8 Walter Jacob Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Parthian , Sassanian , or Roman, permitted local autonomy to all groups. The legislation reported in the Mishnah and the two Talmuds was therefore effective in Israel and possibly beyond.

The Mishnah , as a practical legal code, took the statements of Leviticus and dealt with the obligations of the farmer and the rights and limitation of the poor. The statements read like court decisions. For this system to be workable, numerous details had to be spelled out. These discussions continued in the Talmud Jerushalmi and to a lesser extent in the Babylonian Talmud . As with any system of taxation, the specifics and the need to close loopholes are constant in the face of ever changing agricultural conditions. The rabbinic authorities were concerned with fairness and the creation of a system that would deal with the problem of poverty.

This tractate, Peah, concerned with this problem, began with ethical encouragement, then continued in a practical vein with specifics. The farmer was liable for at least 1/60 of his crop, although there was no limit and all depended on the size of the field, the number of the poor, and his generosity(Peah 1.2).“Everything which is food, stored, and grows from the ground(excluding mushrooms, for example) and gathered at the same time(so that figs and olives which were harvested at various times were excluded), and placed into storage(greens are exempt) and grains as well as pulse(beans and peas) were subject to these laws”(Peah 1:4). The law included trees and enumerated“carob, nuts, almonds, vines, pomegranates, olives, date palms”(Peah 1:5). What could be gleaned as well as definitions of“forgotten sheaves” were provided(Peah 7) along with “droppings”(Peah 4.10). What constituted a field was specified, as were fields with mixed crops, partnerships, undivided estates, and so on. The farmer could not hide gleanings under a bundle of grain; when winds blew the gleanings away, an estimate of what should have been left was mandated(Peah 5:1). Such details and others demonstrated