Laws of Terumos and Maasros - Rabbi Yosef Chaim Rosenblatt shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lema’an Yishme’u,” a podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 Today we’ll discuss separating terumos and maasros from produce grown in Eretz Yisroel. Within Eretz Yisroel itself, as we know—and we’ll talk about this—different areas have different obligations. But first and foremost, we’ll talk about the basic need to be aware of separating terumos and maasros. Nowadays, we buy everything ready to eat, with the required separations already made. Ask someone a question about the kashrus of food, and he’ll say, “I eat food certified by the Eidah Hachareidis and Rabbi Landau.” That’s it; he doesn’t need to know anything else. We see this in every area. Once, every woman knew how to salt meat at home. Who salts meat today? Neither beef nor chicken. Nobody salts it, so people no longer know even the basic laws of salting that every ordinary woman once knew. The same is true of terumos and maasros. Today, boruch Hashem, we shop at the supermarket or a vegetable store with the best kosher certifications. Boruch Hashem, throughout the country you can get fruits and vegetables with the best certifications. So a person seemingly doesn’t need to know anything. But we, the Rebbe’s chassidim, are very involved in shlichus. For one thing, we often find ourselves in places where we need to eat fruits and vegetables from which terumos and maasros have not been separated. Of course, we won’t discuss today the even more serious question with fruit—the question of orlah. That’s a subject in its own right, and when fruit comes without kosher certification, one certainly has to be very careful about it. I constantly get calls from people asking whether they can rely on one type of fruit or another. Those questions are based on published figures for the percentages of

02:20 Speaker 2 orlah found throughout Eretz Yisroel. But that’s not our subject today. Right now I want to focus on separating terumos and maasros. As I said, we often find ourselves in places with fruits and vegetables—or say, vegetables—from which terumos and maasros have definitely not been separated. And certainly, we often buy fruits and vegetables without the very best, most mehudar certification that we’re used to buying when it’s available. More than that, as shluchim we want to look after others, not just ourselves. In other words, I might be at an event or visiting a family, and perhaps I won’t eat those fruits and vegetables myself. But there are fellow Jews sitting there at a housewarming or some other happy occasion, and we want to give them the opportunity not to eat tevel. So perhaps I won’t eat it myself because the host bought it at a fruit and vegetable store with a basic certification that he relies on. There is certainly reason to remove even the concern of demai—a term we’ll discuss—meaning produce about which it’s uncertain whether terumos and maasros were separated, and so on. So we, in particular, need to know about terumos and maasros, and especially how to separate them. And I want to say that the more I meet shluchim and Temimim who go out on mivtzoim, the more I see that people don’t understand the wording used to separate terumos and maasros. They aren’t familiar with it; they don’t understand it. And even when I see that someone understands a little of what it means, when it comes to actually making the separation, they don’t know how to do it. I think this is one of the things we need to raise

04:30 Speaker 2 awareness of in a serious way: to study it even in yeshivos, to practice it, to run through a simulation of how terumos and maasros are separated, so that everyone knows how to do it. And I want to begin here. It isn’t in the order one would normally follow when teaching the subject, but I want to begin with something that happened with one of my kashrus supervisors. Boruch Hashem, I have dozens of kashrus supervisors in our kashrus operation in the Lower Galilee. They vary; some are more learned than others. Also, in many places, the supervisors aren’t responsible for terumos and maasros. A supervisor might be responsible for a particular area and never need to separate terumos and maasros. For example, under the procedures of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, a hotel’s kashrus supervisor is not supposed to separate terumos and maasros. He must accept fruits and vegetables from a supplier who has already had terumos and maasros separated, with documentation signed by the supplier’s supervisor. He may not accept anything else. If fruits and vegetables arrive from a farmer, he may not accept them; he has to send them back. So he never gets to separate terumos and maasros, and often he isn’t sufficiently familiar with the process. Now, something happened at an educational institution connected with the Ministry of Education where I oversee kashrus. As I said, the supervisor there generally doesn’t need to separate terumos and maasros. One day I came for an inspection and saw some tomatoes that, judging by the packaging, didn’t seem to have come from the supplier. I asked him, “What are these? Where did they come from?” He told me, “They’re from right here at the school.” It’s a youth village, and the students have greenhouses where they grow various vegetables themselves. Usually that produce doesn’t reach the kitchen that prepares their meals, because it’s a kitchen under my kashrus supervision and everything has to come in

06:34 Speaker 2 properly, according to procedure. But this time they’d brought in the tomatoes. I told him, “But you’re not allowed to accept them.” He said, “Rabbi, don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry. Relax. I want to show you something.” He took me into the [unclear] room and pointed to the wall. He said, “Rabbi, see that? I said that whole prayer. I said the whole prayer, so you can relax. The tomatoes are fine.” I looked at the wall and saw something he’d printed from the internet: the wording for separating terumos and maasros. I told him, “My dear supervisor, that isn’t a prayer at all. It’s the wording for separating terumos and maasros. Did you understand what you said? Did you understand what’s written there?” He said, “No, I thought it was a prayer. It’s a prayer, like any prayer. I don’t really understand everything I say in prayer either. So I said a prayer. What’s wrong with that?” Of course, I immediately took care of it and separated terumos and maasros properly. But there’s something everyone needs to know here. Separating terumos and maasros is indeed done by speaking, but that speech is a little reminiscent of the way Moshiach will act “with the rod of his mouth.” When we say the wording aloud, we effect a separation and give a particular portion the halachic status of a gift. As we’ll learn, whether it’s terumah gedolah, maaser rishon, terumas maaser or maaser sheini, this is done through speech: we must understand what we’re saying and know where the produce we’re referring to is located. That is what brings the separation into effect. What happens when we don’t understand, when we approach it like that supervisor? We say, “No, it’s a prayer. I said the

08:34 Speaker 2 The prayer. So we need to know: the Chazon Ish says that, after the fact, if someone does not understand the wording, he can say it without understanding it. What is more, many siddurim in his time printed a ruling in his name that even if a person does not have the wording in front of him, and he has untithed produce here that he wants to rectify, he can say, “The terumos and maasros should take effect according to the wording I have at home,” and that’s it. It takes effect, and everything is fine. First of all, in Chabad we do not really follow the rulings of the Chazon Ish—to put it mildly, and we won’t go into that. But we should know that leading halachic authorities disagreed with him. Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank wrote explicitly, as did other important rabbis, that it does not work for someone to separate terumos and maasros without knowing what he is saying—when he does not understand what this gift is or where it is now within the produce in front of him. It does not work at all; the produce remains untithed. So I think that certainly, when we are talking about ourselves—and not only ourselves, because we think of others no less than ourselves—every single person needs to study and understand the subject of separating terumos and maasros. We need to understand how it is done, what we are doing, and what we are saying, so that the separation is done properly from the outset. There is another point that we will also discuss. There is separation, meaning that we have set a portion apart from all the produce that was untithed. But there is also the concept of giving. Giving is not possible with every portion, and there is a discussion among the halachic authorities, as we will discuss later: must we then actually give every portion that can be given nowadays, because it does not have sanctity, as we will soon discuss, to a Levi or to a poor person—as in this year, which is the sixth year, as we will soon discuss? So

10:45 Speaker 2 there needs to be giving. Nowadays, this giving is handled wonderfully by the various institutes that have established a fund for terumos and maasros. And here we should tell the truth: the Torah VeHa’aretz Institute deserves credit for being first. Today we know them as people who were expelled from Gush Katif; they are no longer located there in Gush Katif. But they deserve credit for being first to take up this subject of the mitzvos connected to the Land of Israel. They have a deep personal connection to these mitzvos and have devoted themselves to them. I always refer people who want to become partners by subscribing to a maasros fund to the Torah VeHa’aretz Institute. Other institutes have been established, but there is no particular reason to use a different one. This is not a matter of following a particular custom; it is the same thing. We do not need to do everything separately. They have great merit. These are people who show self-sacrifice in general, and self-sacrifice for the mitzvos connected to the Land of Israel. They were the first to establish a maasros fund. As we will explain, with Hashem’s help, through the maasros fund we not only perform the separation but also give what can be given. This applies primarily to maaser rishon, which goes to a Levi, and to maaser ani in the third and sixth years. Of course, another central part of what they do, besides arranging that giving, is to make a coin available to subscribers for redeeming maaser sheini. We will explain later why it is important to have a coin through a maasros fund. First, it is readily available, whereas otherwise we may not always have one available, and afterward it is not so easy to dispose of that coin. Second, there is the matter of a prutah chamurah, which we will explain. Not everyone can arrange for his own coin to contain a

12:57 Speaker 2 prutah chamurah. They make sure that every coin on which we redeem maaser sheini contains a prutah chamurah, and they make that available to every subscriber. So let us begin by explaining the separation of terumos and maasros. Of course, the obligation nowadays is rabbinic. This relates to the Torah’s requirement—there are different views among the early authorities, who derive it from one verse or another—but the point is that it says, “When you come into the land,” linking it to entering the Land, and there is also the requirement of “when you gather,” with all the Jewish people, or most of them, living in their Land. Then there is a Torah obligation to observe terumos and maasros. Nowadays, when most of the Jewish people are not living in their Land, or when we do not know for certain whether most are, the obligation is rabbinic. But a rabbinic obligation is still a full and serious obligation, as ordained by the Sages. We should also know that even when the obligation is from the Torah, the straightforward understanding is that the Torah obligation applies to three things: grain, wine and oil. Grain means everything connected with wheat—the five species of grain; wine is wine, and oil is olive oil. Those are the items obligated by the Torah. Other produce is obligated rabbinically even at a time when the Torah obligation applies. There are also views in the Rambam that other kinds of tree fruit are obligated by the Torah as well, but we will not go into that now. Even if we regard the obligation of terumos and maasros nowadays as rabbinic, it is a full obligation. Certainly, every single person needs to know how to do it and do it properly. I want to begin with the different versions of the wording that are circulated. In principle, they are all based on the same idea, the same approach. But the problem is that sometimes the wording is not clear enough. Even if you understand the words you are saying, it is hard to understand what

15:32 Speaker 2 the wording means. I will give an example of that in a moment. You can therefore see a very significant difference between the Chazon Ish’s wording, which appears in many siddurim—it used to appear in Tefillas Kol Peh, published by Eshkol; I do not know whether it still does, and it is surely found elsewhere—and the wording of the Torah VeHa’aretz Institute. The latter is plainly clearer: from the words a person says, it is easier to understand exactly what he means by each statement and each gift. So let us first lay out the four gifts, the four portions that need to be separated and given, and define each one. Then we will go through the wording for the separation in an orderly way and see how to do it in practice. The first thing to do is separate terumah gedolah. The first gift we must give is terumah gedolah, and it appears in the Book of Bamidbar. The Torah says, “All the finest of the oil, and all the finest of the wine and grain—their first portion, which they give to Hashem—I have given to you.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells the kohanim that the first portion the Jewish people give, which is terumah gedolah, is given to the kohen. Notice that the Torah does not say how much it is. The Torah only says “the first portion.” So by Torah law, terumah gedolah has no fixed measure; any amount will do. The Sages did set a measure for it in the Mishnah, establishing three standards: generous, stingy and average. A generous person gives one-fortieth of his crop as terumah gedolah, which is two and a half percent. A stingy person gives less than that—one-sixtieth—and an average person gives two percent, one-fiftieth.

17:56 Speaker 2 All of that was true when the Beis Hamikdash stood, the kohanim were ritually pure, and they could benefit from this terumah. But nowadays, since the kohanim are ritually impure through contact with the dead and are not permitted to eat the terumah, if I were to give generously and set aside two and a half percent of the produce, it would simply go to waste. Once I set it aside and designate two and a half percent of the produce as terumah gedolah, it becomes holy. A non-kohen, an ordinary Jew, who eats it is liable to death. The Torah is very, very strict about non-kohanim eating terumah; it is a grave prohibition. So nowadays, the amount of terumah gedolah reverts to the Torah’s basic requirement: any amount at all. If I have a whole quantity of fruit, it makes no difference—even if there are truckloads of it at a factory. Boruch Hashem, we have factories where we separate terumos and maasros, including the Prinir[?] factory, which processes tomatoes, and we’re talking about enormous quantities. For terumah gedolah, you can take a tiny piece. You don’t even need a whole tomato. You have several truckloads; you take a little, and that’s terumah gedolah. So that’s the first gift. And since nowadays we really have no use for it—the kohanim cannot eat it, and an ordinary Jew cannot eat it—what we need to do, because it is holy, is wrap it properly in two layers and dispose of it that way. Anyone who can leave it until it rots—that is certainly better. In factories, unfortunately, because the quantities are so very large, they dispose of it as it is. But it certainly may not be eaten. There is nothing we can do with it, nothing we can do with it. We’ll learn,

19:51 Speaker 2 We’ll see later about oil that is terumah. Even if the oil is ritually impure—in fact, specifically when the oil is impure—a kohen can use it for Chanukah lights and so on. But that’s not our subject right now. That is terumah gedolah. The second gift I need to give from my produce is maaser rishon. The Torah says this too, in the Book of Bamidbar: “And to the children of Levi, behold, I have given every tithe in Israel as an inheritance.” Why do I give it to the Levi’im? “In exchange for their service, which they perform.” You see, the Levi’im work in the Beis Hamikdash, and they needed to be compensated, so Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave them maaser rishon. Further on in those verses it also says, “For the tithe of the children of Israel, which they set aside as a contribution to Hashem, I have given to the Levi’im as an inheritance. Therefore I have said to them: Among the children of Israel they shall not inherit an inheritance.” Here, unlike terumah gedolah, where we said that nowadays we follow the Torah’s basic requirement, with no set measure—any amount will do—the Torah explicitly sets the amount: a tithe, ten percent. You have to understand, when someone separates a small amount at home after buying two kilos of oranges, ten percent doesn’t feel like much. But think of a large factory handling enormous quantities, tons upon tons upon tons. That maaser rishon can amount to enormous quantities belonging to the Levi. So first we need to clarify two points. First, in principle, maaser rishon does not have the holiness that terumah gedolah has. The terumah gedolah we set aside for the kohen is holy, and a non-kohen is forbidden to eat it. An ordinary Jew may not eat it at all; the penalty is extremely severe. Most of maaser rishon, though, may in principle be eaten even by someone who is not a kohen and someone who is

22:15 Speaker 2 not a Levi. But, as we’ll see in a moment, there is a third gift within maaser rishon called terumas maaser. That is holy. For now, though, we’re talking about the stage where I’ve taken ten percent of everything set aside and given it to the Levi; it belongs to him. So, we’re not yet discussing the wording used when separating it or how we do this in practice, but we need to understand the idea. The idea is to take ten percent of all the produce I have, whether fruit or vegetables, and give it to the Levi. That is what is supposed to happen in principle. Then the Torah commands the Levi. I’ve taken ten percent and given it to him; now the Levi also has a mitzvah from the Torah, which appears there in the Book of Bamidbar. Further on, Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: “And Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying: And to the Levi’im you shall speak and say to them”—now you also need to speak to the Levi’im—“When you take from the children of Israel the tithe,” the ten percent of all their produce, “which I have given you from them as your inheritance”—you Levi’im have received it—“you shall set aside from it a contribution to Hashem, a tithe from the tithe.” You Levi’im must set aside a tithe from that ten percent. How much is a tithe from the tithe? The whole amount was one hundred percent. The Levi’im received ten percent, and from that ten percent they must take ten percent. That means one percent of the whole. So the Levi treats the ten percent he received as his one hundred percent and takes ten percent of what he received, which is one percent of the whole. What does he do with that one percent? He gives it to the kohen. And note that when he gives it to the kohen, it becomes holy to the same degree

24:25 Speaker 2 as the terumah gedolah that we, the Jewish owners, gave to the kohen earlier. This one percent that the Levi takes from what he received—ten percent of what he received, one percent of the whole—and separates and gives to the kohen has that same degree of holiness. To give you a sense of the amounts involved, and so we’ll understand the wording used when separating it later on, what emerges is that the kohen receives one percent plus a little more from the whole quantity of untithed produce. Right? Why? The little extra has no set measure; the Torah didn’t specify one, but simply called it “the first portion.” He receives that from the owner at the outset. The owner has the whole quantity, takes a little first portion, and gives it to the kohen. But at stage three, the kohen receives another full one percent. If we’re talking about very large quantities of produce, that one percent is very significant. I can tell you that in large factories, this one percent of terumas maaser—the part the Levi gives the kohen—can amount to tons upon tons upon tons every day. So the Torah also says to the Levi’im: “Thus shall you, too, set aside a contribution to Hashem from all your tithes that you take from the children of Israel, and from it you shall give the contribution to Hashem to Aharon the kohen.” That’s it. There’s more here, but we don’t need to go through all the verses. The idea is that the Levi gives terumas maaser. The next gift is maaser sheini. Until now, we’ve had terumah gedolah, which we gave to the kohen at the beginning. At stage two, we gave the kohen ten percent of the whole. At stage three, the Levi himself took ten percent of the ten percent he received—which is one percent of the whole—and gave it to the kohen. At stage three, I, the owner, need to give

26:26 Speaker 2 Maaser sheni. Now, what is maaser sheni? First, let’s see how much he has left. What remains with the owner is only ninety percent of the original amount. In any case, he now takes ten percent of what remains. When the Beis Hamikdash stood, that ten percent—maaser sheni—belonged to the owner, but he had to eat it in Jerusalem. He would take it up to Jerusalem and eat it there in a state of holiness. He didn’t have to eat it all himself. Obviously, we’re talking about a large quantity. He could bring it to Jerusalem, set a table, invite people, and they would eat the maaser sheni. But the Torah also provides a solution for someone who has very large quantities of maaser sheni: “If the place is too far from you,” yes, “if you cannot carry it”—if that would be difficult for you. So what do you do? “You shall exchange it for money, bind the money in your hand, and go to the place that Hashem your G-d will choose.” You take the maaser sheni and redeem it for its value. Note that this is a very important point: back then, when the Beis Hamikdash stood and it could be eaten in holiness in Jerusalem, maaser sheni was redeemed for its full value. If it was worth ten thousand shekels, he would redeem it for ten thousand shekels, take the money, and go up to Jerusalem. And what would he do with it? The Torah says, “You shall spend the money on whatever your soul desires.” You could buy any kind of food with it—cattle, sheep, wine, strong drink, anything your soul asks for. Yes, that wording includes everything; there is no restriction. You could buy any kind of food with it. “And you shall eat there before Hashem your G-d, and rejoice, you and your household.” That is what a Jew had to do with maaser sheni. Now, in our time, in our time

28:25 Speaker 2 we cannot eat anything in a state of holiness in Jerusalem. We have no way to use the maaser sheni, because we are all ritually impure. So nowadays we redeem maaser sheni, even enormous quantities of it, for the value of a prutah. The halachic authorities discuss how it can be possible to redeem enormous quantities of maaser sheni for a prutah. One explanation is that, in practice, you cannot eat it today: eating it outside Jerusalem is forbidden, and eating it in Jerusalem is also forbidden because we are ritually impure. So its value to me today is no more than a prutah. That is why even large quantities of maaser sheni can be redeemed for the value of a prutah. Of course, when a person redeems his own maaser sheni, the Torah says he must also add a fifth. He redeems it together with its fifth—on a prutah and a fifth. In the third and sixth years of the shemitah cycle, we have a different fourth gift. Instead of maaser sheni, we set aside ten percent and must give it to a poor person. For example, this year, 5781, is the sixth year of the shemitah cycle. With Hashem’s help, 5782 will be a shemitah year. So right now we are in the sixth year. And this makes a very significant difference. When we set aside maaser sheni, we could nowadays redeem it for the value of a prutah. But with maaser ani, there is nothing preventing you from giving it to a poor person as it is, at its full value—ten percent of the whole. So it would seem that you actually have to give the maaser ani you set aside to a poor person. For a private individual, this creates a difficulty. At home, perhaps, it isn’t a problem. He bought two, three, four, or five kilos of oranges at the supermarket; he’ll give ten

30:34 Speaker 2 percent of that to a poor person. That’s no problem. But when it comes to a large factory—a very, very large factory—ten percent of the whole means enormous quantities. As one factory owner once told me, “If I have to give ten percent to the poor, literally, I’d rather switch places. Let the poor run the factory, and I’ll be the poor person they give ten percent to. That’s much more than I currently earn from all the produce I handle in the factory.” So the question really does arise: how do we give maaser ani? Of course, the best thing is to give the produce itself. Today there are ways to do that through agents representing the poor, through charitable funds, or through someone who distributes to the poor. An agent representing the poor also has the halachic authority to negotiate with the owners over the value at which the maaser ani will be given. Various guidelines have also been published on how to calculate the value of maaser ani. After all, the price of a fruit includes many things besides the value of the fruit itself: the farmer’s work, transportation, various middlemen’s markups, and so on. The price of the fruit itself is much, much lower. When you calculate ten percent of that, the amount comes out much, much lower. So giving maaser ani is indeed an obligation nowadays, but there are various ways to arrange it so that even owners of large factories can absorb the cost. That completes our outline of the order of terumos and maasros. Now I want to get into how we actually do it. When it comes to the procedure for separating them, suppose we’ve just bought a crate of cucumbers or a crate of tomatoes, and I now want to separate terumos and maasros.

32:45 Speaker 2 How do we actually do that, and why? Here’s how. In the Chazon Ish’s wording, for example, it says, “The amount here that exceeds one hundredth shall be terumah gedolah on its northern side.” I ask people what “exceeds one hundredth” means. They tell me: We took a little more than one percent of the tomatoes. Say we weighed them and they came to a hundred kilos, and each tomato weighs, say, a kilo. So we took one tomato and a little bit more—one percent plus something extra. When they say “more than one hundredth,” I ask: All right, you’ve now designated more than one hundredth as terumah gedolah? They tell me, yes, I designated the one percent and the extra bit, all of it, as terumah gedolah. That is a very serious misunderstanding of the wording used when separating the gifts, because we will use that one percent only in steps two and three. That is, we will use it when we separate maaser rishon, which we are supposed to give to a Levi, and in step three, when we separate terumas maaser—the gift the Levi must give to a Kohen. I’ll explain that in a moment. So, for example, in the wording used by the Torah VeHa’aretz Institute—I don’t have it in front of me, but I remember more or less the ideas behind it—it says, “The one hundredth that I set aside shall remain in its state of tevel.” It is on standby for now. I’m not doing anything with it. What I designate as terumah gedolah is the amount in excess of that one hundredth. In what I set aside, there is one percent, and there is the extra bit attached to it. It could be part of the same piece, but the extra bit attached to that one percent—that additional amount—will be the terumah gedolah. And so what I say

34:58 Speaker 2 Now, let’s say I have a tomato here that contains one percent of the total, but it has a little more than one percent. So I say: the one percent will remain in its state of tevel. The amount beyond that one percent I designate as terumah gedolah, because, as we said at the beginning, nowadays we follow the Torah law that terumah gedolah can be any amount at all. Once we understand that, we also understand what the Chazon Ish meant in his wording when he said “more than one in a hundred.” He doesn’t mean, as everyone thinks, the one in a hundred and the extra together. He means the part beyond the one in a hundred. But the wording isn’t clear enough, because someone reading it thinks it means both the one percent and the additional piece attached to it. In the wording they wrote, it’s much clearer: I have a large tomato here. Inside it is the one percent, which is on standby for now, because at this point I want to designate the amount beyond the one percent. Whatever that extra amount is, even the smallest amount, will be terumah gedolah for all the produce I want to make fit for use. And as we go through the wording, we’ll also explain why, out of everything, we set aside just one percent and a little more. For now, we’ve started with terumah gedolah. Good. We’ve not only designated it verbally; we’ve also put it to the side. It’s also important to say that within this tomato, which contains one percent and a little more, we have to define where each part is. I have a tomato here, fine. Where is the one percent, which for now hasn’t been designated as any of the gifts and is still part of the—and where is the part that is terumah gedolah? That needs to be stated. It’s in the upper part of the tomato, or on the northern side. You have to define it. And, by the way, this too is in the wording

36:51 Speaker 2 of the Chazon Ish: the locations of the separated portions are defined by compass directions. That may be based on the Mishnah’s use of the north side and the south side. But in the wording of the Torah VeHa’aretz Institute, they used the upper part and the lower part. Why did they change it? Because when you say north and south, standing where you are, you may not know which way is north and which is south. You can say, “I mean the northern side, wherever north is according to the compass,” but you really don’t know which side that is. When you say “upper” and “lower,” you know which is which. So if I say that the one in a hundred is in the lower part and will remain tevel for now—I’m not touching it—and that the amount beyond the one in a hundred, at the top of the tomato, in its upper part, will be terumah gedolah for everything I now want to make fit for use, that’s stage one. We’ve gotten through it, boruch Hashem. Now stage two: ma’aser rishon. Note that nowadays, in practice, we don’t actually give ten percent to the Levi’im. Why don’t we? Because according to some poskim, Levi’im don’t have an established presumption of being Levi’im. If a person doesn’t have that presumption, he can’t demand it from me. I can tell him, “Bring me proof.” The burden of proof is on the person seeking to take something from someone else. It becomes a monetary question. So I’ve separated the ten percent, and now a Levi comes and wants to take it. I tell him, “Excuse me, prove that you’re a Levi. You want to take money from me, right? Prove you’re a Levi, and you’ll get it.” Since he can’t prove it, it stays with me. So

38:39 Speaker 2 for a long time, the practice was that, because ma’aser rishon has no sanctity and a Yisroel may also eat it, people didn’t actually give it to a Levi. They would separate it and designate it—“These ten percent are ma’aser rishon”—but wouldn’t give it to a Levi in practice. The innovation of the various organizations, including the Ma’asros Fund, is a way to give it to a Levi as well, so that I’m not only separating it but also giving it to him. How do they do that? They collect a certain sum from us and give it to a Levi they have, one with some established lineage, as though you had made him a loan. Each time you separate ma’aser rishon, that ma’aser rishon, so to speak, belongs to the Levi. And the Levi says, “Okay, I owe you money because you lent me forty shekels at the beginning of the year. So, as repayment of part of that loan, take the ma’aser rishon you have there. It’s yours; you can use it.” I’m returning to this point to make it clearer how ma’aser rishon is separated. I first explained why we don’t actually remove the full ten percent from the produce: in practice, we don’t give it to a Levi. And when someone does give it, he does so through this arrangement with the Ma’asros Fund, using the loan. But we don’t physically hand it over. Now I want us to understand this clearly. I have a whole crate of tomatoes here. Off to the side I have the tomato with the extra bit. We dealt with that earlier: we said the extra bit, in the upper part of the tomato, is terumah gedolah. Now I do the following

40:19 Speaker 2 thing. The lower part of the tomato makes up one percent of all the tomatoes I want to make fit for use. I now say out loud, “And nine parts equal to it.” What does that mean? If I have this one percent and another nine parts equal to it, how much is that altogether? It’s ten percent. So if I say “this one percent and another nine parts equal to it,” where are those nine parts? Where are they located? One option is to define them as being on the northern side of the tomatoes in the crate; another is to define them as being in the upper part. Again, as I said, the Chazon Ish’s wording says “on the northern side of the crate,” while the wording written by the Torah VeHa’aretz Institute, based on the views of leading poskim, places those nine percent in the upper part of the tomatoes. In other words, if I have a pile of tomatoes here, nine percent in the upper layer, together with this tomato off to the side, constitute ma’aser rishon. Together they make up ten percent. Now pay attention: it’s very important to understand what I’m saying. With my words, I defined and demarcated those tomatoes, giving them the status of ma’aser rishon: this one percent sitting here to the side, and the additional nine percent in the upper part of the fruit. So by speaking, I gave ten percent of the total the status of ma’aser rishon. In terms of location, that ten percent is divided: one percent is here to the side, below the terumah gedolah I already separated, and another nine percent is in the upper part of the crate of tomatoes. Now, as we explained at length earlier when discussing the order of giving these gifts, the Torah commands the Levi to take one percent of the total—ten percent of what he received—and give it as terumas ma’aser. Notice that this is called terumah: he takes from the ma’aser he received and gives terumah to a Kohen.

42:27 Speaker 2 That one percent of the total—ten percent of what the Levi received, which he gives to the Kohen—has a status of sanctity like terumah gedolah. That’s why we divide it in two. I don’t say from the outset that all ten percent of the ma’aser rishon is in the upper part of the fruit. I put aside one percent of the total, which is ten percent of the ma’aser rishon, because I know that at stage three, the stage of terumas ma’aser, I will designate it as a gift with sanctity. A non-Kohen is forbidden to eat it, and nowadays even a Kohen is forbidden to eat it. So I don’t leave it among the fruit and only later remove the terumah from it. I put it aside from the start, so its location is already defined. It’s very simple: in stage two, this one percent was part of ma’aser rishon. In stage three, it has the designation of a separate gift, terumas ma’aser, and becomes sanctified. So I’m not allowed to use it. It’s here to the side. The nine percent that are, say, in the upper part of the tomatoes or on their northern side have the designation of ma’aser rishon, but they have no sanctity. I’m allowed to eat them. If I’ve decided not to give them to a Levi until he proves to me that he is a Levi, then in the meantime I eat them. I eat them; they’re mine. When the Levi proves it, he’ll receive them. So now we understand clearly why we set aside one percent and a little more. The little extra was the first gift, terumah gedolah, and the one percent is the third gift, which the Levi gives. But here’s the thing: we don’t give it to the Levi

44:28 Speaker 2 In practice. So we have to act, as it were, on the Levi’s behalf and separate terumas maaser. If we actually gave the first maaser to a Levi, he would take ten percent of what he received—which is one percent of our total produce—and give it to a Kohen. But since we do not actually give it to a Levi, we must act on his behalf to make our produce fit to eat: we take terumas maaser from the first maaser and give it to a Kohen. Or, nowadays, we have no choice but to discard it, as we explained earlier. That completes our understanding of what happens to the one-and-a-half percent, the one-percent-plus, that was set aside. Now we move to the fourth gift. Pay attention, because this too is very, very important: understanding how to designate locations within the produce. If, for example, I said earlier, at stage two, that the first maaser would be in the upper part of the fruit, then that upper part is the first maaser. I cannot now, at stage four, when I want to separate the second maaser, say that the same fruit in the upper part will be the second maaser. Excuse me—that upper part is already the first maaser. So if I designated the nine percent in the upper part of the tomatoes as the first maaser, and I want to make sure that the second maaser I am about to designate does not fall on that same produce, I have to designate the opposite side. That is why I say the second maaser will be in the lower part of the produce. And according to the Chazon Ish’s wording, which designates the first maaser on the north side of the produce, I must now designate the second maaser on the south side. If I did not designate it and did not

46:34 Speaker 2 understand what I was saying, I have accomplished nothing. If I did not understand that the first maaser was on the north side and that the second maaser is therefore the produce on the south side, then the designation has not taken effect. As I said earlier, despite those who rely on the ruling that one can recite the wording [unclear] even without understanding anything, leading halachic authorities hold that if you did not understand where you were designating the gift, it does not take effect. You have not made the tevel fit to eat. So it is also very, very important not to mix different wordings. If I use wording that designates the first maaser on the north side, I must continue by designating the second maaser on the south side. If I designated the first maaser in the upper part, I must designate the second maaser in the lower part. I cannot suddenly mix them and say that the first maaser is on the north side, but then designate the second maaser in the lower part. That creates an overlap: the entire northern area is first maaser, and I would also be applying the designation of second maaser to part of it. That is impossible. When we understand what we are saying, it makes all the difference. Now, what happens with the second maaser? Again, as I said at the outset, nowadays we do not redeem it for its full value; we redeem it for the value of a perutah. I want to discuss redeeming the second maaser now, and only afterward discuss the maaser for the poor. The Torah instructs us to redeem the second maaser. But how do we redeem it? There are several things to know. Ideally, the redemption should be done using a perutah chamurah. I mentioned this in the introduction. What is a perutah chamurah? It means that on the same coin, which is worth many perutahs,

48:29 Speaker 2 we have already redeemed second maaser from produce whose obligation is Biblical—grain, grapes for wine, or olives for oil—and not only second maaser whose obligation is rabbinic. Ideally, it should be produce whose obligation is Biblical, and the first produce redeemed on the coin should definitely have reached the stage at which its processing is complete. We will not discuss that today. The laws of terumos and maasros and the stages of processing are extensive, but one of the conditions that establishes an obligation is completion of processing. There are many details here that people do not know. For example, if someone harvests olives to press for oil and separates terumos and maasros from the olives before making the oil, that does not work. They remain actual tevel. It does not work even after the fact, because their processing is complete only when the oil is made—if they are oil olives, or if that was his intention. That is just one example. The same applies to wine grapes: if he separated from the grapes before making the wine, it does not take effect, because their processing was not complete. Returning to our subject, redeeming the second maaser: the coin used for redemption must be one with a perutah chamurah, on which second maaser from produce with a Biblical obligation has already been redeemed. That is not always readily available to each of us at home, because we may not have happened to separate terumos and maasros from precisely that kind of produce. So when we subscribe to a maasros fund, they take care of it. They ensure that every coin we use to redeem the second maaser already has on it a redemption from produce with a Biblical obligation. Of course, one can also redeem many times on the same coin. Once an amount has accumulated, one redeems the value accumulated on that coin onto another perutah, leaving the value of the perutah chamurah on the original coin. Then one can

50:40 Speaker 2 continue using it for redemptions. Incidentally, redeeming second maaser in Jerusalem is a more complicated matter. People therefore tried to take the produce outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Nowadays, though, it is done differently. If the produce is tevel, one may not render terumah ritually impure. But if the tevel produce has already been made susceptible to ritual impurity—for example, if water was poured on it—and a person presumed to be ritually impure touched it, then there is no problem redeeming second maaser even within Jerusalem. Now I want to discuss the maaser for the poor, and also how we determine which year produce belongs to. We said earlier that in years one, two, four, and five, we separate the second maaser, while in years three and six we separate the maaser for the poor. And, of course, we explained what is done with each one. But how do we know which year the produce belongs to? This is also very important to know, though the principles are simple. It is just a matter of being aware of them. There is a difference between vegetables and fruit trees, in two important respects. First, as the Mishnah in Tractate Rosh Hashanah says when it discusses the four new years, the fifteenth of Shvat is the halachic new year for trees. But for vegetables, the new year is the first of Tishrei. In other words, their year changes on the first of Tishrei. So first we need to know that the year changes for trees on the fifteenth of Shvat, and for vegetables and all other crops on the first of Tishrei. But that is not enough. Another very significant question is which stage of growth determines where the produce falls in relation to the change of year. For vegetables, the determining stage is when they are picked. For fruit trees, it is the stage of chanatah, initial fruit formation. Chanatah is either when the flower falls

52:52 Speaker 2 The fruit begins to emerge, or reaches a third of its growth. So pay attention: on Rosh Hashanah 5781, I went and bought cucumbers and tomatoes on 4 Tishrei. Presumably, when were they picked? After Rosh Hashanah. But the entire cucumber grew in 5780, which was the fifth year. That does not matter here, because the determining stage for vegetables is when they are picked. Once it was picked in the sixth year, the picking determines its year, and its Rosh Hashanah is 1 Tishrei. So it was picked in the sixth year. It is subject to maaser ani, not maaser sheini. Sometimes a fruit and vegetable wholesaler may pick some cucumbers from a field on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and put them into cold storage, then pick other cucumbers from that same field right after Rosh Hashanah and put them into cold storage. That creates a very serious problem when separating terumos and maasros. Why? Because we have another rule: you cannot separate produce from one year on behalf of produce from another. These vegetables belong to the fifth year, and those belong to the sixth, because the picking changes their status. So it is not only a question of maaser sheini versus maaser ani. There is another difference: you cannot separate from these cucumbers for those cucumbers. Here is the rule: what you picked on the eve of Rosh Hashanah must be separated on its own, and what you picked after Rosh Hashanah must be separated on its own. And there is also the difference that those picked before Rosh Hashanah belong to the fifth year and require maaser sheini, while those picked after Rosh Hashanah belong to the sixth year. That is regarding fruit—regarding vegetables, sorry, only regarding vegetables. As for fruit, first of all, its Rosh Hashanah is 15 Shvat. That means that before 15 Shvat 5781, all fruit being harvested now belongs to the fifth year. Even if it was picked yesterday, it belongs to the fifth year. Only fruit that sets on the trees after the fifteenth

55:08 Speaker 2 of Shvat 5781—which is not far off, less than two months from now. Fruit that sets on the trees after 15 Shvat 5781 is generally summer fruit. The first fruit is the loquat. Sometimes this can apply to lemons too, but we are talking about summer fruit and fruit of the following year, which will not yet have the status of Shemitah produce even though 5782 will already have begun. The fruit picked from the trees belongs to 5781 because it set on the trees then. We said that the determining stage is when the fruit sets, and the date is 15 Shvat. So fruit that sets on the trees after 15 Shvat 5781 belongs to 5781. From that fruit, which sets after 15 Shvat 5781, maaser ani will have to be separated. This is mainly the fruit of summer 5781, and also of winter 5782. So it is very important to know these details. And of course, the lesson I gave is good, but it is not enough. Each and every person should ask for a lesson with a demonstration and hands-on practice, to make sure they have understood exactly how to determine and carry out the separation of terumos and maasros. And let us conclude with a prayer that Hakadosh Boruch Hu help us merit, immediately, to be all together at the Rebbe’s revelation, immediately, right now.