Jesus and the moneychangers in the Temple TY Shekalim 3

 Today’s daf TY Shekalim 3 reminds me of a story concerning Jesus, the Temple, and moneychangers. First, the moneychangers. “We learned in the first Mishnah that on the first day of Adar the court announces the forthcoming obligation to make the half shekel contribution. After listing other matters the court attends to during Adar, the Tanna now returns to the main topic of our tractate-the half shekel contribution: On the 15th day of (Adar) moneychangers would sit in the province. On the 25th day of Adar they said in the temple...” (Art Scroll translation)

The standard practice was for moneychangers to conduct their business over a simple table, שולחן. thus they were called שולחנות-literally table-people (Rambam commentary). Because Jews came to Jerusalem from different countries bringing various currencies, moneychangers were set up to exchange their coins for the half shekalim (Tiklin Chadtin, see Rosh, Shekel HaKodesh 1:63) Others maintain that the moneychangers serve the more basic function-that of collecting the half shekelim. It was their duty to “demand softly” that the half shekel be paid, but they were not granted the power of coercion. The money changing role was incidental to this significant assignment (Rambam, Hil Shekalim 1:9)¹

According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus did something that was completely incomprehensible for the Jews. “Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all all were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers.’” (Mat 21:12-13)

\Remember the main mode of worship back then was the sacrificial cult. Not everybody could schlep an animal from home to offer up as a sacrifice. Sellers who sold doves and other animals enabled those worshipers to fulfill their ritual obligations and draw close to God as they understood it. Driving those people out made no sense at all to them.

Prof. Amy-Jill Levine in her essay "Bearing False Witness: Common Errors Made About Early Judaism” writes “(The) Ninth is the insistence that Jesus objected to the ‘temple domination system’ that overtaxed the population, forced upon them oppressive purity laws (see the third misconception-gg), and functioned as an elitist institution in cooperation with Rome. Thus we have the common stereotype that the ‘moneychangers’ were overcharging pilgrims. Jesus never makes this charge, although there are rabbinic notices that the high priests would sometimes take the tithes due to the poorer priests. Nor have we evidence that the Temple oppressed the peasants or overtaxed them. The vast majority of the Jewish people loved the Temple, visited it on pilgrimage festivals, protected it from Roman from profanation, and more is destruction. According to the book of Acts, Jesus’s followers, including Paul, continued to worship there. When in the first revolt against Rome, zealot factions gain control of Jerusalem, they did burn the Temple that records, but they also appointed their own high priest. To some extent, the idea of the temple domination system stems from Jesus’s comment about the ‘den of robbers’ (Mat 21:13); however, ‘den of robbers’ is a quotation from the Hebrew Bible, from Jeremiah 7:11, and refers not to where people still but where thieves go to feel safe.”²

By the way, this year Easter Sunday coincides with the eighth day of Passover.

1commentary from the At Scroll tractate Shekalim, page 3b1 note 7

2from The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy -Jill Levine and Mark Zvi Brettler, pages 503-4