Hebrew: חָצִיל, chatzil
Name in the Mishnah: קינרס, kinras
Family: Solanaceae, nightshades.
Scientific name: Solanum melongena
The eggplant is an upright herbaceous plant, with both annual and perennial varieties. The fruit’s skin is usually shades of blackish-purple, although some eggplant varieties have white skin. Its height ranges from 40 cm to 1.5 m. The eggplant requires heat to develop properly, similar to its native countries, and is sensitive to cold; at low temperatures, the plant can die or will stop developing.
After the main stem produces several leaves, the plant begins to develop branches. The first flowers appear on the main stem, and later on the branches. Flowering begins about 100 days after sowing. The fruit reaches a suitable size for harvesting 3-4 weeks thereafter. After an initial fruiting period of several months, flowering stops for a while, and then resumes in shorter cycles, so the amount of fruit on the plant decreases consistently.
The fruit contains a large number of seeds, which have a high concentration of bitter compounds. Similar to many plants of the Solanum genus, the eggplant contains the toxin solanine. These impart an increasingly bitter taste to the eggplant fruit as it ripens and its seeds mature.
Eggplant is not mentioned explicitly in Tanach or in the Mishnah. Its natural habitat is south or east Asia. Apparently, it was brought to our region only at the era of the Arab conquest 1,000 years ago. However, some maintain that the kinras mentioned in several places in the Mishnah is actually eggplant.
Tree or vegetable: The Sages set forth criteria to classify plants as either trees or vegetables to determine their obligation in orlah as well as the appropriate blessing. The most basic definition of a tree is a plant with a perennial trunk that bears fruit for several years. As a result, some halachic authorities ruled that eggplants are subject to the laws of orlah, and since they do not produce after three years, they banned eating eggplant altogether.
However, the majority of posekim define eggplants as vegetables, which is the accepted ruling today. This is because the plant fruits several months after sowing, which is a trait botanically associated with vegetables, while no trees produce fruit in such a short time span; in winter, eggplants shrivel, renewing at spring; the plant does not survive for more than three years; from its second year, the quality of the fruit deteriorates and becomes smaller and more bitter; and the plant is relatively short, resembling a vegetable, and has a hollow trunk, as opposed to most trees, which are tall and have full trunks.
In practice, the accepted ruling is that eggplant is classified as a vegetable.
Kilei ilan (grafting mixed species): In recent years, for various reasons the need has arisen to graft vegetables onto various rootstocks. Often eggplants are grafted onto tomato rootstocks, which constitutes the prohibition of kilayim, forbidden mixtures.
Kilei zera’im & kilei hakerem (interplanting mixed species – annuals & grapevines): Due to eggplant’s classification as a vegetable, it should not be planted near other edible annuals or grapevines.
Blessing: Due to its classification as a vegetable, the blessing for eggplant eaten in a conventional manner – after being processed – is adamah; if eaten raw, the blessing is shehakol.
When Ridbaz (Rabbi David ben Shlomo Ibn Zimra, 1479-1573), lived in Egypt, he wrote a halachic responsum that eggplant is subject to the laws of orlah, following the opinion of Rabbi Ishtori HaParchi (Kaftor Vaferach). However, after he made Aliya, he saw that the accepted practice, sanctioned by local Torah giants, was to eat the eggplant even during its initial years, without waiting for orlah years to pass. Thus, he wrote that orlah does not apply to the plant.
The posekim refer to eggplant as baringan, bandijon, and badingan, names taken from Arabic and other languages.
Toxicity. Some posekim describe the plant as “a completely evil fruit, causes blindness and is poisonous to all those prone to melancholy,” descriptions that match the plant’s .
Different varieties: There are white-skinned and black-skinned eggplant. Radbaz notes that the white eggplants are annual while their black counterparts are perennial, so each cultivar should be treated independently vis-à-vis orlah laws.
לע”נ הקדוש אברהם בן יששכר זליגמן הי”ד נספה באושוויץ כ אדר ב תש”ג
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