Q&A: Doubt About Orlah and Disappointment………
Doubt About Orlah and Disappointment………
Question
I bought trees at a nursery and planted them.
It involved expense and effort.
The trees are 5–6 years old.
Now it turns out that they had been sitting on a sheet, and it is uncertain whether that is considered, for purposes of Jewish law regarding orlah, a disconnected growing medium.
Is there no choice but to count another 3 years of orlah and a fourth year of neta revai because of the doubt?
Answer
I don’t understand. Are you now removing them from that medium and planting them in the ground?
Discussion on Answer
So it’s permitted?
More power to you.
If there really is doubt about the growing medium, and you are transferring it to the ground with a clump in which it is fit to survive, then yes.
Just noting: even if there is a double doubt, on the possibility that the correct side of the ruling is that it is forbidden, then straightforwardly this would be a transgression (unintentional, admittedly, and there is discussion how much atonement is needed for an unintentional violation of a prohibition that does not incur karet. But that’s for you to consider).
I didn’t understand that comment. If it is permitted, then no atonement is needed. The permission to be lenient in a case of double doubt means that there is no need to be concerned for the side that forbids it.
True, some halakhic decisors discussed double doubt in a legal doubt about the law itself (and here that is based on your reasoning), but according to that approach there is also no permission to do it in the first place (and not merely that atonement would be needed if you went ahead). But even regarding a double doubt in a legal doubt, according to most halakhic decisors it is permitted.
Maimonides (Second Tithe 10:8) writes that one also counts the years of orlah for a disconnected growing medium. True, some explained that he meant only an unperforated flowerpot that a tree can penetrate, and not truly disconnected sheets. But the opinions are divided on this. Therefore, for example, people prohibit orlah fruit from a tree that grew on a disconnected growing medium because of this Maimonides.
The Chazon Ish, in the laws of orlah, section 32, writes that orlah is prohibited on metal as well, at least rabbinically. But if one uproots it with a clump of earth (in which it can survive) and plants it in the ground, it is uncertain whether the orlah years are counted again from the beginning.
So if you are now planting it in the ground with a clump of soil from the disconnected growing medium, that is an additional doubt that combines with the doubt about the disconnected growing medium, and it is a double doubt.