Maseches Maasros, Chapter 2, Mishnah 25. The Mishnah continues to discuss the events that take the place of the ordinary completion of work: from the moment they occur, a full obligation to tithe takes effect, even though the ordinary completion of work has not yet been done. Until now we have examined Shabbos and the separation of Terumah Gedolah, and now we will discuss a sale.
A sale as completion of work:
When a person sells his produce and it passes into someone else's possession, the obligations of maaser take effect at that moment, since the sale comes in place of the processing: the owner does not intend to process the produce, but rather hands it over to be sold.
It is worth noting: if the buyer purchases the produce while it is still attached to the ground - for example, someone who buys a fig tree - he steps into the seller's shoes and becomes the new farmer, and no obligation to tithe applies to him until he performs a completion of work on the figs. The novelty of our Mishnah is in a case where only a few figs are sold from the tree, and then the entire picture changes, and the question is when the sale takes place, that is, the acquisition of those particular figs and the transfer of ownership. One must understand that merely handing over money, without identifying which figs are being bought, does not effect their sale.
The wording of the Mishnah:
The Mishnah says: "Ha'omer lachaveiro heilach issar zeh v'ten li bo chameish te'einim" - the buyer gives the seller an issar, a coin, and asks him to select and pick five figs from the tree and give them to him to eat. The giving of the issar by itself did not designate any particular figs, and therefore no figs have been sold yet at all. When do the figs become his? When the seller picks them from the tree and places them in his hand. At that moment it becomes clear that this is the fig he received in exchange for his money, and it becomes his.
The dispute of the Tannaim:
The Tanna Kamma (who is Rabbi Meir): "Lo yochal ad sheyaser" - once the buyer has received the first fig in his hand, it is a sold fig, and the sale takes the place of the ordinary completion of work; from now on the buyer must tithe it before eating.
Rabbi Yehudah, and the halachah follows him: what is the true completion of work of the five figs being purchased? They should be viewed as a kind of miniature harvest, whose entire purpose is the picking of five figs. As long as they have not all been gathered, there is no completion of work even for that miniature harvest. Therefore one who receives a single fig may eat it as a casual eating, without separating maaseros at all. Once the fifth fig has been picked and given to him, the harvest is complete and this is a completion of work by Torah law, and from now on he must tithe everything.
The law of tzeiruf:
Beyond that tiny completion of picking by Torah law, the Sages saw that from the moment a person begins to accumulate sold merchandise in his hand - figs or other produce that carries an obligation of Terumah - it appears as though it is fit to be tithed. An outsider cannot be sensitive to the technical details: that there is a tiny picking here, and that the number of figs to be purchased is unknown, and the like. Therefore the Sages instituted a new law - the law of tzeiruf.
Tzeiruf means joining: a silversmith joins and solders two parts to one another, and similarly we find tzeiruf of approaches - the joining of two approaches together - and tzeiruf of letters. The tzeiruf in our case is the gathering of more than one unit of food upon which the obligations of maaseros apply. By rabbinic law, from the moment a person collects more than one unit of sold food that is obligated in maaseros, he must tithe it before he eats, even a casual eating.
Therefore Rabbi Yehudah, who follows the approach of the Sages and the halachah that was ruled in the previous Mishnah, says that a person may eat the figs one at a time: as long as no completion of work has been done, one who receives a single fig from the small picking is exempt from tithing it. But if he has gathered two or more figs in his hand, he must tithe them before eating, at the very least by rabbinic law.
The incident of the rose garden in Jerusalem:
Rabbi Yehudah's proof comes from an actual incident. The Gemara in Bava Kamma (82) lists ten enactments instituted by Ezra, the most famous of which is that one who had a seminal emission must immerse in a mikvah before saying words of holiness, as we saw in Maseches Berachos. Another enactment was that there be no gardens in Jerusalem. This seems puzzling, since we tend to think of a garden as something that adds beauty; but in their day a garden was an entirely practical matter, a place for growing vegetables such as turnips.
The reason for the enactment, in the language of the Gemara there, is "mipnei hasircha" - because of the stench: either because weeding leaves behind decaying organic matter that gives off a foul smell, or because of the need to bring fertilizer, whose odor spreads. For the sake of Jerusalem's beauty, then, gardens were prohibited. Only one garden was left standing, the very garden our Mishnah discusses, because a certain spice was grown there, kipas hayarden, which was needed for the incense in the Beis HaMikdash.
In that garden, besides the spice crops, there were also fig trees. The garden was apparently privately owned, and people would come and buy figs from the owner, receiving them one at a time.
And so Rabbi Yehudah says: "Ma'aseh b'ginas veradim shehaysah birushalayim, v'hayu te'einim nimkaros mishalosh v'arba b'issar, v'lo hufrash mehen terumah uma'aser me'olam" - there was an incident with a rose garden in Jerusalem, where figs were sold three or four for an issar, which is a small coin, and the buyers never separated Terumah or ma'aser from them. The reason, according to his approach, is that they would receive one fig and eat it, and then a second and a third, so they never had a joining of produce, since they never held two figs in their hand at one and the same time.
The halachah: The halachah was decided in accordance with Rabbi Yehudah, that as long as no joining has taken place, one who buys foods and fruits is not obligated to tithe them, but once more than one item has been joined in his hand, the laws of ma'aser and Terumah apply to them.