[Avodah] Half-Shekel found from the time of Bayis Sheni

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

Regarding the article that R' Gershon Dubin posted to Areivim:
> http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125612

R' Micha Berger asked two questions:

> I'm not sure why the article makes the assumption
> that this particular coin may have been involved
> in the mitzvah of machatzis hasheqel.

Because the article says that the coin "is of the denomination used during the turbulent Second Temple period to pay the Biblical half-shekel head-tax."

The photos of that coin don't seem to show any inscription which actually says "chatzi shekel" on it, but I suppose this is the sort of thing that coin collectors and antiquities mavens might be familiar with. Note, for example, that the articles identifies exactly which deity's face appears on the coin. To me, one Greek-looking sculpture is like any other, but the mumchim, they know these things.

> But if the probability is real, wouldn't it have
> to be treated as heqdeish?

My first answer to this was to suggest that the denomination of the coin is insufficient evidence to its being hekdesh. After all, when the Bedek Habayis would spend the accumulated half-shekels on whatever, wouldn't it lose the kedusha?

But the article itself offers even more evidence on this question:

> The ancient silver coin was discovered in ... the main
> Second Temple-era drainage channel of Jerusalem. ...
> "Just like today when coins sometimes fall from our
> pockets and roll into drainage openings at the side of
> the street, that’s how it was some two thousand years
> ago – a man was on his way to the Temple and the shekel
> which he intended to use for paying the half shekel
> head-tax found its way into the drainage channel,"
> theorized archaeologist Eli Shukron of the Israel
> Antiquities Authority. 

According to this theory, the coin never became hekdesh to begin with.

Akiva Miller
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