100 Richard S. Rheins

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7 Halakhah differentiates between various classes of workers, namely, between a poel, day laborer, and a kabbelan, a piece worker. A poel is one who is hired for a specific time and fixed hours. The farm worker is a poel. A kabbelan is one who is hired for a specific task, e.g., as a craftsman to complete a project. The modern equivalent is the difference between a hired worker who becomes a part of the regular crew(even if only for the duration of a season) and an independent contractor. For a fuller treatment of the legal distinction between a poe! and a kabbelan, see Baba Metzia 112a. Shulhan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat 339.6, and Rabbi Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg , Responsum 477(Prague edition).

8. Though Deut 24:15 and Lev. 19:13 each speak of paying the laborers in a timely fashion, they are listed in the various commentaries as two mitzvot. Lev. 19:13 addresses timely payment for one who worked during the day, and Deut. 24:15 deals with the worker who labored all night(Baba Metzia 110b). See Sefer haHinukh 230 and 588: Rambam ’s Mishneh Torah, Sefer HaMada: negative#238(Lev. 19:13) and positive 200(Deut. 24:1 5); and Chafetz Chayim’s list of mitzvot that are still applicable in modern times: positive 66(Deut. 24:1 5) and negative#38(Lev. 19:13).

The apparent contradiction found in the Torah’s two commandments, one to pay the worker before daybreak and two, to pay the worker before the sun sets, is resolved in Mishnah Baba Metzia 9.11: A day worker collects[his wages] all night. A night­worker collects all day. An hourly worker collects all night and all day. Someone hired for the week, or hired for the month or hired for the year or hired for the Sabbatical cycle...if he left during the day, he collects all day; if he left at night, he collects all night and all day.

9. See, for instance, Nachmanides in his commentary to Deut. 24:15 He declares:“The plain meaning of the text is just as it is written elsewhere in the Torah :“the wages of a hired servant shall not abide with you all night”(Lev. 19:13).....And so Scripture commands[the employer] to pay him during his day as soon as he finishes his work, in order that he could purchase with his wages what he, his wife and his children,need to eat at night. Because he is poor as are most of those who hire themselves out for the day he has staked his life upon this wage to buy with it food to

sustain his life.”

10. For the understanding that 200 zuz was the designated monetary amount that represented sufficient funds to survive from one harvest to the next, see Mishnah Ketubot 5.1-2. For a review of the debate in halakhah over the exact modern equivalent of 200 zuz, see Michael Broyde and Jonathan Reiss,“The Value and