Irrigation during Shmitta

Let's look at some of the agricultural laws of Shmitta. First of all irrigation, mentioned in tractate Moed Katan 2a: The first mishneh in Moed Katan says that it is permitted to water a very dry field during hol hamoed and the shmitta year. (Hol homoed are the middle days of the 7 day Passover holiday, and the middle days of the 8 day Sukkos holiday.) The reason that watering is so important to be permitted is written in the Rambam (H. Shmitta VeYovel ch. 1 h. 10) that if this field is not watered the land will become salty and all the trees in it will perish. Since this prohibition is NOT a Torah law rather a Rabbinical one, the Rabbis did not want extensive damage to result from their edicts. The fact that hol hamoed and shmitta year are mentioned together requires explanation. The reason we do not work during hol hamoed is because our Rabbis wanted to limit the amount of work to the minimum. The permitted types of work are those that do not require great physical effort and would result in personal loss if not executed on time. The reason we do not work during the shmitta year is because the Torah and our Rabbis made forbidden any kind of agricultural in the land of Israel. The permitted types of works are those which are not mentioned in the Torah and which would result in losing the fruits if not executed on time. So we can see that the common denominator here is the necessity to prevent loss. Harav A.Y. Greineman told me that hol hamoed and shmitta have something else in common: that nobody else can do the work instead of the owner,as opposed to a person in the week of mourning that he may sometimes have others do work in his place. Let us talk about Shmitta. The list of forbidden types of work during shmitta is quite long - we will learn them in the first pages of tractate Moed Katan. The question is why is watering permitted? Is this a specific leniency only for watering or perhaps other types of work are permitted because they are similar in some way to irrigation? This question comes to be extremely important for farmers in Israel who wish to keep the laws of shmitta. The answer to the question is quite complex. I am guided in my explanations by a book written by Harav Zeev Whiteman seven years ago.

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