Daily Talk
He enters the Temple treasury barefoot, in a garment with nowhere to hide a coin, without even his tefillin, and they keep talking to him the whole time so he cannot slip silver into his mouth. Why does the holiest treasury in the world take precautions against its own most trusted officer?
The Man With No Pockets
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About This Talk
Chapter 2 of Shekalim follows the half-shekel from the shofar-shaped chests in every city into the thirteen labeled chests of the Temple, five of them set aside for the awkward leftover coins of people who had just finished the hardest chapter of their lives, and then into a sealed chamber where three baskets of nine seah each are lifted three times a year with a handkerchief marking the officer's place. It ends with the man sent in to do the lifting, stripped of shoes and tefillin and privacy, not to protect the silver but to protect the community from having a single suspicious thought.