Jerusalem's Tyrian Shekel
A Lesson in Priorities
In the second century BCE, Rome, the ruling
power, operated two mints in the Mediteranean region, one in Lebanon at
Tyre, and the second at Antioch. The mint in Tyre produced Tyrian Shekels
and Half-Shekels, of a 95% silver purity, between the years 127 BCE and
19 BCE. In the year 19 BCE Rome closed the mint in Tyre and began to import
an inferior silver coinage from the Far East consisting of 80% pure silver.
The Religious leaders in Israel, realizing
that the new coinage was not sufficiently pure to fulfil the Commandment
of giving the Holy Half-Shekel appealed to the Emperor for permission to
produce a ceremonial coin of sufficient purity to fulfil our religious
obligations. The Rabbanim received special dispensation to produce the
requisite coinage on condition that they continue with the motif of the
Tyrian Shekel, so as not to arouse objections within the Roman Empire that
the Jews were granted "autonomy" to mint their own coinage.
Now the Rabbanim in the year 19/18 BCE had
a serious problem. On the one hand, the giving of the Holy Half-Shekel
is a Torah Commandment. The problem arises with the motif of the Tyrian
Shekel. On the obverse appears the image of Melkhart, known to us as Hercules,
the god of the Phoenicians. On the reverse, appears an eagle on the bow
of a ship with the legend: "Tyre the Holy and City of Refuge",
and the date of issue.
Both images, a foreign god (or any likeness
of man) and an eagle, are Torah prohibitions. And yet the Rabbanim decided
that the importance of the giving of the Holy Half-Shekel superceded the
violations incurred in using the Tyrian motif. More than this, these coins
were actually brought into the very Beit Hamikdash itself, a vault room
full of coins dipicting a foreign god, inside the very Temple. And the
sages went as far as issuing the decree, as recorded in the Talmud, that
only the Tyrian Shekel was acceptable for fulfilling the Commandment of
giving the Holy Half-Shekel (because of its silver purity).
Can you imagine the Rabbanim today producing
a religious item and putting on it the image of a foreign god? Unheard
of, right? And yet that's exactly what we did. Under Roman Law, we had
no choice if we wanted to fulfil the Commandment, and so important was
it deemed to do so, that we entered the image of a foriegn god into the
Holy Temple, an act that only a few generations before sparked the Maccabean
Revolt!
The coins minted in Jerusalem between the
years 18 BCE and 65 CE were virtually identical to their predecessors from
Tyre with one addition, the letters KP that appear on the reverse on the
upper right side. According to Professor Yakov Meshorer, of the Israel
Museum, whose research and published findings have opened up the entire
world of ancient Israelite coinage, and to whom the whole House of Israel
is deeply indebted for bringing us this Torah, the KP may have been an
acrostic that stood for "By Authority of the Roman Constitution".
(We believe it was actually the world's first Hechsher, and stood for
"Kosher for Purim"! Only kidding.)
In the days of the later second Temple we
are told in the Talmud, if a person were to pay his/her Half-Shekel with
a whole shekel, requiring change, they would give the Temple Treasurer
their shekel, and two kalbonot (money changer's fees), and would receive
in change a half-shekel.
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In a keeping with the spirit of Purim, where
everything is turned around up-side-down, today's shekel is exactly the
size of our ancestor's half-shekel, and today's half-shekel is exactly
the size of the ancient shekel. Good Purim!
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