Safeguarding Consecrated Property After the Temple's Destruction

How the Sages prevented spiritual mishaps when handling animal tithes, firstborns, and consecrated coins without an altar.

The Cessation of Animal Tithes

The Mishnah taught that the obligation of מעשר בהמה (animal tithe) applies both during the Temple era and after its destruction. In practice, however, the Gemara notes that animal tithes are no longer separated nowadays. Rabba explains that the Sages abolished the practice out of concern for a תקלה (mishap).

Rashi explains that without an altar, the sanctified animal cannot be offered. The owner would have to detain it until it developed a disqualifying blemish, creating a persistent risk that someone might shear it, work it, or slaughter it unblemished.

משום תקלה - דאין לנו על מה להקריב וצריך לשהויי עד שיומם ואתי ביה לידי תקלה

Because of a mishap — for we have nothing upon which to sacrifice, and one must detain it until it becomes blemished, and one will come through it to a mishap. (Rashi on Bekhorot 53a:9:1)

Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah's Calves

Tosafot raise a striking historical difficulty against Rabba's conclusion. In Shabbat 54b, the Talmud records that Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah tithed twelve thousand calves annually from his vast herds. Yet Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah lived well after the destruction of the Second Temple, serving as Nasi (prince) generations after the burning of the sanctuary.

Rabbeinu Tam rejects interpretations that this tithe was a government tax or separated by an appointed guardian during his youth. Instead, Rabbeinu Tam resolves the contradiction by suggesting that the Sages did not enact the decree immediately following the Temple's destruction. For a brief transitional period, the biblical obligation continued until the rabbinic prohibition was formally established.

ושמא לא בטלו מעשר בהמה כ"כ סמוך לחורבן:

And perhaps they did not abolish animal tithe so soon after the destruction. (Tosafot on Bekhorot 53a:9:1)

Why Firstborns Are Not Starved

To prove that the Sages actively prevented mishaps post-destruction, the Gemara quotes a baraita: if someone consecrates an animal nowadays, it must be locked behind a door until it starves on its own,. Tosafot ask why this lethal procedure is never applied to a בכור (firstborn animal), which becomes consecrated automatically from birth even nowadays,. Rather than starving the animal, the owner must wait for a blemish while tending it for months or years.

Tosafot resolve this by distinguishing between the ultimate fate of each animal. A בכור can be eaten by a priest once it develops a blemish without requiring redemption; locking it away to starve would cause an avoidable loss of consecrated property (הפסד קדשים). By contrast, voluntarily consecrated animals cannot be eaten even with a blemish unless redeemed, and their redemption money must be destroyed anyway, meaning starvation causes no true loss to sacred property.

דבכור דשרי בנפילת מום בלא פדייה איכא הפסד קדשים אם היה כונסו לכיפה

For a firstborn, which becomes permitted upon the falling of a blemish without redemption, there is a loss of consecrated property if he were to lock it in a cell. (Tosafot on Bekhorot 53a:10:2)

Disposing of Consecrated Coins

The baraita further rules that consecrated money or metal vessels must be cast into the Dead Sea. Tosafot point out that other passages permit discarding redemption money into an ordinary river. Why does our baraita insist exclusively on the Dead Sea?

Tosafot explain that intact coins rapidly corrode in the dense mineral waters of the Dead Sea, preventing anyone from retrieving and misusing them. An ordinary freshwater river, however, mandates prior grinding of the coins before disposal. Tosafot conclude that this halacha directly dictates practical observance: one who redeems כרם רבעי (fourth-year vineyard) produce nowadays must grind down the redemption coins before casting them into a local river.

Rabbinic emergency measures after the Temple's destruction balanced preventing illicit use with avoiding unnecessary destruction of redeemable sanctity.

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