Gardening - Leket, Shikcha and Pei’ah

QUESTION: Are the mitzvos of “Leket” (leaving for the poor produce that falls in the field), “Shikcha” (leaving for the poor forgotten produce) and “Pei’ah” (leaving over a corner of your field for the poor) observed today in Israel?

ANSWER: The Gemara (Chulin 134b) states that the Amora Levi planted a field in a region where there were no poor people around. Rav Shaishes ruled that he should not leave over these gifts for the poor. He explained that the purpose of leaving these gifts is to benefit the poor, and not to benefit wild birds. If there are no poor people around to collect these gifts, they will end up being collected by local animals. This was not the purpose of leaving over these gifts.

Therefore, Shulchan Aruch (YD 332:1) writes that the mitzvos of “Leket”, “Shikcha” and “Pei’ah” only apply when there are poor Jews in the vicinity to collect them. The Rema adds that in his day these mitzvos were not observed because the majority of the population in Israel were non-Jews and this mitzvah only applies to Jewish recipients. The Chazon Ish (Maaseros 7:10) writes that even today that the majority of Israel are Jewish, the halacha has not changed from what the Rema has written. This is because the price of bread is comparatively so inexpensive that it is not worth the effort for a poor person to harvest the grain himself and then to go through the extensive effort of turning it into bread. The left-over produce will ostensibly be collected by birds and other local animals defeating the whole purpose of this mitzvah.

The Chazon Ish concludes that since today the mitzvos of “Leket”, “Shikcha” and “Pei’ah” are mitzvos d'Rabbanan, if there is even a serious doubt as to whether the poor will collect the produce or it will be left for the birds, it need not be observed. However, some Poskim write that the leniency of the Chazon Ish might not apply to fruit, because these are easy to pick, and poor people would make the effort to collect them. It is recorded today that some farmers do leave over Pei’ah of fruit trees.

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