Water falls on crops + the owner is happy = machshirin no matter what the owner is happy about? Does it matter if the owner is happy because the crops are getting water (no machshirin) as opposed to being happy because the crops get washed (machshirin)?
Thanks
Pat, Greenbelt MD USA
It seems to me that it does not matter why the owner is happy.
When you write that the owner is happy because the crops are being watered, you seem to imply that the crops are still in the field atached to the ground, and the reason the owner is happy is because his crops are being irrigated and this helps them to grow. However the Rambam (Hilchos Tum'as Ochlin 12:1) writes that if water falls on the food when it is still attached to the ground, this is not considered Machshirin. He writes that this is because it is obvious that there is no seed on which water never fell when it was attached to the ground, so if Machshirin applied even to crops in the ground then there would be no food in the world which did not have Machshirin. Therefore he writes that Machshirin is only effective after the food is uprooted from the earth.
In fact the Rambam (Hilchos Tum'as Ochlin 12:11) writes that if someone put his fruit deliberately into water, this effects Machshirin (as long as the water is not attached to the ground). Presumably he put the fruits into the water in order to wash them, so we learn from this that Machshirin with such a purpose, works.
All the best
Dovid Bloom