Resources for Moed Katan 3

Rabbi Yitzchok Gutterman

1. The גמרא at the very end of דף ב discusses whether שמיטה בזמן הזה is דאורייתא or not. רבי’s שיטה seems to be that it is דרבנן and the חכמים who disagree hold it’s דאורייתא. What is unclear is that the דרשה that רבי brings sounds like it’s purpose is to tell you that if there is no שמיטת קרקע, then there is no השמטת כספים, which allows us to derive that there must be a time when שמיטת קרקע is דרבנן. However, See תוספות in גיטין דף ל"ו who explains that when our גמרא says שמיטת קרקע it is referring to יובל (when the land returns to it’s owner), and השמטת כספים refers to שמיטה in general. That means the דרשה is telling us that if there is no יובל, there is no שמיטה. That clarifies things considerably, since the rules for יובל, as described in ערכין דף ל"ב, are that it requires all twelve of the שבטים to be living in Israel in their proper places (see the פּסקי תוספות in ערכיו דף ל"ב who says you just need one person from each tribe). This is also how the רמב"ם paskens in הלכות שמיטה פּרק י' הל' ח. However, see רש"י in גיטין דף ל"ו: ד"ה בזמן שאי as well as the תוספות הרא"ש ד"ה זמן who say that the reason there is no שמיטה דאורייתא today is because once the second בית המקדש was destroyed, בטלה קדושת הארץ. See the חינוך in מצוה פּ"ד who has a totally different approach. He says that שמיטה is דרבנן since it is like תרומות ומעשרות which require ביאת כולכם. According to that, once 51% of Jews live in Israel, שמיטה will once again be דאורייתא. On the opposite extreme, see the ראב"ד in פ"א הלכות שמיטה הלכה י"א who seems to hold that even שמיטה ,בזמן הזה is דאורייתא.

2. The גמרא says that we would have included all of the תולדות of עבודת קרקע in the איסור of שביעית except that we have a דרשה to exclude any מלאכות that aren’t written in the פּסוק. This sounds like the general rule of thumb is that whenever we have any איסור is ש"ס, if there is a possibility of אבות and תולדות, then the starting point is to automatically include all תולדות unless we have a דרשה indicating that we should not. See the שיטה מקובצת in בבא קמא דף ב who brings the מהר"י כ"ץ who says this יסוד and says the only reason we need a פּסוק to include תולדות by שבת is because we might have thought that the תורה only forbade exactly what was done in the משכן, so we need a פּסוק to tell us otherwise. However, see תוספות in בכורות דף כ"ה ד"ה ואמר ריש לקיש who says that one cannot learn from the תולדות of שבת to בכור since בכור isn’t necessarily חייב in תולדות (paraphrasing his words). This is clearly not like the מהר"י כ"ץ mentioned above. See the שו"ת אבני נזר in או"ח סימן קל"א ס"ק י"ט who was asked how would תוספות understand our גמרא? Isn’t our גמרא clear that even by שביעית we would have been מרבה all תולדות if not for a דרשה? He answers that שביעית is different in that it is called שבת, so we would know to add תולדות. This is why the גמרא calls anything תולדות at all! In other words, תולדות usually refer to things not mentioned explicitly in the Torah, whereas by שמיטה the “אבות” and “תולדות” are mentioned in the Torah. The reason we call them תולדות is because שמיטה is similar to שבת.

3. The גמרא on our דף makes an obscure statement about שמיטה: it says “אברויי אילן אסור, סתומי פּילי שרי”. What exactly does that mean? רש"י in ד"ה שרי says it means that filling up holes should have been prohibited except that it is a הפסד (whereas אברויי אילן is just for רווח). However, see the ריטב"א here who says that filling up holes is not considered a מלאכה at all for שביעית. That would mean it would be allowed even if no loss was involved.

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