The mitzvot of leket, shikḥa, pe’a, peret, and olelot – the gifts left in the field for the poor – apply by Torah law only in Eretz Yisrael. Just as the Sages required terumot and ma’asrot to be separated in lands near Eretz Yisrael, they similarly required the gifts to the poor to be left outside the Land (Rambam; Tur, YD 332:1). Some maintain that this requirement applied only in lands adjacent to Eretz Yisrael (Itur; Shakh 332:2).
Although the requirement to separate terumot and ma’asrot outside the Land was no longer practiced from the time of the Geonim, the requirement to leave the gifts to the poor remained in force. Teruma and ma’aser sheni depend on the laws of purity and on the Temple service; once those conditions were no longer present, the requirement outside the Land no longer served its purpose. Gifts to the poor, however, continued to serve their purpose even outside the Land, since poor Jews could still benefit from them. Therefore, even after the destruction of the Temple, the requirement to leave those gifts remained in place. Today the practice is not to leave the gifts to the poor, as explained above in 6:9, because poor people do not generally find it worth the effort to collect them.
The authorities disagree about the status of the gifts to the poor in Eretz Yisrael today: must one leave them by Torah law, or only by rabbinic enactment? This dispute turns on whether the mitzva is classified as an individual mitzva or as a communal-national mitzva, as explained above in section 4 and at the end of note 2. Some maintain that today one must leave the gifts to the poor only rabbinically (Sefer ha-Ḥinukh 216; Pe’at ha-Shulḥan 4:39). Others maintain that one must leave them by Torah law (Minḥat Ḥinukh 216:15; Degel Reuven II, 28–29), and that this Torah obligation applies throughout all of gevul olei Mitzrayim (Yeshu’ot Malko to MT, Laws of Terumot 1:26).
