Study Menachot folio 68A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Since before the omer you permitted one to harvest the crop only by picking it by hand and not in the typical manner, he will remember the prohibition and refrain from eating it. With regard to searching for leaven, there is no reminder.
Abaye said to him: This works out well in explaining R' Yehuda’s opinion with regard to picking the grain. But with regard to grinding and sifting, what can be said? Apparently, it is permitted to perform these acts in a typical manner. Why, then, is there no concern that one may eat the grain at
The Talmud responds: This is not difficult, as one also performs grinding in an atypical manner. One must grind the grain before the sacrificing of the omer with a hand mill, not with a mill powered by an animal or by water. Likewise, sifting is performed unusually, not in the interior of the sift
The Talmud raises another difficulty from the case of a field that requires irrigation, where typical harvesting is permitted, as we learned in a Mishnah (71a): One may harvest grain from an irrigated field and from fields in the valleys, as their grain ripens long before the omer is sacrificed, bu
Rather, Abaye said: This difference between the cases of the omer and leaven is not based on the manner in which one harvests, grinds, or sifts. Instead, the reason for the different rulings is that one distances himself from new grain, as it is prohibited to eat the new grain all year until the om