[Avodah] ‘Kzayit’: Torah, as Real as it Gets

[Prof. Levine]

 From http://tinyurl.com/7887hz9  This article is 
written by Rabbi David Bar-Hayim is the head of 
Machon Shilo, a centre of Jewish learning in 
Jerusalem dedicated to the exposition and 
dissemination of Torat Eretz Yisrael. The 
teachings of Rabbi Bar-Hayim may be found at www.machonshilo.org

Rashi almost certainly never saw an olive. The 
same goes for other medieval authorities in 
Ashk’naz (Germany-Northern France). This 
little-known but indisputable fact should matter 
to you. It has everything to do with the 
following question: Is Halakhic Judaism rational 
and rooted in reality, or is it a hypothetical 
construct unconducive to engaging the real world?

It is a simple matter to ascertain, or describe 
to another, the volume of an average olive, a 
‘k’zayit’
provided you have olives. But what if 
you have never seen an olive? How would you 
understand the concept? How would you describe it 
to someone unfamiliar with olives?

Medieval Ashk’nazim were unfamiliar with olives, 
a fact confirmed by R. Eliezer b. Yoel’s (d. 
circa 1225) discussion of the minimal amount 
required for a b’rakha aharona: “Wherever a 
k’zayith is required, one needs a sizeable amount 
of food, because we are unfamiliar with the size 
of an olive
” (Ra’avya, B’rakhoth 107).

Some Ashk’nazi authorities concluded that an 
olive was half the volume of an egg, while others 
demonstrated, based on Talmudic sources, that it 
must be less than one third of an egg. How much 
less they could not say. The truth, of course, is 
different, as was clearly perceived by one 14th 
century authority who actually made it to Eretz 
Yisrael. Responding to the proposition that a 
person could swallow three k’zaytim at once 
(which is quite impossible if one assumes a 
k’zayit to be half of an egg in volume) he wrote: 
“As for me, the matter is plain, for I saw olives 
in Eretz Yisrael and Yerushalayim, and even six 
were not equal to an egg.” S’pharadi authorities, 
on the other hand, had no such difficulties. One 
wrote that an olive is “much less” than a quarter 
of an egg (Rashba), while another mentions in 
passing that a dried fig is equal to “several 
olives” (Rittba). The last three statements, made 
by sages who saw olives, are entirely accurate.

See the above URL for the rest of this article.  YL
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