Masechet Shekalim Daf 5
Mar. 26th, 2021 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 5
lannamichaels made the point that she conceptually thinks of 'tithes' different from 'taxes'. In at least one sense, this is right. Maaser is hekdesh, there are special rules about how you can handle it and what you can do with it. Taxes are just money, they're treated like money.
Anyway, a lot of tithes you can just deal with locally by giving them to your nearest Kohen or Levi, and some tithes you need to deal with personally by bringing the animal or food to Yerushalayim to eat/sacrifice/etc... But the Chatzi Shekel needs to go to the Beis Hamikdash, so it can be used for the expenses of the Beis Hamikdash, but you can send it indirectly with a shaliach.
What happens if the shaliach carrying all the money for a bunch of townsfolk is robbed on his way to the Temple? Is it considered as if the half-shekel has already been given to the Beis Hamikdash, or do you need to pay another half-shekel?
The halacha is that two weeks before each of the shalosh regalim, the Kohanim withdraw money to buy sacrifices. At that point, it's considered that all money given for chatzi shekel, even money that hasn't actually physically been put into the Temple treasury, is considered given to the Kohanim. But before that, it's still the person's money until it reaches the Temple treasury. So if the shaliach is en route robbed before the withdrawal, the senders need to contribute again. After the withdrawal, they don't. The Gemara then starts to figure out what the shaliach is responsible for in terms of making good on the loss, and to whom.
As is usually the case in this kind of halacha, it depends on whether the shaliach is paid or not... If paid, they have a greater level of obligation to protect what they're transporting. But there's an added wrinkle in the case where the withdrawal has happened already because then the money is the property of the Temple treasury, a sort of corporate identity, and that's a different (lesser) kind of obligation than a shaliach's obligation to an individual person. The Gemara ultimately concludes that there's a Rabbinic gezeirah to treat it the same way as a loss to an individual person.
lannamichaels made the point that she conceptually thinks of 'tithes' different from 'taxes'. In at least one sense, this is right. Maaser is hekdesh, there are special rules about how you can handle it and what you can do with it. Taxes are just money, they're treated like money.Anyway, a lot of tithes you can just deal with locally by giving them to your nearest Kohen or Levi, and some tithes you need to deal with personally by bringing the animal or food to Yerushalayim to eat/sacrifice/etc... But the Chatzi Shekel needs to go to the Beis Hamikdash, so it can be used for the expenses of the Beis Hamikdash, but you can send it indirectly with a shaliach.
What happens if the shaliach carrying all the money for a bunch of townsfolk is robbed on his way to the Temple? Is it considered as if the half-shekel has already been given to the Beis Hamikdash, or do you need to pay another half-shekel?
The halacha is that two weeks before each of the shalosh regalim, the Kohanim withdraw money to buy sacrifices. At that point, it's considered that all money given for chatzi shekel, even money that hasn't actually physically been put into the Temple treasury, is considered given to the Kohanim. But before that, it's still the person's money until it reaches the Temple treasury. So if the shaliach is en route robbed before the withdrawal, the senders need to contribute again. After the withdrawal, they don't. The Gemara then starts to figure out what the shaliach is responsible for in terms of making good on the loss, and to whom.
As is usually the case in this kind of halacha, it depends on whether the shaliach is paid or not... If paid, they have a greater level of obligation to protect what they're transporting. But there's an added wrinkle in the case where the withdrawal has happened already because then the money is the property of the Temple treasury, a sort of corporate identity, and that's a different (lesser) kind of obligation than a shaliach's obligation to an individual person. The Gemara ultimately concludes that there's a Rabbinic gezeirah to treat it the same way as a loss to an individual person.