Shmita in the kitchen | Part 7 - Buying fruit and vegetables of Sheviet from non observant Jews

[Music] we're gonna continue in the laws of shemitah and uh we don't have much left in this chapter and then another chapter how we do the bio the the destruction of it and then we gonna have a lot of classes about more uh basic and practical things but today's class is very important because there's a lot of restrictions when it's coming to buying fruit and vegetables of shemitah and then you also have a problem because a lot of the shops in israel they don't observe shmita a lot of the farmers they don't care about the shemitah so they're transgressing the shemitah now am i allowed to buy from them not allowed to buy from them it's a big problem so today we're going to go a little bit about that what and when you're allowed to buy and how and uh and that will shed some light so it says as follows fruit vegetables grain and legumes are all considered under the umbrella of the shemitah and it says as follows called everything that grew in israel that grew during the year of shemitah mimisha and no merch from somebody that doesn't observe the shemitah which again i can't tell you in percentage but probably a large amount of the produce in israel is by farmers that don't really keep the shemitah so it's not completely prohibited but there's all sorts of prohibitions and rules how you can do that the fact that they don't observe the shemitah that's their problem but it doesn't mean that what grew is not holy which beat and it doesn't mean that it's not edible in some of the cases we're going to go through some of the prohibitions and then we can learn from that how i can buy that type of produce now there is something that is called uh like a prohibited produce that and of course you can't really know if you're looking at it but this is the concept of some of the products is prohibited you're not allowed to touch it no not to touch it not allowed to trade with it not allowed to eat it there's different rules so if you remember in one of the classes we learned about a prohibition that is called sephirim the translation of suffix after growth is that you didn't do anything it doesn't matter right now if it's yours your property it's abandoned it's a farmer sometimes things just grow whether you didn't do anything or nobody did anything you know in that even the other day i went in front of my house i have these big flower pots i don't know i don't even know where like this beautiful flower came out i didn't plant it there and this beautiful flower came out maybe a seed flavor was went from in the air or something but this is flowers we're talking about food so we learned in length in one of the classes about the prohibition of sufficient after growth when you're allowed to take it not allowed to take it because in many of the cases you're just allowed to take it you didn't do anything when it comes to this prohibition then it says vegetables grain and legumes because there's no aftergrowth with fruit fruit is never going to be after growth because they grow anyways that you can leave the tree alone it will constantly grow but when it comes to vegetables then you need to plow and sow and and do all sorts of work so when it comes to grain legume and vegetables that was raised or that they grew by themselves if they grew in and they were in the possession of a jew during shemitah you are not allowed to eat them now that in general will say oh so it covers everything but when is it not going to be applied is that we learned in one of the first class is that the owner of the field has to do a certain act that is called hefkel that he abandons the land so it means that if they abandoned the land that it doesn't it didn't grow in my possession so here when he's saying any produce that grew in the possession of a jew means they didn't abandon it then it's prohibited now of course go figure out who did the the the half kill or not and if you remember we learned and that doesn't apply in all the cases but we also learned that in some of the cases even if the person didn't do a healthcare abandon then it will still be by default but nevertheless if it grew in the possession of a jew then they're prohibited from be eaten and how is this prohibition called the prohibition of after and of course like i told you when it comes to fruit there's no such a prohibition of sufficient so this is rule number one if you know that the la the owner of the land is a jew and he did not abandon the the the the land then you can eat you can't eat this fruit next any produce that that came out during the land of the the the year of chevit any produce that grew in the year of chevit has kedusha on it right we learned that already a few times means that it has a status of being holy sheila bismarck that it was not abandoned while it was growing and like i told you the owner of the land a person that really observes the shemitah does have care right away as the shemitah comes in he abandons the land then there's no problem but some of times the produce is being grown you know it started last year but it's still growing in this year and we learned that already in length in other classes that when it comes to fruit and vegetables even if the fruit the the vegetables was planted last year but it was picked this year then it still has shemitah if you remember when i told you with with the vegetables it goes by the time you pick it from the ground not when you planted it so any produce that has kedusha has the status of it because it grew during the year of swede the life is it was not abandoned excuse me while it was growing yes that grew as a result of actual work in the field in the year of shemitah yes and of course some authorities will say this you can't you can't eat it so we have two two sections here a that it was not abandoned while it was growing then you can't eat it the next one that's it was it it grew and not as an aftergrowth the person actually worked on the land which you're not allowed to so that uh uh approach will say no no that also cannot be eaten okay but this is one opinion the next opinion but a prominent rabbi in our time who's known as the hazonish he says no you have to be very lenient with these things and also don't forget goes back uh 50 50 60 years when israel wasn't so doing that great there was a lot of poverty here uh wasn't so easy to import fruit and vegetables so he says no no he should be lenient but nevertheless that's what he says in the book that he wrote that is called mitzvot it's the mitzvot the commandments of the land and he says no you should be lenient and you know why because sometimes you're talking about life means people need to eat i'm gonna start being strict now with every little thing people here don't have more to eat and again like i told you this can go back to the 50s and 60s russian israel it wasn't like today you can import things and but nevertheless that's his opinion then mccombe but when it comes to flowers or a herbal growth and stuff like that then there's no place to be lean only with produce and and grains and so forth now if does everybody go by this opinion not everybody like like in anything in alaka you need to choose who you go by some opinion says no it cannot be touched at all and the opinion that i'm assuming that many go by because the hazonish was pretty much of an authority in the land of israel at the time of being now not talking about 500 years ago 2000 years ago i'm talking about now in the last 67 years that he says you can be lenient with that saying in other words that i can technically buy produce from somebody doesn't observe shmita which is a little bit of a puzzling because if you now go to a restaurant and everything in the restaurant is super kosher all the produce is a hundred percent kosher and there's a a masjid there a supervisor everything is you can't find one thing that is not kosher but the restaurant is open on shabbat can you eat the food there of course not nobody's everything is kosher yeah but the restaurant is open on shabbat so how come here the produce you know the produce didn't do anything but the owner is not observing the shemitah so how can i eat it that's why to some authorities is you can't eat it because it was grown in a in a in a way of a sin but like i told you each person needs to choose what they hold by i'm just giving you the options next this is now uh what we talked about it's not necessarily with buying the produce it's just taking it because technically in the land of israel you're free now to take whatever you want now in regards to the government i don't know if that will be considered theft or not but in regards to halacha the torah allows you to take whatever you want you go next to a field goal people whatever you want so they'll fee the field owner does not own it right now therefore anybody could just come and take whatever you want you can go now for a hike whatever you see yours to take and also by the way when it when it's in the backyard of some individual of course i wouldn't recommend to jump into the backyard but you knock on the door and tell them i see you have a nice lemon tree can i take some of the lemons i don't think anybody will tell you no but but that's the the halacha in regards to the lawn in the state of israel they might tell you that's illegal you can't do that but we're not going by the state we're going by what the torah says so everything that we said now is when i can just take the produce but how is about to buy it you know now every wednesday you have here the market everybody goes and buy stuff now how do you know who you're buying from i mean some of them are druze some of them are arabs some of them you don't know where you're buying it from okay so this is called iso the provision of trading which we learned already how we're not allowed to trade with the produce second now you can give it and we learned all the loopholes all the maybe i shouldn't even say loopholes we learned the ways how the halacha permits you to sell and buy produce of shivering but if you remember we're talking about very small portions only what will be good for you and your family for three to three days so you can't buy now containers of fruits but nevertheless when it comes to the trading i'm not allowed to trade with anything that has kedusha the holiness of the produce of shivit period no questions here why if i buy that even though that person doesn't matter right now he's observing the shemitah not observing doesn't matter but if i buy it then i'm making him sin by selling it to me besos what's the prohibition that i'm not allowed to trade what's the scene that i'm transgressing should not put a stumbling block in front of a blind person because he doesn't know he does know he doesn't know but i i'm not allowed to come in and say okay i want to and i want to buy it and to some authorities it says not only that the buyer not only that the the the seller is doing something wrong now the buyers also you can are the buyer then you're also transgressing it off because you're a big part of the trading here so not only that you're putting a stumbling block in front of him you are transgressing the prohibition of trading because one might say i'm not a trader i'm i'm a consumer yeah but you you're part of the trade so you're also packing it in and therefore overall so doesn't first i'm making that person the seller fail and only that i'm part of the of the trading then uh then i'm also part of the of the sin this is one thing so you got to be careful next if you remember we spoke about that when it comes to selling because we had a whole class how can i buy and how did we do that what was how does zalaka allow me to buy let's say you go on a day trip whatever you go and you one went through an orchard say beautiful fruit and you say okay i'm allowed to take what's the condition that i'm allowed to take because it's healthcare it's abandoned you're allowed to take not five tons you're allowed to take what's good for you for a few days for you and your family so let's say you took whatever 30 oranges now you came home saying i'm not going to eat 30 oranges i'm going to eat 30 oranges so you're left with 15. so that you're allowed to sell okay now when you come to sell it to me i'm allowed to buy it from you you told me listen i have some fruity do you want them i'll give it to you for a good price sure and we already explained in length how the money will have the xiao chevate but nevertheless when a when it's sold you cannot come and tell me i'll sell it to you for 10 shekels a kilo because i'm defining the weight and i'm not you can't come and say i'll sell you an apple for a shekel you'll tell them listen i'll sell you the whole thing for 10 shekels so we're not allowed to to assign it to a weight or to a quantity so this is called i'm not allowed to do with mida means a measurement one three for ten or whatever like that and mishka and the weight so our sages said as follows said okay if you're already buying fine but we're going to put a prohibition that you can't sell it by weight by size and by measurement ella the only way that you have to sell it is you have to evaluate i think it's worth about 50 shekels that's it and this prohibition is applicable also when the trade is done in a way when there's no prohibition of trading therefore therefore if you buy produce of the year of shmitah but you buy it by a measurement for example by weights or by the quantity prohibition then i'm putting a stumbling block in front of a blind person so you'd say okay i'm going to sell it to you when we're doing trade between you and me so and you know and we're not talking about here like quantities we're talking something small but if i tell you let's say you tell me okay give me 50 shackles for the whole thing that is allowed but i will tell you know i don't know 50 shekels doesn't sound fair i'll give you what they keep what they pay in the store 10 shekels a kilo and then then you'll say okay fine take the shaker 10 shekels a kilo that i'm making you sin because maybe you don't know the law but nevertheless we're not allowed to if there is any type of trading it cannot be done with a weight measurement and three for two ten for five and so forth next when we have a situation that you and me made a business deal a transaction and i sold you my little bit of produce and again what we're talking right now we're talking about a very small quantity not now a farmer selling a truckload of potatoes talking about you have a few produce and it doesn't have to be necessarily the same thing you can go now and pick a few oranges a few apples some avocados in you and you're saying you know what i'm not going to eat the whole thing it's going to go to waste so a you can give it to somebody that's of course a given or you're saying listen why not make some money here give me 100 shekels and maybe today it's not so applicable maybe today people are more financially established and they're like just take it but i think 100 years ago 200 years ago everything had a little value you don't just give over uh produce but nevertheless let's say you already did it and you got money that money has could do shout on it that it has a status of okadusha you can just use this money for whatever you want if you remember we learned that you can only use that money for food and when you eat the food it has to be in a state of in a in a state of holiness now this one is called dementia wheat if you remember i'm just repeating a lot of things for the ones who didn't see all the classes but the may comes from the word in hebrew damien the meme is money and i'm sure you're familiar the time when we're talking about the maids mechanuka is when you give the chanukah girl to hanukkah money so this is called meshevit i gave you produce you gave me money now this money cannot be used for whatever i want it has it's i'll call it now holy money so i can only buy food with it so if i have this type of money okay and i have to put it aside you can't put it with all your money because you don't know what's this money you have a hundred shekels put it aside you know this is holy money casa for it if i have money that was giving in a return to fruit of shaveed meet kadesh back to shachivit and we already learned that it has the kedusha the holiness of chevit versus not allowed to use this money for regular and mundane things only to buy food with it i'm not allowed to pay to a person who sells and does not observe the laws of shemitah with a sorry that is not observing shemitah for fruit that have duchachivite i'm not allowed to pay him that how she can do because if i give him now money now the money will have the xiao jv and he's not necessarily going to observe the fact that the money has kedusha so basically saying seems in a simple way if you selling if a seller sells perot of chevit and he doesn't observe the the shvit i'm not allowed to give him money for that because that money will have to shut now and he can go and buy whatever he wants and then he's using the money that has to do nevertheless the only way that i can do it is if i don't give him money directly so nowadays you give a credit card because he doesn't get the money right away in the olden days they would write down okay you owe me 10 shekels 100 shekels that's prohibition is only with actually giving money but if i give a credit card or buying and i'll pay you in a month then that doesn't apply so basically saying this in this simple law if i know that you don't observe the laws of schmitt i can't give you money for the food that you gave me why because the money has status of dusha and i don't know if you will actually observe it and you can go buy whatever you want with it and then both of us are failing now how do i now secure myself so to say to buy produce from a person that doesn't observe the shemitah and that can happen how do you know let's say now you go to the store and you don't know if this is observing ishmael is not but you want to buy the produce so our sages find the ones who are selling a produce of sweet when they're not observing the shemitah that it grew in the year of sweet and by the way the our sages is 2500 years ago farmers now in israel they don't like that they're like that's not fair so basically now we have to throw our produce we're talking about the non-observant farmers they saying it's not fair we have to throw our produce while you're importing produce from outside of israel and they don't the unobservant farmers don't like all these rules but nevertheless the exercise that our sages added and i'm not we we're not about allowed to buy that hakone mimo so if i buy from them then i'm trying to transgressing the law of our sages it's not from the torah but it's from our sages because when there's a period that in the market there's the produce that has achieved on it all that has the prohibition prohibition of sufficient that this is a few side side conditions all the type of produce and fruit that started growing prior to shemitah and end up after shemitah then some of them have to eat and some of them don't for example the the vegetables will have to chive but the fruit won't because they started growing last year so then i can bite right then there's no problem this is these are the conditions next week then sometimes the the vegetables they started growing before shemitah and they were picked during shemitah then sometimes they will be they'll be uh prohibited and uh underwater prohibition of suffering of after growth and sometimes they won't and it depends again when it started growing when it was picked and so forth now another uh uh condition maestro hagidor min the length of how long it takes to grow it changes between the types so potatoes let's say will take two months onions will take a month and the radishes will take three months i'm just throwing i don't know i'm just giving an example so the length of the growth is completely different yes some grow fast some grow slow so that will also affect what started prior to shemitah and after the shemitah and some of the types they are long lasting some things if you take a tomato off the uh you pick the tomato give it a week or two it rots but some things can last for a very long time for example onion onion and garlic can go for months you can pick it and still have it for a few months not only that another thing that stays for a very long time is almonds and also apples apples is not the type of fruit that they pick from the tree and they bring it to the market you can pick the apples and it will stay for months so all this also makes a big difference now what happens is that you might go to the market now and see onions i don't know maybe the onions are half a year old or the almonds and if they're old then you don't have a problem so a lot of the produce can be from last year anyways and they're just in their warehouses and there and they can uh hold on a little bit therefore since each one has different lengths of time how they can sustain or grow then then depending what time of the year that i'm buying the produce and nevertheless some of them will have the prohibition some will not have the prohibition now now we're not giving you solutions we're just telling you the facts so now you might have a problem that you go to a market and some of the produce you can buy some of the products you can buy now of course later on we'll give all the solutions what do you do but now we're now laying down the foundation that you should know not everything that you see now in the market has a problem of chevit a lot of it doesn't a lot of all the fruit and things that stay a long time they're from last year most likely they are from last year so now this is not so uh uh common but in the more olden days when things were simple they used to make something that is called the hanuchmita now i don't think they really follow that maybe in your life and benefit you can find some of these stores but in yerushalaim it's a what's called minha russia that they used to do stores for fruit and vegetables and that would be shmita stores and you know that that's a shmitah store now what did they used to do by the bet yourself that grew by a gentile in israel then it doesn't have to show it that's what they bet yourself says they bet yourself and another authority the path so they say no if a gentile lives in the land of israel and they grow produce then um even though it's the land of israel but they're not jewish it doesn't have but what's the condition that all their produce was grown by a gentile so when you walk into that store and it says khanushmita shmita store you know that all the produce came from an arab or from a druze or somebody another gentile that lives on the land and that the produce is all what's called now again i'm now we're learning this before there's difference of opinions we're going to have to dedicate a whole class maybe even two for what's called because a lot of people say listen i'm buying from the jews they're not obligated and observing the shmitah but there's a lot of conditions and some agree some don't agree that we'll do in a different class but nevertheless going back to the shemitah it says as follows if i have this type of a store then the first condition is that all the produce is coming from a gentile but since this is so to say a produce that you can buy then one is allowed to also sell in that store produce that was imported from outside of israel and producers from the sixth year but so you know you walk into that story knowing everything that i'll find in the store i'm good to go and in order to make sure that nothing prohibited is sold in this store then it has to have some type of a supervision and needless to say like i told you it's not so common you're not going to find it so often i'm sure in some little places in irushalam or maybe benebrak or some other places you might find these type of stores and it is to say that we'll have some type of supervision that say you're the owner of the store or some local rabbit says yeah i'm supervising and this is really what's going on and some people actually will get a certification from one of the known uh battery name that says yeah this is the meter and you can just walk in and do you're safe to go and buy whatever you want there next now like i told you not everybody holds by that so why because i told you the bet yourself and the piata shulhan but before we learned about the halacha ruling of the hazonish that in many cases were lenient but the he says no no no produce that grew in the land of israel i don't care if aliens grew it it's in the land of israel it has to show it doesn't matter if a gentile is the uh the one who did it no no there is actually the holiness of shavit in the produce of a gentile in order to buy in these type of stores there has to be a very specific condition or like almost even like a contract between the buyer and the seller and like i told her it's not so common now so this doesn't really matter how does it really done and it has to be done with a star with a document is that the buyer appoints the owner of the store to buy for them okay now the buyer gives money here i want you to buy me for 100 shekels and what's your fee 20 shekels here 20 now the produce is not owned by the owner of the store it's owned by the buyer to sell it and the owner of the store doesn't have to buy the produce and we're talking about produce of gentiles he doesn't even have to do he can appoint somebody to do that and nevertheless and usually there's a committee that they will buy from the gentile now how do we act accordingly then again it depends by who what lack of ruling you go by some say listen i will go away they bet yourself i buy from non-jews i don't care that's good enough for me there's many difference of opinions i told you already that many people in our generation what they do is they buy what's called the heteromexico and i told you to a large amount of observing jews they go by really is a loophole that doesn't really work mine should not really go by the term is like the ability to sell but i told you we'll have to do another standalone class just about that so here we're just explaining the alaha practically saying again it goes there's two things one needs to know a is which opinion you hold by and like i told you we're going to have to do dedicate a class or two just for no because means that the protest was grown by a gentile and how you go about and do that but now we're just laying down what we're allowed to do and not allowed to do with that said we need to be very careful where we buy the produce and if we can somehow track where the produce came from so if you go to a regular market or one of the big stores you might have a problem uh how to trust when it came from who it came from who imported the produce when you buy it from a little store it's a little bit easier the owner of the store tells you i buy the produce i know who i buy it from but when you go to one of the big chains shuffle salo whatever i think i know they come with truck loads i don't know where they bring can you really trust it the bottom line here is that there's a lot of conditions how you buy the produce and for that you need to be very cautious that's why many people when it comes to the fruit of street they'll buy either for a very small store or they just go to the fields and buy directly and they know here i see the produce or they pick it themselves or they go like they have here in spot every wednesday market and they know okay that guy sells only potatoes and onions and i know him and i know what he does where he gets it and so forth so basically saying in other words you have to be very cautious you're allowed to buy in some of the cases protest for shavit but you need to know when it came where it came from what was all the conditions therefore it makes the whole situation a little bit harder how to know where and where and what to buy and as i said not once and not twice not so easy to observe the shemitah perfectly because unless you take care of it yourself then you're putting yourself in a lot of places that are of doubts that you don't know exactly where it came from but this other share machine should help us to know all the rules and buy accordingly [Music] you