"Priestly dues" and often, "heave-offering") is the sixth tractate of Seder Zeraim ("Order of Seeds") of the Mishnah and of the Jerusalem Talmud.
This tractate discusses the laws of teruma, a gift of produce that an Israelite farmer was required to set aside and give to a kohen (priest).
This tractate comprises eleven chapters in the Mishna and ten in the Tosefta and has fifty-nine folio pages of Gemara in the Jerusalem Talmud.
[note 1] In the Torah, the commandment applied to grain, wine and oil; the Mishna extends the scope to include all produce.
[1][2][3][4][5] The Torah does not specify the amount of terumah that must be given, and theoretically, even one single kernel of grain could suffice; thus the Mishna in this tractate establishes an amount, from one-fortieth to one-sixtieth of the gross product, depending on the circumstances and generosity of the individual farmer, with one-fiftieth being regarded as the average gift.
The generally accepted measure is therefore one-fiftieth, and the Sages found an allusion to this amount in the term terumah as an acronym of the Aramaic words trei mi-meah ("two from a hundred") or 2%.
Terumah is considered holy, and may be eaten by priests only, as prescribed in Leviticus 22:10, and must be guarded against becoming ritually unclean, lost or wasted, as interpreted from Numbers 18:8.
[8] Many medieval and modern Jewish legal scholars have grappled with the practical applications of the cases mentioned in this tractate, often when facing situations involving persecution, in the Middle Ages during the Crusades, the Rintfleisch massacres or other anti-Jewish violence, and in modern times during the Holocaust.