Daily Talk
Every Jew gave the same half-shekel, and at the end of the year there was money left over. The Sages neither saved it nor returned it; they bought extra burnt offerings and called them the dessert of the altar. What kind of holy accounting turns a surplus into a delicacy?
The Dessert of the Altar
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About This Talk
Chapter 4 of Shekalim follows the half-shekel money out of the chamber and into the world: the salt and the wood, the incense and the showbread, the wages of people nobody was watching, the walls of Jerusalem and its water conduit, and at last the leftovers, spent on offerings the Sages called the dessert of the altar. It is the chapter where the holiest fund in Israel turns out to pay mostly for ordinary things, and refuses to take anything for free.