Hi friends, and welcome back to Talmud Daily, our 40-week tour of the entire Babylonian Talmud.
And today, we are beginning our overview of Tractate Shekalim, which is the plural of the term shekel, which is the classical coin that Jews would give to contribute to the communal funds. But before we actually get to Tractate Shekalim, we need to do a different introduction, because as I’ve mentioned in every single episode of Talmud Daily, this is a tour of the Babylonian Talmud. And if you are paying close attention, Tractate Shekalim is not a part of the Babylonian Talmud. It is, in fact, a part of the Jerusalem Talmud, what is known classically as the Talmud Yerushalmi, sometimes the Talmud of Israel or the Palestinian Talmud—having nothing to do with the politics of nowadays, also for a different class.
Why are we using something from the Talmud Yerushalmi, the Jerusalem Talmud? Doesn’t mean it was from Jerusalem, it was actually in the Galilee probably where they did most of this. How is it different than the Babylonian Talmud? Why is Tractate Shekalim kind of borrowed, and what is Shekalim about.Let’s cover everything.
First and foremost, the Jerusalem Talmud came first. It was probably codified somewhere around the late fourth century, fifth century, maybe in the late 300s, early 400s, as opposed to the Babylonian Talmud, which they spent many centuries continuing to edit and to develop and to add. So the Talmud Yerushalmi kind of was canonized first as a collection, but it didn’t have the additional period of editing, and the questions really developed completely like we have in the Babylonian Talmud. So the Jerusalem Talmud is much harder to read. It’s also in a slightly different dialect of Aramaic.
Now, normally we think of whatever comes earlier might even be like better. That’s usually how we think of things, and that is true. Generally, if there is a rabbi and their student, we want to listen to the rabbi. They’re older, they’re wiser. That is not true when it comes to the Babylonian Talmud versus the Jerusalem Talmud. We actually very much rely on the Babylonian Talmud for all normative Jewish law, Jewish practice. Halacha emerges from the Babylonian Talmud.
Why not from the Jerusalem Talmud? So the first reason is probably what we just mentioned: the Babylonian Talmud is edited, it’s clearer, the questions are more precisely developed. There’s also something else very foundational, which is what comes later, and this was actually mentioned in one of our Voices interviews when we discussed with Ari Bergmann: this idea that at some point we realized that later generations have access to more of the information.
And that’s why the Rif—who is one of the classical commentaries predates the Rambam, two generations before the Rambam, Rav Yitzchak Alfasi, who we have mentioned—he writes at the very end of his commentary on Eruvin, the tractate that we pretty recently just did an overview of, where he says the reason why we follow the Babylonian Talmud is because the Jerusalem Talmud came much earlier and that we go like the Babylonian Talmud because, and he uses a Talmudic phrase, hilchesa kebasra’ei, we accord like the later generations.
Why is that? Earlier generations, you know, they were holier, they were more pious, but later generations had access to more. It was more developed, there was more commentaries, and that’s the real, ultimate reason. Why does anything have authority in Jewish life? Why does one text have more authority than the other? The way texts gain authority after the cessation of prophecy is actually through the development, the fighting, the commentaries, the resolving contradictions, the building students. And it happens to be that the Babylonian Talmud, there was much more eyes and ideas and fighting and debating over this text where it became adopted by the Jewish people as the primary text of Jewish life.
And it’s really through the commentary, through the acceptance of the Jewish people, ultimately, that really any text gets its authority, but particularly any post-prophetic text, I should be precise. But particularly when we think about the difference between the Bavli and the Yerushalmi, the Babylonian Talmud versus the Jerusalem Talmud, so much of it really has to do with the acceptance by the Jewish people. What were Jews primarily writing commentaries on? Not to say that there are no commentaries on the Jerusalem Talmud, but the earlier commentators were spending much more time on the Babylonian Talmud. And that’s really, all the commentaries around the Talmud, this is this is a recurring theme and it’s important to emphasize, that’s a part of the Talmud as well. That is a part of Talmud study.
So you see, when you open it up and you have the Rashi and you have Tosfot and the Rambam, and all of these people are basing their commentaries around the central text of the Babylonian Talmud. It’s these commentaries that kind of create the authority and the canonization, that acceptance by the Jewish people, of the Babylonian Talmud [that] without a doubt has been the central occupation of Jewish minds prioritized over the Jerusalem Talmud, which is probably why it has always been seen as the central authority of Jewish life, Jewish thought, Jewish practice, and not the Jerusalem Talmud.
Now, what about Tractate Shekalim? Why all of a sudden are we borrowing? There is no Babylonian Talmud on tractate Shekalim. We’ll probably talk a little bit more about why some topics didn’t get as much time in the Babylonian yeshivas. It’s not just Shekalim. Alot of the tractates that deal primarily with rituals related to society in Jerusalem, in the land of Israel, they didn’t spend as much time on in the Bavli, which is why most of the first seder of Mishnah, Zeraim, we only have a Babylonian Talmud on the first tractate, Brachos. The rest of Zeraim we skip. There is a Yerushalmi on Zeraim. You see that they were interested in in different topics.
It happens to be that Shekalim found its way into the classical cycle of the Babylonian Talmud. When somebody says, “I finished all of Talmud,” number one, they’re probably referring to the Babylonian Talmud, but number two, they probably also did Shekalim. How did Shekalim become a part of that? That’s actually through Daniel Bomberg. When he published the first full printed edition of the Talmud, he noticed that in the second seder, Moed, which we are in the middle of now, beginning with Shabbos, he noticed that every single tractate had a Talmud commentary on it except Shekalim. So he thought to himself, “Okay, we have almost all of it, so let’s not ruin it by missing one.” So he borrowed from the Jerusalem Talmud and kind of placed it in his printing of the Babylonian Talmud.
So when later when they developed the Daf Yomi program, which is learning a page a day, they said, “You know what? We’ll include Shekalim as a part of this classical program completing the entire Talmud every seven and a half years,” what we’re working up to this summer for the next cycle, God willing. We are going to include Tractate Shekalim in there. And that’s why.
Now, what is Shekalim about? In a nutshell, if you open up the 30th chapter of Exodus, in Shemos, there is a commandment for the Jewish people to collect a half a shekel, not a full shekel. Half a shekel was the classical measurement.I would probably compare it to half a dollar. But it was a nominal amount, a half of a shekel, which is why our tractate is called Shekalim. And to contribute it to the Temple in Jerusalem. They would make an announcement to begin doing this on the first of the month of Adar, and on the 15th of Adar you’d be expected to collect and bring it in, even though Jews even who lived outside of Israel were also a part of this and would also give and contribute money to the Temple in Jerusalem.
Now, this wasn’t just a fundraiser. This is not just Jews, you know, like trying to, you know, make sure it’s nice and make sure there’s nice programming. This is not a fundraiser. They are contributing to something very specific, known as a korban tzibur, which is a communal offering. A communal offering like the daily sacrifice that they would bring in the morning and in the afternoon, known as the korban tamid, tamid meaning daily, that was always taken from the funds that were collected of the half a shekel from every single Jew, both in the land of Israel and outside of the land of Israel.
Because it was important that a korban tzibur, a korban, a sacrifice that was offered by the tzibur, needed the participation of the entirety of the Jewish people. These were sacrifices that were meant to atone and to come and be offered on behalf of the collective body known as Knesses Yisrael, the collective body of the entire Jewish people. And the way that we ensured that these communal offerings represented the entirety of the Jewish people, that is the role of the half-shekel, that everybody contributes and the money was then used from all these people to then buy all of the communal sacrifices. That includes the tamid, the mussaf offering. There are more, let’s keep it simple for now. But any korban tzibur as opposed to, a communal offering as opposed to an individual offering. When I sin, somebody sins, they would bring a chatas. That’s individual, that has nothing to do with the half a shekel. The half a shekel went to create that collective body of the Jewish people contributing to korban tzibur, because what we’re going to see in this tractate is about the formation and participation of the entirety of the Jewish people.
So so excited to learn more about Tractate Shekalim from the Talmud Yerushalmi, and let’s together keep making Torah sweet.