We are up to mishnah 6. In mishnah 4 we learned that when one plants forbidden produce, there are six cases in which - provided the seeds disintegrate in the ground before the new produce grows - whatever comes up out of the ground is permitted. But it was explained there that with the type of produce that grows from bulbs, whatever comes up out of the ground remains forbidden in those very same six cases. Our mishnah returns to this subject.
Let us focus on "tevel," which is one of the six cases:
With tevel we are dealing with the prohibition of eating a casual snack before tithing. Produce that is tevel is obligated in tithes, and nevertheless a person may eat from his produce in a casual manner - nibbling, eating that is not a fixed meal - as long as its processing has not been completed and it has not been brought into the house. Once its processing has been completed and it has been properly brought home, even a chance casual snack becomes forbidden, until he tithes it as required.
It emerges that tevel produce which has reached the stage of completed processing is forbidden in the sense that one may not eat from it even casually without first tithing it. And nevertheless we learned in mishnah 4 that if one plants it in the ground, what comes up out of the ground is not restricted; rather, it comes up as a fresh start, and eating from it casually is permitted.
This is what our mishnah says about tevel: what grows from the tevel, even though the tevel itself was forbidden, comes up "muttar" - that is, without any restriction, provided we are dealing with the type of produce that grows from seeds that rot away in the ground. But with the type of produce that does not grow from seeds, and whose seed does not fully disintegrate, even the growths of the growths, and not only the second generation, remain forbidden.
The meaning of the terms "asurin" and "muttar":
"Asurin" here does not mean forbidden in the plain sense, but rather restricted, as fits the case at hand. With tevel it means that one may not eat it casually, and once it has been properly tithed it becomes permitted to eat. Here too, as has already come up many times in this tractate, "asurin" and "muttar" mean restricted and unrestricted.
Which kinds of crops are considered ones whose seed does not fully disintegrate?
Luf - its identification is not clear. It is not actually a leek, and it may be a species of arum; for the sake of illustration we will picture it as something resembling a leek.
Shum - garlic, in its plain sense.
Betzalim - onions, in their plain sense.
What they all have in common: they are species that grow from bulbs, and are not sown at all. Therefore, if one plants in the ground a bulb that carries a restriction, whatever comes up out of the ground remains restricted - for example, the prohibition of eating casually before it has been tithed.
Rabbi Yehudah's dissenting view:
Rabbi Yehudah disagrees on one point: "Rabbi Yehudah omer: ha'shum ka'se'orim" - Rabbi Yehudah says: garlic is like barley. In Hebrew there is no linking verb, and even the word "is" does not stand as a separate word of its own, and therefore this construction can be understood in two ways:
Garlic is comparable to barley - just as a barley seed disintegrates and breaks down completely in the ground, so too garlic is considered a seed that disintegrates, and therefore whatever grows out of the ground is unrestricted, unlike the law governing onions.
The garlic is the size of a barley grain - as in the expression **"etzem kis'orah"** - a bone the size of a barley grain. In other words, we are speaking of a clove of garlic that is no smaller than a barley grain; but anything smaller than that, when planted in the ground, is classified as a seed that disintegrates, and it is treated as though it had indeed broken down, so its law is more lenient.
Either way, the halachah does not follow Rabbi Yehudah.
In summary: In this mishnah we returned to the law of growths that emerge from forbidden produce. In the case of tevel whose processing has been completed, the growths that come up out of the ground are permitted - provided we are dealing with a species whose seed disintegrates; but with species that grow from onions, whose seed does not disintegrate, even the growths of the growths remain forbidden. We clarified that "asurin" and "mutar" mean restricted and unrestricted, and we saw the two ways of explaining Rabbi Yehudah's words "hashum kis'orim" - garlic is like barley - whose opinion is not the accepted halachah.