המצוות התלויות בארץ -: השתקפות הקדושה בשיח ההלכתי

In the halakhic literature there is an ostensibly defined category of commandments whose observance is dependent on the “Land.” These are agricultural commandments to be observed only in the Holy Land. This distinction is anchored in a series of Rabbinic sources, and early allusions to it can be found already in Josephus and Philo. In the context of this article we have examined the attitude towards this important distinction and observed that it is far from being fixed and uniform. We found a large number of exceptions and an absence of any system. Already in Philo and Josephus the lack of uniformity is evident, and it becomes much more prominent in the rabbinical literature, both Mishnaic and Amoraitic. The genre of Land-dependent commandments of course emphasizes the hegemony of the Land of Israel and anchors its place in the religious hierarchy as the Holy Land. This sanctity is accepted for the most part in most of the sources, although in the Babylonian Talmud we also find a tendency to deviate from it, a tendency to minimize the priority of the Land of Israel, and Babylonian patriotism. A large percentage of the exceptions, which deny or minimize the priority of the Land of Israel, are in fact found in the BT. But there are also echoes of this perception in sources that are clearly Tannaitic and originate in the Land of Israel. Our conclusion is that what we have here is not a rule and its exceptions, but that the entire rule is undefined. Like other rules in the rabbinical literature, it is not the rules that created the halakha, but rather the various details were consolidated into a summarizing rule, which accords with most of the individual cases, and most of the opinions. The rule was established at a later stage of the development of halakha, after most of the details had become permanent features or by a God-fearing and halakha-observing population. What determined the halakha? Rather than uniform and systematic thinking, it was a series of specific decisions that gave rise to these decisions. In this case I believe it was a combination of causes. On the one hand – the ideological perception of the sanctity of the Land, with the social tendency to emphasize the supremacy (precedence) and the hegemony of the Land of Israel. And on the other hand – the economic difficulty involved observing the commandment and the stringency of its prohibitions. Therefore the Sabbatical year was never expanded beyond the borders of the Land of Israel. But the commandment of Teruma, the heave offering, whose consumption was considered a serious transgression, was observed more strictly.