פירוש על תרומות 4:2

במגורה – in a storehouse, as it is written (Haggai 2:19): “While the seed is still in the granary, [and the vine, fig tree, pomegranate and olive tree have not yet borne fruit].”

If one had his produce in a storehouse, and he gave a seah to a Levite and a seah to a poor person, he may set aside another eight seahs and eat them, the words of Rabbi Meir. But the sages say: he may only set aside according to proportion. A person has a storehouse of produce from which tithes have not been taken out. He sees a Levite and he gives him one seah of his produce and then he sees a poor person and gives him one seah of his produce. According to Rabbi Meir, he may then go to his produce and eat another 8 seahs, with the understanding that the seah that he gave to the Levite was first tithe and the seah that he gave to the poor person was poor person’s tithe (given in the third and sixth year of the sabbatical cycle). The remainder of his produce remains totally untithed. The sages do not allow this because they say that the two seahs he gave count towards the entire storehouse, which contains far more than eight other seahs of produce. Any seah that he removes from the storehouse is only partially tithed for, according to the percentage of produce that the two seahs that he did give would account for. For instance, if he had one hundred seahs in the storehouse, each seah that he takes out is only ten percent tithed (he removed two seahs and he should have taken twenty). Before he eats any of the remaining produce he must complete the tithing process.

ונתן סאה לבן לוי – Our Mishnah is speaking about a worker who is a member of the order for the observance of Levitical laws in daily intercourse (i.e., Haver), who comes to dine with the owner of he house and does not believe him on the tithes, and the worker saw that owner of the house giving from his storehouse a Seah to the son of a Levite (i.e., First Tithe) and a Seah to a poor person (i.e., the Poor Tithe, in years 3 and 6 of the seven year cycle). Rabbi Meir states that this worker can eat from the storehouse eight Seah, for undefined, according to the law of First Tithe, he gave to the Levite, and according to the law of the Poor Tithe, he gave to the poor person, and behold there are eight Seah which were already made legally fit for use by giving the priestly dues and a little bit more. And even though he did not see him separate the Great Terumah (i.e., the two-percent for the Kohen), the illiterate were not suspected [of not fulfilling] the heave-offering.

וחכ"א לא הפריש בעל הבית אלא לפי חשבון (with a calculation [of the percentage of tithes which remain to be separa from the batch as a whole]) - this meal that the worker wants to eat with him., but the remainder is a mere gift that he gives to the Levite and the poor person, therefore, the worker does not have to eat with him until he has completed eight Seah according to the words of Rabbi Meir, but that meal which he was to eat with him and nothing more. Another explanation: “and he gave a Seah to the son of Levite and a Seah to a poor person, and they went on their way. But when he came to separate eight Seah from the storehouse and to eat them on the support of the two Seah that he gave to the son of the Levite and the poor person, he doesn’t know if those two Seah exist or not. Rabbi Meir says that he should separate eight Seah and eat them, in support of those two Seah that he gave to the son of the Levite and the poor person in the presupposition that they exist. But the Sages say that he does not separate other than according to a calculation [of the percentage of tithes which to be separated from the batch as a whole], that exist; if all of the two Seah exist, he separates upon them eight Seah and a bit more, and if only one-half of them exist, he does not separate on them other than four Seah, according to the calculation of what he finds of them existing, thus he separates upon them and not more. And the Halakha is according to the Sages.