Avodah Zarah 31

The Gemara turns its attention from buying items from a non-Jew to depositing items with a non-Jew — specifically wine. On today’s daf, we read the following:

With regard to one who deposits his wine with a gentile, it is prohibited to drink from it, but one is permitted to derive benefit from it.

Wine that has been stored by a non-Jew is, according to this teaching, no longer appropriate for Jewish consumption. The Gemara then challenges this teaching:

But didn’t we learn in a mishnah (Bekhorot 11b): With regard to one who deposits his produce with a gentile, it has the status of the produce of a gentile with regard to the halakhot of the sabbatical year and with regard to tithes.

Elsewhere, the Gemara points out, there is a mishnah that teaches that produce deposited with a non-Jew, even if tithed before that deposit was made, is considered untithed upon retrieval. Since produce is fungible, we don’t know for sure that the Jew will retrieve the precise produce he deposited. He may have deposited a liter of wine and retrieved a liter of wine, but it isn’t necessarily the exact same wine. And because the non-Jew made the swap, we worry that the produce returned has not been properly tithed. This poses a difficulty for the halakhah on our daf.

An answer to this dilemma is uncovered in a particularly lucky manner:

As Rabbi Yohanan once happened to come to Parod. He asked: Is there any mishnah of bar Kappara here? Rabbi Tanhum of Parod taught him: With regard to one who deposits his wine with a gentile, drinking from the wine is permitted.  Upon hearing this, Rabbi Yohanan read the following verse about him: “Where the tree falls, there it shall be.” (Ecclesiastes 11:3)

Rabbi Yohanan happens to pass through Parod, a town where his deceased colleague once lived and taught. Walking through the town, or perhaps into the beit midrash, he asks if anyone can share with him a teaching of bar Kappara. Much to Rabbi Yohanan’s pleasure, the teachings of bar Kappara are not forgotten. And, much to our pleasure, the teaching relates to the larger conversation on today’s daf. Wine stored with gentiles, we learn, is not only suitable for benefit, it also can be drunk. In his joy, not only to learn a halakhah but also to recover a teaching that may have died with its teacher (and, perhaps, to discover that more wine is drinkable), Rabbi Yohanan recites from Ecclesiastes: Where a tree falls, there shall it be. This is the only time the verse is quoted in the Talmud.

Having solved the legal dilemma, the Gemara interrogates the meaning of the verse:

Could it enter your mind that this means that the tree itself will be there? Rather, the verse is saying that where it fell, its fruits shall be.

The Gemara’s objection can be understood two ways. The first is based on the fact that the verse states something obvious. Of course a tree will remain where it fell, so why would Ecclesiastes need to say that? Therefore, the verse must be teaching about the fruits of the tree. The second is acknowledging the reality that once detached from the ground, a tree will decompose and ultimately disappear. If we take the long view, Ecclesiastes is, in a literal sense, wrong: The tree will not always be exactly where it fell.

The Talmud, however, employs the verse not to discuss dendrology, but to muse that once deceased, teachers, through their students, will continue to bear fruit. And it may also be read as an injunction: To keep Torah alive, we are dependent on those who learn it to pass it along to those that follow.

Read all of Avodah Zarah 31 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on July 19, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.