Teens Question, Re'eh 2025

Question

Imagine it's Erev Pesach. The house is clean. The shopping is done. The food is cooked. Biur chametz was last night. Everything is completely ready for the seder to start tonight.

Suddenly, Abba comes running in to the main room. He dashes to the large case of wine - the special wine he bought to do the mitzvah of the 4 kosos - and scoops it up as he heads for the door.

You watch as Abba runs out the door with all the wine in his arms. When he gets to the street, he puts the wine down and screams out "This wine is hefker! Anyone who wants should come and take!"

Moments later, almost as quickly as he brought it out, Abba snatches the box of wine back up and runs inside with it. He puts it back on the shelf and continues with his day as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

1. Why did Abba bring the wine out in the first place?
2. Why did he snatch it back up and bring it back in?
3. What was the plan if someone had taken the wine when he offered it for anyone who wants? 

Answer 

Abba's peculiar behavior starts with a pasuk in the parsha

מקצה שלש שנים תוציא את כל מעשר תבואתך בשנה ההוא והנחת בשעריך

At the end of three years you shall take out all of your ma'aser, in that year, and you shall place it in your gates

Devarim 14:28

You might know Jewish farmers are required to separate a portion of their produce for the Kohen and the Levi. Did you know they get to pick which Kohen and Levi they give it to? The Torah allows farmers to set aside the ma'aser they separate and save it until they have a chance to give it to the Kohen and Levi of their choice. They can even save from year to year for up to the third year of the shmitta cycle. That's when our pasuk kicks in - chaza"l learn from the words תוציא את כל מעשר - "take out all of your ma'aser" that at the end of three years we have to "take out" or "destroy" any ma'aser we might still have.

Any Jew who has ma'aser in his house must either bring it to a Kohen and Levi or actually destroy it. Why destroy it you ask? Because we don't keep anything around that we could accidentally be nichshal with. It's the same reason we destroy chametz before pesach or destroy goyish idols when we entered Eretz Yisroel.

So far, we could guess our story is about an Abba who had ma'aser wine for leil haseder and it's the fourth year of the shmittah cycle. It's not a perfect fit. If the Abba was a Yisroel, it would be assur for him to drink the wine for leil haseder and if he was a Levi he wouldn't need to destroy it!

It turns out there's another mitzva that requires ביעור like מעשר - shevi'is. The Torah tells us

והיתה שבת הארץ לכם לאכלה לך ולעבדך ולאמתך ולשכירך ולתושבך הגרים עמך ולבהמתך ולחיה אשר בארצך תהיה כל תבואתה לאכל

And the Shabbos of the land shall be for you to eat, for you, your slave, your maidservant, the goy, and the resident who lives among you, your domestic animals, and the wild animals in your land; all the produce will be for you to eat

Vayikra 25:6 

The Torah treats your domestic animals right to eat from shevi'is produce the same as the wild animals right to eat from it. Chaza"l learned this was a principle in how long we can eat shevi'is.

כלה לחיה מן השדה - כלה לבהמתך מן הבית

Once it (the produce) finishes for the wild animal in the field - you should finish for the domestic animal in your house

Sifra

You can keep shevi'is in your house and eat from it as long as the same type of fruit is still in the fields. As soon as it's not in the fields, you can't eat it, and you have a mitzvah to destroy it.

Shevi'is gets us a bit closer to our story. The Abba could have shevi'is wine for leil haseder. He's allowed to drink shevi'is wine as long as it's still "available in the field". Will it be "available in the field" come leil haseder? How do we know how long any given produce is available?

Thankfully, chaza"l established fixed times for us for each kind of fruit. For wine? It's erev pesach of the year following shemittah. Sound familiar? That's right - it's erev pesach - the day the Abba in our story made the wine hefker. So we have two parts of the story down. The Abba was allowed to buy and drink the shevi'is wine, and he would have to destroy it come eren pesach. But what about the end of our story? What's the Abba plan to drink?

That last question brings us to a special halacha that Chaza"l created only for shevi'is. Chaza"l didn't want a chumra to bring us to a kula. If they required every Jew to actually destroy their wine and grape juice from shevi'is on Erev Pesach, what would we drink on leil haseder? That would be a chumra that's really a kula in disguise!