| Case | Ruling | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| What drained the goodness from the world? | Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar: The lost taharah took taste and fragrance; the lost maaseros took the grain's richness | — |
| Chachamim: Licentiousness and sorcery consumed everything | — |
R’ Shimon ben Elazar was a foremost student of R’ Meir, and much of what stands in his name carries his rebbi’s Torah forward into the Mishnah and braisa. His own voice is sharpest in mussar: it is he who teaches in Pirkei Avos (4:18) not to appease a friend in his hour of anger, nor to comfort him while his dead lies before him, nor to press him at the moment of his vow — the hard wisdom of meeting people where they truly are.
R’ Shimon ben Elazar breaks from the mishnah before him. There the loss of taste was laid on the Churban itself; here he traces it to lapsed mitzvos — taharah and maaser. Bartenura: while Israel kept taharah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself purified the produce of any bad taste or smell. Read forward, the claim carries hope — if observance is what gives food its taste, then the mitzvos still within reach can still restore what was dimmed.
Our text reads that lost taharah took ‘the taste and the fragrance.’ The Yerushalmi reads only the fragrance (German Commentary). The reason is precise: the previous mishnah already mourned the taste of fruit, so the Yerushalmi keeps here only what is new — smell. The two mishnayos are read as one continuous accounting, careful never to count the same loss twice.
Following the Maharsha, the pairing is measure-for-measure. Taharah is the least tangible of disciplines, purely spiritual; reyach is the least tangible of the senses — the one the neshamah alone enjoys and the body cannot seize, which is why we rouse it with besamim as the neshamah yeseirah departs on Motzei Shabbos. Let the spiritual discipline lapse, and it is the spiritual sense that dims first.
R’ Shimon ben Elazar says the lost tithes took shomen hadagan, the fat of the grain. But grain is not alone in carrying ‘fat’: the previous mishnah spoke of the fat of fruit, and oil and wine are richer still. Why single out the fat of the grain? (See Tosafos Yom Tov and Lechem Shamayim.)
The Chachamim name no missing mitzvah but two boundary-breaking sins. Znus shatters the order of permitted relationships; kishuf tries to wrest nature from the One who runs it. Both assault the borders that hold the world in place — so nature answers in kind and withdraws its goodness across the board: they ‘consumed everything.’ Where the first view names what we failed to do, this one names what we did.
The catalog now pivots on cause. The prior mishnah laid the world’s fading squarely on the Churban; here R’ Shimon ben Elazar and the Chachamim lay it on our own conduct — taharah and maaser let go, znus and kishuf let in. The series turns from what the destruction took from us to what our own hands forfeit, a turn inward that sets up the next mishnah’s question: once everything is stripped away, on whom is there left to lean.