Orlah: Fruit of the First Three Years

The Torah forbids the fruit of a tree for its first three years — orlah. In the fourth year the fruit has its own status, and from the fifth it is ordinary.

For most people buying fruit this never surfaces. Where it becomes a live question is at the edges, and the edges are more interesting than the rule.

What counts as a tree

Orlah applies to trees. So a great deal turns on which plants are trees, and the sources give more than one test.

• Does it produce fruit year after year, or must it be replanted annually? Something requiring fresh sowing each year is a vegetable.
• Does it send leaves up from its roots? A plant that does is treated as a vegetable; one that does not is a tree.
• A further view holds that a plant whose branches die off completely in winter, regrowing from the root, is not a tree.

These do not always agree with each other, which is exactly why the borderline cases are argued about.

The awkward plants

Eggplant, papaya and raspberry are the classic cases: woody and perennial enough to look like trees, short-lived enough to look like crops.

The discussion around eggplant is illuminating. One authority distinguished varieties — holding that a white variety sown afresh each year is a vegetable, while a black variety that regrows from its stock over two or three years is a tree, and therefore always orlah, since it never reaches a permitted year.

Against that, others pointed to sugar cane, which regrows from the stock in the same way and is treated as a tree for other purposes — and to roses and thorn bushes, which the Rambam classes as trees although new shoots come from the stock rather than from last year's branches.

The same authority who was stringent for himself explicitly declined to prohibit these for others, on the ground that the prohibition is not found in the poskim people ordinarily rely on, and that where a permissive practice has taken hold and the prohibition is not clear, the practice is left in place.

Outside the Land of Israel

This is what makes orlah a mostly theoretical concern for produce bought abroad.

Orlah applies outside the Land as well — but with a crucial difference: doubtful orlah is permitted, and only definite orlah is forbidden.

There is a further and quite striking allowance. The Rambam rules that even where one knows the fruit comes from an orlah orchard, one may buy it, provided one does not see it actually being picked. The seeing is what creates the definite status.

One qualification is worth recording, because it is easy to over-extend the leniency: the permission for doubtful cases applies to a doubt that arises in the world, not to a doubt arising from our own lack of knowledge about which opinion is correct.

What this means for you

For ordinary fruit bought at a shop, orlah rarely arises. It becomes a real question for produce from the Land of Israel, where the rules are stricter and certification addresses it; for fruit from a tree you own and planted; and for the disputed plants above if you are careful about them.

If you have planted a fruit tree, the years matter and it is worth asking your rav how to count them.