Modern Times
The Shulchan Aruk argues that Jewish farmers are no longer obliged to obey the biblical rule. Nevertheless, in modern Israel, rabbis of Orthodox Judaism insist that Jews allow gleanings to be consumed by the poor and by strangers, during Sabbatical years.
In nineteenth century England, gleaning was a legal right for cottagers. In a small village the sexton would often ring a church bell at eight o'clock in the morning and again at seven in the evening to tell the gleaners when to begin and end work. This legal right effectivily ended after a legal case in 1788.
In the modern world, gleaning is practiced by humanitarian groups which distribute the gleaned food to the poor and hungry; in a modern context, this can include the collection of food from supermarkets at the end of the day that would otherwise be thrown away. There are a number of organizations that practice gleaning to resolve issues of societal hunger; the Society of St. Andrew, for example, is dedicated to the role.
When people glean and distribute food, they may be bringing themselves legal risk; in the Soviet Union, the Law of Spikelets (sometimes translated "law on gleaning") criminalised gleaning, under penalty of death, or 20 years of forced labour in exceptional circumstances. In the USA, The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, a law enacted in 1996, limited the liability of donors to instances of gross negligence or intentional misconduct, alleviating gleaning from much of its definitions of the Good Samaritan Act, to consistently deliver surplus food from restaurants and dining facilities to emergency food centers.
Gleaning has been studied artistically as well as legally. Gleaning in rural France has been represented in the paintings Des Glaneuses (1857) by Jean-François Millet and Le rappel des glaneuses (1859) by Jules Breton (image), and explored in a 2000 documentary/experimental film, The Gleaners and I, by Agnes Varda. Vincent van Gogh's sketch of a Peasant Woman Gleaning in Nuenen, Netherlands (1885) is in the Charles Clore collection.
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