Hi friends and welcome back to Talmud Daily, our 40-week tour of the entire Talmud. And today I wanted to go and explore the deeper meaning of what Tractate Shekalim is all about.
As we mentioned, shekalim, which is the plural of shekel, which was literally every Jew, both in the Land of Israel, outside the Land of Israel, would donate a half of a shekel, and those funds would be used to buy the sacrifices, the communal sacrifices, the ones that were brought by the entirety of the Jewish people. And to really understand what this actually means, I want to explore a dialogue that appears in the Jerusalem Talmud, as we mentioned, and some of the back and forth. I want to introduce a word in that back and forth, which is the term that is used to describe dialogue in the Talmud is called shakla vetarya, giving and taking, that’s literally what it mean. Shakla vetarya, the back and forth, the give and take.
So there’s the following back and forth that appears in the first chapter in the Talmud on the fourth mishnah. In the Jerusalem Talmud, it’s not paginated in the same way as the Babylonian Talmud, so the way that we cite it is 1:4, that’s the first chapter, the fourth mishnah on the Talmud over there.
And they have the following question. The Talmud says that everybody had to give the half-shekel for communal sacrifices, and there was a question that arose: Does that also include kohanim? Are the priests, the kohanim, the ones who serve in the Temple, the ones who are offering all the sacrifices, do we also have to contribute this half-shekel?
And they came up with actually a very interesting reasoning. They said, “It’s a problem if we have to contribute to this.” Why? They reasoned as follows, and this is directly from the Talmud Yerushalmi Shekalim: Shehakohanim dorshin mikra zeh le’atzman. The kohanim interpreted the following rule for themselves, and they said, “If we end up donating a half-shekel, it’s going to be a problem for all the communal sacrifices.” Why? Because when a kohen offers a minchah offering, specifically when a kohen offers, it gets entirely burnt on the mizbeach, on the altar. It gets entirely burnt. And the kohanim said that’s a rule that applies to anytime a kohen brings this kind of offering. There’s a problem, though: “When we offer the communal sacrifices, we don’t actually do that. We don’t actually ensure that it gets entirely burnt.So if we end up donating and taking part in this, the problem is it’s going to have to be burnt entirely because it’s going to be accepting money and ownership also from kohanim, and yet we’re not following the rules of when a kohen offers a sacrifice, this specific kind of minchah, that is entirely burnt.”
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai responds and says, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You absolutely need to give, and if a kohen does not give and contribute the half-shekel, they are sinners.” What is this back and forth? What is this, let’s use the Talmudic term, what is this shakla vetarya? What are they arguing about?
So there is a fascinating idea that is explained by Rabbi Soloveitchik. We’ve quoted him before. He was the author of Halakhic Man and one of the great Talmudic scholars, particularly in the beis medrash, in the house of study, of Yeshiva University, and others also offer this response. He says something brilliant.
The kohanim were looking at these communal sacrifices as if they were like a partnership. So everybody’s contributing a little bit, and you can imagine a million people contribute, so I own a millionth of this. Think of it like when you buy a stock in a company. So when I buy a stock, if I contribute, I own the stock, so now I have a little piece of this entire company. So they reasoned to themselves, if this is like a partnership, if we’re all contributing for these communal sacrifices, then it should ostensibly be that our partnership is going to ruin the actual rules and procedures of how you offer this, because there are different rules of when a kohen versus a non-kohen offers it.
And Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai says, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re misunderstanding the whole thing.” Communal sacrifices are not a partnership. They’re not structured that way. It’s not like buying stock in a company. You are actually contributing to be a part of an entity, of a unified entity, that not everybody has it, but that unified entity is called Knesses Yisrael, the body of the Jewish people. And when we offer communal sacrifices, we don’t look at it halachically as it’s owned a little bit by this kohen, a little bit by this non-kohen, a little bit by this person, a little bit by that person. We’re not having fractional ownership of communal sacrifices.
No. When we donate a half-shekel, we are now binding ourselves and contributing to be a part of the unified entity known as the Jewish people. And really at the heart of Tractate Shekalim is what we do in our lives to connect and bind ourselves, even now, when we don’t have a Temple, when we’re not giving the half shekel, but thinking, how do we bind ourselves to the Jewish people? But at the heart of Tractate Shekalim is actually this notion and this idea that there is an entity that’s not… It’s not a partnership, it’s not fractional ownership, but there is an entity called Knesses Yisroel, the Jewish people. And this is a unified entity that even if a kohen is a part of it, it’s now a unified entity. So if a kohen‘s a part of it, it doesn’t change the procedures of how the communal sacrifices need to be offered, because it’s not a fractional ownership, it’s not a partnership. It is a unified entity called Knesses Yisroel.
And this is what Rabbi Soloveitchik writes in an essay which is so beautiful, and I want to read it to you. And he wrote this in an article called “The Community,” which can be found in the journal called Tradition, which used to always publish Rabbi Soloveitchik’s writings. He has a lot of writings in Tradition. And it was published in spring of 1978, and this is what Rabbi Soloveitchik said, and I think it’s so beautiful, and it’s the central theme of what Shekalim and donating that half shekel is all about.
“The community in Judaism,” writes Rabbi Soloveitchik, “is not a functional-utilitarian, but an ontological one.” I know that’s a fancy word. Rabbi Soloveitchik loved the word ontological. Functional utilitarian is like, you know, “What do I get out of it?” Like, I belong to a country club, I belong to a vacation rental place, you get something out of it. That’s not what the Jewish people are. The Jewish people, binding yourself to the Jewish people is an ontological entity. It’s like something of an existence. It is part of your essential identity.
“The community is not just an assembly of people who work together for their mutual benefit, but a metaphysical entity, an individuality; I might say, a living whole. In particular, Judaism has stressed the wholeness and the unity of Knesset Israel, the Jewish community. The latter is not a conglomerate. It is an autonomous entity, endowed with a life of its own. We, for instance, lay claim to Eretz Yisroel, the land of Israel. God granted this land to us as a gift. To whom did He pledge this land? Neither to an individual nor to a partnership consisting of millions of people. He gave it to Knesset Israel, to the community as an independent unity, as a distinct juridic metaphysical person. He did not promise the land to me, to you, to them; nor did He promise the land to all of us together.”
“Abraham did not receive the land as an individual, but as the father of a future nation. The owner of the Promised Land is the Knesset Israel, which is a community persona. However strange such a concept may appear to the empirical sociologist, it is not at all a strange experience for the Halachist and the mystic to whom Knesset Israelis a living, loving, and suffering mother.”
This is a beautiful paragraph where Rabbi Soloveitchik is actually emphasizing this is not just a mystical concept, this is a halachic concept. This is a halachic concept of the unity and entity known as the Jewish people, which has specific rules of how they regulate, what it regulates, and what it’s involved in, which we will be discussing and coming back to over and over again as we continue our tour throughout the entire Talmud.
But what we do understand, and what we should emerge from Tractate Shekalim understanding, is that there is a difference about looking at the Jewish people as like this fractional ownership, like this country club that we all belong to, like my dear friend Mitch Eichen sometimes calls the Raccoon Lodge. I know that’s a reference to some television show that I never watch. It’s none of the above. The Jewish people, Knesses Yisroel, is an independent entity that each of us as individual Jews do our best to connect to and be a part of.
So thank you so much for listening to Talmud Daily, and let’s together keep making Torah sweet.