The next two Mishnayot (Mishnaic passages) discuss people who cannot serve as judges or give testimony as witnesses in court. The Mishnah says these people are ineligible to be judges or witnesses. Somebody who plays dice for money is a gambler. He gambles; he plays games of dice. It’s an empty lifestyle. People who do this have a lack of Yirat Shamayim (fear of Heaven). They take other people’s money, and they’re not contributing anything to the world.
It says in the Bartenura over here that people have to spend their time right: either learning Torah, doing acts of kindness, working, or contributing to society in some way, shape, or form. All of these things are called Yishuvo Shel Olam: helping deal with the normal circumstances in the world. You’re keeping the world go round. You’re contributing. You’re contributing in some way. But gamblers, people who do this, aren’t contributing at all. Therefore, they cannot be edim (witnesses), and they also can’t be judges.
Somebody who loans money to somebody else with interest—that is a mitzvah de’orayta (Torah commandment) that you’re not allowed to violate. It’s a lav de’orayta (Torah prohibition): you can’t lend money with interest. Therefore, they’re disqualified because we see they’ll do anything for money. We can’t trust these people because they’ll do anything for money. Another type of gambler is somebody who races pigeons, sort of like horse races as we know them nowadays. If they race pigeons for money, they’re also ineligible. They cannot be judges or edim.
Somebody who does business with the produce, with the vegetables of the Shemitah year (seventh year), during the seventh year is not allowed to use produce or vegetables from their garden for business. It’s theirs to eat alone. They can keep it. They can eat from it alone. They can let other people take from it. But they’re not allowed to sell it. This type of person violates the Torah when they sell the perot shevi'it (produce of the seventh year). Therefore, we see they’re willing to violate the Torah in order to make money, so they’re also considered problematic.
Amar Rabbi Shimon (Rabbi Shimon said). Rabbi Shimon deals with this last category of socharei shevi'it (merchants of seventh-year produce). Originally, says Rabbi Shimon, the rabbis called these people osfei shevi'it, shevi'it gatherers—people who gather produce during the seventh year. They’re disqualified even if they gather a large amount of produce and bring it into their house, even if they don’t plan on selling it. If they do that, it’s a problem in itself. You’re not allowed to gather a lot of produce. You’re only allowed to take what you need for the next few days. But you can’t store a lot of produce in your house. You have to leave it out there in the field for people to take. So they were disqualified, even people who took too much shevi'it, too much produce, into the house.
But what happened was that the tax collectors became very tough and increased. A lot of tax collectors came to the people and pressured them for money. The farmers needed to take a lot of shevi'it, a lot of produce, in order to pay these taxes. Therefore, they disqualified only the merchants, the people who sold the shevi'it produce they had gathered, but not the people who gathered a lot and brought it into their homes.
We learned above that gamblers who played with dice and were also pigeon racers were disqualified from serving as judges or witnesses. Here we’ll qualify that halakha (Jewish law) and say it doesn’t apply across the board to all gamblers. Rabbi Yehuda says: When are gamblers considered problematic, so that they can’t serve as witnesses or judges? Only when they have no other job besides gambling. But if they have another job that isn’t gambling, they’re eligible.
We said that gamblers are people who aren’t contributing to the world. And if these other people, says Rabbi Yehuda, are contributing in some way, then even though they shouldn’t be gambling, they’re contributing in some way, so we’re not going to disqualify them from being judges or witnesses.