Rosh Hashana 15

Today's daf ends the rabbis' debates regarding our last Mishna on the many different New Years.  Their discussions have allowed us to better understand halachot surrounding planting, harvesting, tithing, and how we work with anomalies like the Sabbatical year and plants that take three years to produce ripe fruit.

The etrog continues to be used to elucidate our rabbis' arguments.  As it produces valuable fruit and it is a short tree; because it grows a fruit used for ritual purposes, the rabbis use this tree to explain their dilemmas.  One of these regards tithing: if a fruit is planted or begins to grow in the sixth year of the sabbatical cycle and then it is ripe in the seventh year, can it be used and tithed in the seventh year?  What if it grows through the seventh year but ripens in the eighth?  These questions allow our rabbis to discuss some of the particularities of the Sabbatical year and of tithing.

The rabbis ask other questions: what if there are two broods over one year?  How should we tithe in this case? The term "brood" usually refers to animals and our Sages are not happy with the use of this word to describe produce.  Nevertheless, they interpret this idea as yielding two crops in one year.

Rabbi Abba the priest and Rabbi Yosei the priest have some fun at the end of today's daf.  It had been said that Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish disagreed regarding a baraita on white figs (which could have been any number of plants, including a pine nut tree), which ripen over three years. Rabbi Yochanan is silent to Reish Lakish's question.  Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Yosei then imagine what each of them should have said to each other; they play-act an argument between Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish.

One of the most amazing things I have found in the Talmud is the fact that anecdotes, references to mothers, funny stories, and toileting details - among many other things - are saved for us to better understand this ancient world.  Only Jews would decide to leave these things in our holiest texts!