human bone one must build a marker.

And we expound this verse:

“Bone”

from here that they mark upon the bones

[when they contain a quarter-kav, or when they are the majority of the structure and the majority of the number of a person’s bones. And with less than this they do not impart impurity through a tent, and there is no need for a marker].

“Human”

from here that they mark upon the spine and the skull,

which impart impurity through a tent when they are whole, even though they are only one bone.

“And he shall build”

implies that it should be joined like a building.

From here that they mark upon a fixed stone

which they build, a stone upon the impurity, and mark the stone with lime, excluding placing a detached stone that rolls.

For

if you say

[you say] that they also mark

upon a detached stone,

then

it too goes

and rolls

and imparts impurity to another place,

and they will say that that is the place of the impurity, and will render the pure objects impure there unlawfully, and will purify the pure objects at the place of the impurity since the marker has moved away, and will not know that there is a dead person there.

“Beside it”

the marker is not placed upon the impurity itself, but adjacent to the impurity,

in a pure place

[and we derive it from the fact that it states “and he shall build beside it,” and not “and he shall build upon it”].

And the reason for this is explained in tractate Moed Katan [5b]: They do so in order not to cause loss to the pure objects. For if the marker were directly upon the grave, they would not notice the marker from a distance. And at times, by the time they saw the marker, they would already have made a tent over it.

Therefore they mark adjacent to the place of the impurity, and through this the person is delayed in his walking by the marker, and he does not come to impurity through a tent.

“Marker”

from here for a marker,

for they mark and designate the graves.

It was taught:

If one found a single marked stone,

he must be concerned that there is impurity beneath it.

And even though they do not maintain this practice

of placing a stone upon the impurity, for we learned that they do not build the marker upon the impurity, but only adjacent to it, around it, in a pure place, nevertheless, since here there is only a single stone, necessarily this marker was built upon the impurity and not around it.

Therefore,

one who makes a tent over it is impure.

Because

I say: A dead person was placed beneath it,

as was explained.

And if

there were two

stones, with a space between them, we say that the stones were placed around the dead person, and the impurity is between them. Therefore,

one who makes a tent over them is pure. And one who makes a tent

over

the space between them is impure.

However,

if

he found two marked stones, but

there was

plowing in between

[the area between the stones was a plowed field], certainly they did not place the dead person in this space, for one does not plow a place in which a dead person is buried.

Therefore,

they are like

stones

standing alone,

for we judge each stone as an individual stone, and again we say that it is more reasonable that the impurity is beneath it; and one who makes a tent

between them is pure,

while one who makes a tent

around them

in the place of the stones

is impure.

It was taught: They do not mark

a marker

upon flesh

of a dead person, even if it contains an olive-bulk, because

perhaps the

already

flesh

has decomposed to less than an olive-bulk, and it turns out that there is no impurity here. For the flesh of the dead does not impart impurity through a tent when it is less than an olive-bulk.

Rabbi Yusta bar Shunam asked

[raised a difficulty]

before Rabbi Mana:

Why do they not mark upon the flesh?

And

for

is it not found that he renders pure objects impure retroactively!?

For as long as the flesh has not decomposed, it imparts impurity through a tent, and if it has no marker, then while the flesh has not yet decomposed, one who passes there loses the pure objects that passed with him there, since he does not know that there is impurity there.

And he answers:

He said to him: It is preferable that they be spoiled through it

for a time,

during the short period until the flesh decomposes,

and not

that a marker be built there, through which

they will be spoiled through it forever.

For one who sees it will think that impurity is still there, and they will gratuitously burn all consecrated things that pass over them inadvertently or at night.

Halakha 2 - Mishna:

Rabbi Judah said: At first,

when the agents of the court would go out to uproot the mixed plants in the fields,

they would uproot

the mixed plants

and throw them

beside the owners of the fields,

before them,

so that they would be embarrassed.

When violators increased

[as is explained in the Gemara], they stopped throwing them before them. Rather,

they would throw

the uprooted mixed plants

onto the roads.

And afterward

they instituted that they should declare the entire field ownerless,

by virtue of “the ownerlessness declared by a court is ownerlessness.” The reason why they renewed these enactments will be explained in the Gemara.

The Tur and the Beit Yosef disagreed in Choshen Mishpat 273 whether the court had to actively declare each and every field ownerless, or whether this was an enactment of the Sages that these fields should become ownerless automatically.

Gemara:

We learned in our Mishna:

Rabbi Judah said

at first they would uproot.

It was taught: Rabbi Judah said: At first the

agents of the court

would uproot

the mixed plants

and throw them before them.

And

the owners

would rejoice with two rejoicings.

One—

that they would weed their fields,

for through the removal of the mixed plants the field was weeded by itself.

And one—

that they would benefit from the mixed plants

that had been uprooted and thrown into their fields, for they would give them to their animals.

When violators increased, they would

the agents of the court

throw

the uprooted plants

onto the roads,

so that the owners would suffer loss and not benefit from them.

And nevertheless they would

the owners

rejoice

in this,

that they would weed their fields.

Therefore,

they instituted that they should be

the agents of the court

declaring the entire field, all of it, ownerless.

And the owners would again not profit from the mixed plants.

And now the Gemara explains the foundation of the law of ownerlessness declared by a court:

From where is it that the ownerlessness declared by a court

is

ownerlessness?

As it is stated in the Book of Ezra:

“And whoever does not come within three days according to the counsel of the officers and the elders—

all his property shall be forfeited, and he shall be separated from the assembly of the exile.”

Thus, Ezra and his court had the power to declare ownerless all the property of a person who violated their words. And from here [we learn] that ownerlessness declared by a court is ownerlessness.

And we raise a difficulty concerning it:

From where is it that it is exempt from tithes?

For regarding complete ownerlessness, which its owners declared ownerless, we learn from a verse that it is exempt from tithes. And the Gemara is uncertain whether something made ownerless through the ownerlessness declared by a court is also complete ownerlessness, even to exempt it from tithes; or whether the court has the power only to remove the owners’ rights, but not the Levites’ rights, and it remains obligated in tithes.

And we say:

Rabbi Yonatan, son of Rav Yitzchak bar Acha, heard it

[proved] that ownerlessness declared by a court is exempt from the tithe

from this

beraita.

For it was taught:

They do not intercalate the year

to add a second Adar to it

neither in

the year

of the Sabbatical year,

because through intercalating the year the prohibition of working the land is extended by an additional month, and everyone’s hand dominates the growths, since produce and grain are not readily available to them, and they will not find grain from which to bring the omer offering and the two loaves.

And

likewise

they do not

intercalate the year

at the conclusion of the Sabbatical year,

which is the first year in the count of the years of the next Sabbatical cycle, for the reason that will be explained below.

And if they intercalated it—

it is intercalated.

And Rabbi Yonatan infers from the law that if the court intercalated the Sabbatical year, it is intercalated despite the fact that fundamentally they do not intercalate it:

And

for that

one month that it

[the court]

adds

during the Sabbatical year—

is it not exempt from tithes,

like all the produce of the Sabbatical year, which is ownerless?

And certainly it is exempt from tithes, even though the produce of this month was not made ownerless except through the force of the ownerlessness declared by the court that intercalated the year.

And it is proven that even ownerlessness declared by a court is exempt from the tithe.

[The later authorities disagreed whether the owners of Sabbatical-year produce must declare it ownerless, or whether it is rendered ownerless by virtue of “the king’s removal,” that the Holy One, blessed is He, commanded that the produce should become ownerless by itself.

The Afikei Yam, part 2, section 25, raised a difficulty against the Beit Yosef, who holds that the produce does not become ownerless by itself, from this passage:

According to him, what is the Gemara’s proof that ownerlessness declared by a court is ownerlessness? Surely it is impossible for their power to be greater than a commandment of the Torah, and all their power is only to command the owners to declare it ownerless; and then it is obvious that the ownerlessness takes effect, for this is not ownerlessness declared by a court, but ownerlessness declared by the owners.]

And now the Gemara comes to explain the words of the beraita, before returning to discuss this proof:

And we say:

Until now

[until here] we have heard only that they do not intercalate the year

during the Sabbatical year,

for the reason that they extend the prohibition of working the land, as explained.

But it still must be explained:

At the conclusion of the Sabbatical year—

what

is the reason that they do not intercalate the year?

And we answer:

Said

Rabbi

Avun:

In order

not to increase

the prohibition of new grain.

For the old grain had already been exhausted during the Sabbatical year, and in the eighth year there is only new grain, which is prohibited until the sixteenth of Nisan. And if they intercalate the year, they extend the time of the prohibition against eating the new grain by an additional month.

Said

Rabbi Zeira in the name of Rabbi Elazar: This that you said

[what you said], that they should not intercalate the year during the Sabbatical year, applies

before Rabbi permitted bringing vegetables from outside the Land to the Land.

For he was concerned lest they bring with them a clod of earth from the land of the nations, which imparts impurity through contact and carrying, and they would render the pure objects of the Land of Israel impure.

But after Rabbi permitted bringing vegetables from outside the Land to the Land

[and all the more so grain, which is not so commonly brought together with a clod of earth], there is no longer a distinction between the Sabbatical year and the other years.

Rather,

it

is a

seventh year—

it

is a

year like the rest of the years of the seven-year cycle!

For even in the seventh year they intercalate the year as in the other years, because there is again no concern about a shortage of grain for the omer and the two loaves, since people have no need to eat the growths of the seventh year, for they have all that they need from what comes from outside the Land. And they will be able to find grain from which to bring the omer and the two loaves from the growths of the Land.

Rabbi Mana said:

Now it is possible to intercalate the year even immediately after the seventh year.

For

this is what you say:

that the statement that one may not intercalate the year immediately after the seventh year applies specifically

in the beginning, when the years were in their proper order,

and the grain hastened to ripen in Nisan, and it was proper to eat from the new grain on the sixteenth of Nisan; therefore they did not intercalate the year, so as not to prolong the prohibition of new grain by an additional month.

But now, when the years are not as they should be,

and the grain does not hasten to ripen even when spring arrives, and the prohibition of new grain has already been permitted,

it follows that if we come to intercalate the year, we do not increase the prohibition of new grain, for in any event the grain is then unfit for eating.

Therefore:

it is a seventh year—

it is like the rest of the years of the seven-year cycle.

It was taught:

Its court

of the house of Rabban Gamaliel intercalated it immediately after the seventh year.

And now the Gemara returns to discuss the proof brought above: that even something which the court rendered ownerless is exempt from tithes, from the fact that when the court intercalated the year of the seventh year, the produce is exempt from tithes even in the intercalated month, although this is not complete ownerlessness, but only ownerlessness effected by the court.

Rabbi Avun said: If it is from this

[if your proof is from here,] that they intercalate in the seventh year—

you learn nothing from it

[there is no proof from there at all].

Since the intercalation of the year is not an enactment of the court, but is a law of Torah.

For it is written:

“Observe the month of springtime.”

And we derive:

Observe it so that they bring it in its renewal!

So that the month of springtime, which is the month of Nisan, will be at the time of spring.

And therefore, if spring is delayed, they add one month.

And therefore, if the court intercalated the year of the seventh year, the produce becomes ownerless by Torah law, and it is complete ownerlessness and not ownerlessness effected by the court.

And although it is forbidden to intercalate the seventh year, that is a prohibition by rabbinic law. But if they intercalated the seventh year for whatever reason it may be, the intercalation certainly takes effect, and the ownerlessness of the produce is by Torah law.

And therefore there is no proof at all concerning the question of whether ownerlessness effected by the court exempts from tithes.

And where does he say this

[and where do you find it stated] that ownerlessness effected by the court is ownerlessness also for the purpose of exemption from tithes? It is a Mishna in Tractate Peah.

One who harvests his field must leave in the field for the poor “gleanings.”

The “gleanings” are one or two ears that fall at the time of harvesting and are not harvested together with the groups of ears.

And we learned in Tractate Peah: One who made in his field, after the harvest, in the place where there were ears of gleanings,

a stack

of sheaves of grain, and it was found

that they had not been gathered,

for the poor had not taken the ears of gleanings that were lying on the ground

beneath it

[beneath the stack], and it was found that the ears of gleanings belonging to the poor had become mixed with the ears of the stack belonging to the owner of the field:

All

the ears

touching the ground—

they belong to the poor!

For the Sages penalized the owner of the field because he made his stack of grain in a place where there were ears of gleanings, so that all the ears touching the ground would belong to the poor, even though most of the ears are his.