Question:
Is it ok to pick and eat an orange fruit from an unharvested looking orchard in eretz Yisrael during shimitta year, if you do not know the owne
Answer:
It is permissible to harvest an orchards in the seventh year even without the owner’s permission because the Torah abandoned in the seventh all fruits.
Although all this is in place in 2 conditions:
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It seems that the owners have abandoned the field and as you wrote in your question, and all that seems to be that the field is not fenced off and all that wants to take comes and takes obviously the abandonment, especially if it is in a place where there are Torah people. And when you have a doubt you should not take.
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Only trees and fruits embalmed in the seventh and not sixth years fruits. And in doubt, one should be ‘machmir’.
