Demai (, is the third tractate of Seder Zeraim ("Order of Seeds") of the Mishnah and of the Talmud. It deals with the Jewish legal concept of demai, meaning doubtfully tithed produce, and concerns the laws related to agricultural produce about which it is suspected that certain obligatory tithes have not been separated in accordance with requirements derived from the Torah. The tractate consists of seven chapters and has a Gemara only in the Jerusalem Talmud. There is a Tosefta of eight chapters for this tractate. Subject matter This tractate concerns the laws regarding agricultural produce about which there is a doubt as to whether the rules relating to the tithes were strictly observed. This doubtfully tithed produce is known as demai. The background to the discussions of this tractate is that according to the Torah, Israelite farmers were obligated to separate three types of tithes: Ma'aser rishon – the first tithe, which had to be given to Levites, who had not been given an allotment of tribal land and therefore depended on this produce for their sustenance () Ma'aser sheni – the second tithe, which the owner had to consume in Jerusalem, or convert into money plus a fifth of its value and reconvert into food in Jerusalem () Ma'aser ani – poor person's tithe, in place of the second tithe in the third and sixth year of the seven-year cycle in the sabbatical year ( and ). The Levites also had to contribute from the tithe that they received from the Israelites to the kohanim, consisting of a tenth part of the tithe they had received; it was called terumath ma'aser (offering from the tithe) or ma'aser min ha-ma'aser (tithe from the tithe) (). During the period of the Second Temple, doubt began to arise among scrupulous observers of the law (known as haverim) as to whether produce had been properly tithed when they bought from farmers who were likely to be uneducated, or unscrupulous about separating the tithes. This type of individual was known as an am ha'aretz (person of the land), someone whose trustworthiness was questionable. The am ha'aretz was not suspected of not giving terumah (gifts to the priests), because it required only a small payment comprising one-hundredth of the produce, and because terumah had a degree of sanctity that made it a severe transgression for a non-priest to eat. However, because it was doubtful