Friday, February 15, 2008

Daf Yomi Nedarim 57a: Kfar Yama vs. Kfar Dima; Uprooted vs Stock

From my Rif blog:
ישמעאל איש כפר ימא ואמרי לה כפר דימא העלה בידו בצל שעקרו בשביעית ונטעו בשמינית ורבו גידולין על עקרו והכי קא מיבעיא ליה
Yishmael, resident of Kefar Yama, and some say, of Kefar Dima, brought in his hands {or perhaps idiomatically, propounded} an onion which was uprooted in the 7th year {shemitta} and planted in the 8th, and its growth was more than its stock, and this was his question...
Some say, as I often say, is always a girsological variant, and we should look to textual problems to explain and possibly resolve them. The difference between כפר ימא and כפר דימא is a single letter, the daled, and that daled is similar to the resh which precedes it, in form. We can thus understand how the daled could have been accidentally deleted, or accidentally introduced.

I am unsure how to translate שעקרו. I follow Soncino who wrote "that has been pulled up." But I wonder because of the letter גידולין על עקרו. Perhaps שעקרו means that "its stock was" {or "its stock developed} in the 7th year. And it stayed planted into the 8th. But then of course we would expect ונטעו to be an actual action, which would mean that it was uprooted before. First I lean one way, then I lean the other, and finally I chicken out and follow Soncino.

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