Today we will delve into laws that apply only to Jews that live in the land of Israel. Our daf begins with a mishnah that offers a general rule and then, as we’ve often seen, multiple exceptions:
Any mitzvah that is dependent on the land applies only in the land of Israel, and any mitzvah that is not dependent on the land applies both in the land of Israel and outside the land of Israel.
This is apart from the mitzvot of orla (not to eat fruits from a tree less than three years old) and kilayim (not to mix certain species). Rabbi Eliezer says: Even hadashah (eating from a new crop before the omer offering is given).
The mishnah’s general rule makes intuitive sense: Halakhot that are pertinent to physical land — agricultural laws — are kept by people who live on sacred soil. For those who live elsewhere, these laws are irrelevant.
But the second half of the mishnah states that some agricultural laws were nonetheless applied outside the land of Israel, including the practice of refraining from gathering fruit before the trees reach a full three years’ maturity, planting mixed species together and eating new produce before the 16th of Nisan when the omer was offered.
There appears to be a tension between the mishnah’s logical law (mitzvot of the land apply only in the holy land) and actual practice (nonetheless, some of these mitzvot were practiced in diaspora). As we have seen, both logic and practice are sources for rabbinic law, and things get complicated when they come into conflict. The Gemara will now pull the discussion in a third familiar direction — looking for a scriptural basis for practicing some mitzvot only in the land of Israel.
What is meant by mitzvot that are dependent on the land, and what is meant by mitzvot that are not dependent on the land? Perhaps a mitzvah is called dependent in a case where it is written in a verse with regard to it: “coming (to the land of Israel),” and a mitzvah that is not dependent on the land is one concerning which word “coming” is not written with regard to it.
There are many verses in the Torah, particularly but not only in the Book of Deuteronomy, in which God gives instructions that begin with some variant of the words: “When you come to the land that the Lord your God has given you…” The Gemara suggests that commandments following this formula apply only to the Israelites once they actually inhabit the land and, by extension, Jews of any era who actually live there.
This would be a clear scriptural basis for determining which laws are practiced only in the land of Israel, but unfortunately it also does not align with the rabbis’ received practice. The Gemara immediately counters that the verses which are the basis for the practice of donning tefillin, for instance, also use this language of “coming” into the land, and yet tefillin is a mitzvah applicable to Jews in every corner of the globe. So now the Gemara returns to a logical (rather than strictly scriptural) way of thinking:
Rav Yehuda said that this is what the mishnah is saying: Any mitzvah that is an obligation of the body applies both in the land of Israel and outside the land of Israel. Conversely, an obligation of the land, applies only in the land of Israel.
The rule about using the Torah’s oft-repeated formula of “when you come into the land…” gives us a good approximation of the laws that apply only in the land of Israel, says Rabbi Yehuda, but there’s another metric that makes sense: Mitzvot that apply to our persons, like tefillin, even if they are found to use this language in the Torah, nonetheless remain in force outside the boundaries of the holy land.
The Gemara now toggles back to the search for a textual basis for the law, and finds one in a beraita, an early rabbinic source, that offers a midrashic reading of Deuteronomy 12:1: “These are the statutes and the ordinances that you shall observe to do in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess it, all the days that you live upon the earth.”
First, the beraita uses this verse to derive that there are some laws that apply only in the land of Israel and some that apply everywhere and then it uses the adjacent verse to determine which laws fall into which category:
Go and learn from what is stated: “You shall destroy all the places where the nations that you are to dispossess served their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:2). Just as the prohibition of idol worship is distinct in that it is an obligation of the body, and it applies both in the land of Israel and outside the land of Israel, so too any mitzvah that is an obligation of the body applies both in the land of Israel and outside the land of Israel.
Once again, scripture is brought to support received practice when it differs from logical inference. There is much more to discuss, and so the rabbis’ exploration of this obligation continues down the page, all the while balancing and harmonizing these three sources of truth: God’s word, logical inference and received practice.
Read all of Kiddushin 37 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on September 19th, 2023. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
