In Parashat Shekalim, we read that the Torah commands every Jewish man above the age of twenty to donate half a shekel to the Tabernacle/Temple (Ex. 30:11–16). Now, the word shekel clearly derives from the triliteral root shin-kuf-lammed (“to weigh/measure”), and refers to the fact that this currency was a metal coin that weighed a specific amount. But there is another term for this type of coinage: Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan consistently translate the word shekel in the aforementioned passage as sila, which is an Aramaicized form of the Hebrew word sela. Why are there two different words for the same coin? What other terms refer to the half-shekel?
The word sela appears many times in the Mishnah, with two fairly distinct meanings. Sometimes it refers to a certain coin used as legal tender, and at other times the word retains its meaning from biblical Hebrew as “rock/bedrock.”
The Mishnah itself implies that the sela coin is what the Bible calls a shekel, because the Mishnah uses the word sela in the same contexts in which the Bible uses the word shekel. One example is that the Torah stipulates that a Jewish firstborn son must be redeemed from a Kohen for five shekel (Num. 18:16), while the Mishnah in Bechorot (above) in citing this law refers to five selaim. The connection is a bit more explicit in Rava’s definition of the sela d’orayta (“the Biblical sela”), wherein he cites Ex. 30:13 that specifies that a shekel ought to weigh twenty geira (Bechorot 50a). Thus, Rava clearly understood that what the Torah calls a shekel is what the rabbis called a sela.
This is even more explicit in the Jerusalem Talmud (Kiddushin 1:3), where Rabbi Chanina comments: “All shekalim written in the Torah are selaim.” [See also Babylonian Talmud (Bechorot 50a) which cites Rabbi Chanina as saying “All kesef (“silver”) that is said in the Torah unspecified is a sela.”] Indeed, later authorities like Rashi (to Bechorot 5a), Maimonides (Laws of Erachin 4:3, Shekalim 1:2), and Sefer HaChinuch (Commandment #355) explicitly write that a shekel in Biblical Hebrew refers to what the rabbis in the Mishnah call a sela.
How did these two terms come to be related to each other? And why did the rabbis stop using the biblical Hebrew word shekel and instead use the word sela for what the Bible calls a shekel?
These questions are compounded by the fact that the Rabbis also used the word shekel, but differently. The most illustrative example is the Mishnah Shavuot (6:7), in which two litigants argue over the value of a lost collateral vis-à-vis the total debt. The creditor claims, “I lent you a sela and it [the lost collateral] was worth a shekel [so the collateral that I lost does not cover your entire debt, ergo you still owe me money].” To this, the debtor responds, “No, you lent me a sela and it [the lost collateral] was worth a sela [so the collateral that you lost covers the entire debt, ergo I owe you nothing].” Their exchange of words presumes that the term shekel implies coinage worth less than a sela, for if sela and shekel were truly synonymous, then there would be no conflict between the creditor and the debtor. Now it gets complicated: If the Mishnaic Hebrew word sela refers to what the Bible calls a shekel, then why would the Mishnaic Hebrew word shekel refer to less than what the Bible calls a shekel?
Nachmanides (to Ex. 30:13) partially addresses these questions by admitting that while the term sela in Mishnaic Hebrew equals the shekel of biblical Hebrew, the term shekel in Mishnaic Hebrew does not equal the shekel of biblical Hebrew. He explains that because of the Torah’s commandment of an annual half-shekel donation, people began to use the term shekel for the half-shekel coin that they were supposed to donate. In time, the word shekel became so totally identified with this commandment that it lost its original meaning of a full shekel and was only used to refer to a half-shekel. Because of this, in rabbinic parlance (reflected by Mishnaic Hebrew) the word shekel actually means what the Bible calls a “half-shekel,” and a new term – sela – was applied to what the Bible calls a shekel. The same idea is found in the writings of Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano (1548-1620).
With this understanding in hand, the Mishnah in Shavuot makes perfect sense: The creditor claimed that he lent the borrower one sela and since the collateral that he lost was only worth one shekel (i.e., half of a sela), the borrower still owes him money. The borrower, on the other hand, agreed that the original loan consisted of one sela, but he claimed that since the collateral was also worth one sela (i.e., two shekels), he owes the lender nothing.
Nonetheless, although Nachmanides and Rabbi Menachem Azariah have accounted for how the term shekel in biblical Hebrew came to mean half-shekel in Mishnaic Hebrew, they have failed to explain how the term sela came to be associated in Mishnaic Hebrew with what biblical Hebrew calls a shekel. I have not found any sources that explicitly address this question. But Rabbi Asher Gvirer of Beitar Illit suggests that the rabbis renamed the shekel sela because the latter means “strong rock” to show that this term refers to a stronger (i.e., more valuable) coin than the term shekel that they commonly used.
(It would be interesting to consider whether the name Ashkelon for the Philistine coastal city is somehow related to the Hebrew word shekel or the triliteral root from whence it derives.)
A piyyut ascribed to Rabbi Elazar HaKallir that is customarily recited on Shabbat Shekalim reads: “A shekel I will bear in the prepared and exalted house.” Said house clearly refers to the Holy Temple and refers to the yearly shekel donation. However, at first sight, this wording is somewhat inaccurate because the commandment entails donating a half-shekel, not a whole shekel. Barring the possibility of poetic license, we must account for why the payytan referred to donating “a shekel,” which implies a complete shekel, not a half-shekel.
Based on the sources cited above, Rabbi David Schlussel of Munkatch (1864-1940) answers that this piyyut used the term shekel in the rabbinic sense, by which it actually refers to what the Bible calls a half-shekel. Similarly, Rabbi David Cohen of Gvul Yaavetz in Brooklyn uses this idea to explain why the tractate devoted to the rules of the half-shekel donation is called Shekalim, even though a full shekel was not required. Since in rabbinic parlance, the term shekel refers to what the Torah calls a half-shekel, it is appropriate to call the tractate devoted to discussion of the laws of giving a half-shekel Tractate Shekalim.
Rabbi Elazar Rokach of Amsterdam (1665-1742) offers a more esoteric understanding of the name of Tractate Shekalim and the enigmatic piyyut cited above, by explaining that while originally the Torah commands a yearly donation of a half-shekel, in Messianic times that commandment will morph into a requirement to donate a full shekel. He explains that according to the at-bash cipher, the Hebrew word shekel assumes a gematria of 26, which equals the gematria value of the Tetragrammaton. Accordingly, he explains that because G-d’s name remains incomplete until the eradication of Amalek (see Rashi to Ex. 17:16), the shekel given in His honor should likewise be halved, but in the Messianic era when G-d’s name will contain all four letters, then the shekel given should likewise be complete.
