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

[Zev Sero]

kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
> 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."

So?  It was also used for shopping and business and whatever else
people used money for.


> My first answer to this was [...] After all, when the Bedek
> Habayis would spend the accumulated half-shekels on whatever,
> wouldn't it lose the kedusha?

Indeed.  Rambam Shkalim 3:17 says "money found on Har Habayit
is chulin, because the bursar never removes money from terumat
halishka before cancelling it against the animals that he buys
with it."  How much more so money found in the streets of Y'm.


>> 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.

Why not?  If a person designates it as his half-shekel, doesn't it
remain hekdesh?

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas