Maaser Sheini 1:6 — Buying an Animal with Maaser Sheini Money
Buying an Animal with Maaser Sheini Money
A reading aid, not an exact translation.
This English is a clause-by-clause rendering to help you follow the Hebrew. It is not word-for-word literal, and it is not a transcript of the recorded shiur — the audio carries explanation and context the translation deliberately leaves out.
| Case | Ruling | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| One who buys an animal by mistake (shogeg)? | Its money reverts to its place | — |
| And deliberately (meizid)? | It goes up and is eaten in Yerushalayim | — |
| And if there is no Mikdash? | It is buried with its hide | — |
A machine transcript of the recorded shiur.
This is the shiur as spoken, transcribed automatically and left unedited — the wording is Ephraim's, and occasional transcription errors remain. It follows the audio word by word.
An amalgam of commentaries, including original insights.
These insights draw on the commentaries to this Mishnah and on the recorded shiur. Those commentaries often rest on earlier sources — the Gemara, the Yerushalmi, the Rishonim, and one another — without always saying so; where they do, we generally cite the one we read. Every commentary consulted is kept, verbatim, with this page.
Bought by mistake, undone
An animal bought outside Yerushalayim by mistake unwinds as a mekach ta’os — Tosafos Yom Tov frames it by anan sahadi, our certainty that the buyer never meant to spend maaser money that way, so the money returns to its holiness. Bought knowingly, it must be brought up and eaten in Yerushalayim — and not kept at home, where it would be raised and breed a herd all bearing the kedushah of maaser sheni.
With no Mikdash, buried with its hide
And with no Mikdash, the animal bought knowingly is buried — with its hide, for the skin too may not be used (Bartenura). Tosafos Yom Tov clarifies why the hide fares worse here than in an ordinary shelamim: with a shelamim the buyer means to eat the meat, so the hide comes along with it and is permitted; here nothing is eaten at all — the animal is buried — so there is nothing to carry the hide into permitted use, and it is buried along with it.
Where this sits
The pair closes on the same churban-shadowed note: a consecrated animal meant for Yerushalayim, stranded by the destruction, is buried whole rather than used. It sets up its neighbor Eduyos 8:6, where R' Yehoshua argues the other way — that offerings may still be brought and maaser sheni still eaten even without the walls — the live question of what holiness can still do once its house is gone.