Hey there and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one fair page of Talmud

each day. And today's page, Menachot 67, delivers a profound

and much-needed, Lord-Know's masterclass in, ta-da, economic policy. The rabbis are discussing

the process of meruach, or smoothing of grain piles. Now look, all of us, of course, are great experts in all things grain, so we hardly need an explanation.

But just in case, it's been a day or two since you've visited your silo,

Meruach is the process of cleaning up the grains of all the bits and bobs that need to be discarded

before they are delivered into the

granary and stored there. Simple enough, but here's a question. What happens if a Gentile

smooths the pile of grain and then the pile is purchased by a Jew? Is the Jew obligated

to separate tiths from his newly acquired pile, as he would have been

obligated to do with grain that he himself had sown and harvested? Or do we say that because

Gentiles are not permitted to partake in any offering of sacrifices to the priests, that

sacred activity is reserved only for Jews, the pile, once smoothed by the

Gentile, becomes exempt from the need to offer a portion of it to the priests in the temple.

Well, the Talmud offers one heck of an answer. Have a listen. The Gamar answers, this ruling that

the smoothing of a grain pile by its Gentile owner does not exempt it from the obligations of truma and tithes applies only by rabbinic law.

By Torah law, the smoothing of a grain pile by its Gentile owner does exempt it from the obligation to separate truma and tithes.

The sages enacted a decree due to the schemes of people of means.

There was a fear that conniving merchants might temporarily transfer ownership of their produce to Gentiles

while the piles were smoothed, after which the Gentiles would return them to their possession,

thereby circumventing the obligation to separate

tremor and tiths.

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