Shekalim 18 a, b

The description of Solomon's Temple is used to help us understand the placement of the tables, the Ark and the Menorah.  Extra attention is given to the gold used on the Menorah.  There exists some dissension regarding the amount of gold used, its purity, and the possibility of excess.

In Halacha 4, we learn a new Mishnah that takes us through amid (a).  The thirteen community collection chests in the Temple are each named in writing.  They include: New Shekalim, for the half-shekels due this year; Old Shekalim, for overdue payments from the previous year; bird pairs and young Olah birds - those offered by zavot/zavim and women who have given birth; wood, levonah (frankincense) and gold for service vessels to facilitate the offerings; and a number of voluntary community offering chests.

Discussions include the appropriate amounts of these offerings and specific laws designating portions of different offerings to the Kohanim.  An interesting question arises regarding the person who dies after her offering is in the chest.  If her offering is an animal, that animal is left to die (money is also 'left to die' in such circumstances; it is thrown into the sea).

The Gemara discusses further how to deal with the circumstance where an offering is given followed by the death of its owner.  The concept of intermingling is a challenge - we do not want items that are in different categories co-mingling.  In this case, the offering of a deceased person is 'in limbo'.  Again we are faced with a crisis of cooties.  Some rabbis try to argue that the community member can be understood to have given money retroactively to the Kohanim, allowing the effects of the offering itself to be nullified.  However, R'Yehuda is said to reject this sort of retroactive clarification.

The debate moves to amounts - how many dinars are equivalent to a particular offering?  And then the Gemara returns to the discussion of animal offerings. Why six community chests for voluntary offerings?  We are told that one was for each type of animal offering: bull, calf, goat, ram, kid, lamb.  The size of the animal was significant: if one had designated a large animal, a small animal was not permitted.  Neither was a change in monetary offering allowed.  Shmuel suggests that the six chests were for bird-pair offerings of zavim; those of women who had recently given birth; animal chataot, ashamed; mincha sin-offerings; the tenth of an ephah offering of a Kohen Gadol.  R'Yochanan agrees with this possibility, as there were so many of these offerings.

Whenever I learn these passages that discuss animal sacrifice, I cannot help but wonder how this was done without obvious conscience or thought.  To hold animals in small spaces before killing them; to speak of their torture with so little emotion... these words are tremendously different from our words today when we speak of the animals in our lives, whether those are used for food or for pleasure, as pets.