Special Features ASK THE REBBE Question: We bought land in a tropical region to plant noni trees. Someone said that orlah applies, and we cannot benefit from the fruit! If this is true, we will have a tremendous loss. Can we work around the problem by having a non-Jewish partner? We are putting a non-Jew in charge of growing and harvesting the noni (for a 25% share of the sales); we will process and market it. Intermediate Response: Orlah does apply in Chutz La’aretz, as a halacha l'Moshe miSinai (Oral Tradition given to Moshe) (Kiddushin 39a). Many people don’t know about it, because, in Chutz La’aretz, it applies only when one knows the fruit is orlah (ibid.). You do know! The gemara (Avoda Zara 22a) compares and contrasts partnerships with non-Jews in a new orchard and in a business which is open on Shabbat. If done in the proper way, your non-Jewish partner can buy a share in the land, whereby he will get control and ownership of all the fruit of the first three years, and you will get them after that. If this is feasible, we will send more details. Question (part II): Your suggestion will not help us. We need to get the business going under our control (machinery, marketing) and start selling. There is a shortage of noni fruit worldwide, and we need to insure our market position now. We are willing to give all profits to tzedaka for the first three years! By the way, noni fruits taste and smell horrible. They are extremely healthy and can be used only for vitamins and as no more than 10% of a juice. Does that make a difference? Answer (part II): Your last piece of information was crucial. Rav S.Z. Orbach zt”l (Minchat Shlomo 71.4) writes that he believes that orlah applies only to edible fruits, not those that can be used only for their extract. The logic is as follows. Orlah does apply even to benefit from uses other than eating (burning, making paint - Pesachim 22b), but that is in regard to the fruit of “food-producing trees” (Vayikra 16:23). However, if the fruit is inedible, and is used only for its extract, then it isn’t included in the prohibition. Although Rav Orbach is not fully decisive in his ruling, there is a rule by doubts on the matter of orlah that one should be stringent in regard to Israeli fruit and lenient on others (Berachot 36a). Therefore, you can rely on the approach that orlah does not apply to noni fruit, as you describe them. Had we been discussing an edible fruit, the situation would be as follows. A partnership with a non-Jew, which the gemara in Avoda Zara allows on orlah orchards, does not make the fruit permitted. It simply creates a situation where the Jew has no benefit from the fruit during those years. Even fruit which is fully owned by non-Jews is forbidden for Jewish benefit. You, thus, could not sell the fruit, even with the intention to give the money to tzedaka. Future plans do not remove the benefit of the sale. Besides the money, there are other problems. Commerce with forbidden foods is forbidden - details are beyond our present scope (see Yoreh Deah, 117). Also, use of the fruit to obtain a market share itself would be considered benefit. Rama (Yoreh Deah 294:8) rules that one cannot even help pick a non-Jew’s orlah fruit for free, because of the benefit from the favor the non-Jew now owes. “Ask the Rabbi” Q&A is part of this week’s Hemdat Yamim, the parsha sheet published by Eretz Hemdah. You can read this section or the entire Hemdat Yamim at www.ou.org or www.eretzhemdah.org. If you would like to receive Hemdat Yamim by e-mail, on a weekly basis, please send an e-mail to lists@eretzhemdah.org with the message Join Hemdatya Please leave the subject blank. RITE and REASON is available at local Sfarim stores, in the original Hebrew as well as in English translation. It makes a great gift... even for yourself! [The Ki Tisa Homepage]
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