The Advocate

In his book Ha-metsaref [The Purifier], vol. II §182, Rabbi Moses Kunitz¹ wrote:

The term am ha-arets [lit., “People of the Land,” often meaning boors] was applied to people of various dispositions in their manners, habits, and ways of thinking in the period of the talmudic sages. Some were suspected of laxity in their observance of the rules of ritual purity, of tithing, of the shemitah [sabbatical year] produce, of homosexuality, and of bloodshed; these men were disqualified from serving as witnesses. Sometimes the term am ha-arets was applied to those who were not strict about eating nonconsecrated food in a state of purity (even though observing the rules of purity for ordinary food was a supererogatory standard—b. Gittin 61a), and to those who did not attend the scholars of Torah; these, however, were qualified to serve as witnesses. Thus there were various classes of am ha-arets.

There are some rules mentioned in the Talmud concerning the am ha-arets that have already fallen into disuse. One such example is found in the Talmud, that one should not include an am ha-arets in the quorum required for grace after meals (b. Berakhot 47b). The Tosafot comment on this passage: “Today we are not so scrupulous, and we include them in the quorum for grace and accept them to give testimony, since the am ha-arets in our day is not the same as in their [the sages’] times.” [ . . . ]

The great rabbi R. Yosef Ḥayim Karo [1800–1895], head of the community court in Włocławek—may God grant him long days—said to me that in his view the sages called the communists of their day by the name am ha-arets. They were the same who said, Let us have one common purse (Proverbs 1:14) and that all should work for the common fund.² Just as governments in our day consider this sect to be destroyers of the peace of the country and dissolvers of the bonds of human society, so too did the rabbis exclude this harmful group. In his view, his surmise was explicitly supported by the words of the sages themselves, when they defined the nature of the am ha-arets in their saying in m. Avot [4:1]: “The one who says, what is mine is yours and what yours is mine, this is the am ha-arets.” In these few words they summarized their [the communists’] entire ideology.