R. Shimon b. Gamliel dice nel nome di R. Shimon, figlio del sommo sacerdote aiutante: lo spessore della parrocchia era largo, era intessuto su settantadue aste trasversali e su ogni filo c'erano ventiquattro fili . [Perché era fatto di blu e viola e scarlatto e lino, sei volte ciascuno, come spiegato in Yoma.] La sua lunghezza era di quaranta cubiti e la sua larghezza, venti [come all'ingresso dell'Ulam, che era alto quaranta cubiti e venti larghe.] Ed era fatto di ottanta duemila. [Questo era il numero di fili di cui è stato realizzato. Un'altra interpretazione: il numero di dinari d'oro spesi su di essa (era ottanta duemila). Alcuni testi hanno: "ottantaseimila giovani fanciulle erano occupate a modellarlo."] Due di loro venivano prodotte ogni anno e trecento Cohanim lo immergevano. [Per gli articoli finiti, anche se sono stati rifiniti in termini di pulizia, richiedono l'immersione per il Tempio (Chagigah 3: 2). Il "trecento Cohanim" della nostra Mishnah è un'esagerazione, che molti non sono tenuti ad immergerlo.]
Bartenura on Mishnah Shekalim
נימין – “Lytzish” in the foreign language.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Shekalim
Introduction
This mishnah describes the curtain in all of its glory. Interestingly, Josephus (Wars of the Jews, Book V, Chapter Five, four) also describes the curtain in exceedingly glorious terms. He writes:
“But then this house, as it was divided into two parts, the inner part was lower than the appearance of the outer, and had golden doors of fifty-five cubits altitude, and sixteen in breadth; but before these doors there was a veil of equal largeness with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue, and fine linen, and scarlet, and purple, and of a contexture that was truly wonderful. Nor was this mixture of colors without its mystical interpretation, but was a kind of image of the universe; for by the scarlet there seemed to be enigmatically signified fire, by the fine flax the earth, by the blue the air, and by the purple the sea; two of them having their colors the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flax and the purple have their own origin for that foundation, the earth producing the one, and the sea the other. This curtain had also embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens, excepting that of the [twelve] signs, representing living creatures.”
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Bartenura on Mishnah Shekalim
עשרים וארבעה חוטין – because it is made from blue, purple and crimson yarns and fine linen and each and every species, its thread is doubled six times as is mentioned in Yoma (Talmud Yoma 87a).
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English Explanation of Mishnah Shekalim
Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel says in the name of Rabbi Shimon the son of the chief [of the priests]: the curtain was a handbreadth in thickness and was woven on seventy-two cords, and on each cord there were twenty-four threads. Obviously the curtain was simply a tremendous piece of work. There is a description of the Tabernacle’s curtain in Exodus 26:1. There we learn that it is made of four types of thread: blue, purple, scarlet and fine linen (see also Josephus above). Each type had six strings, which means that there were twenty-four threads on each cord.
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Bartenura on Mishnah Shekalim
ארכה מ' ורחבה כ' – like the measure of the hall leading to the interior of the Temple (see Tractate Middot, Chapter 4, Mishnah 7), that its height (it should be “length,” based upon the commentary of the Tosafot Yom Tov) was forty cubits and its width was twenty cubits (see also Tractate Middot, Chapter 3, Mishnah 6; but we also learn in Chapter 3, Mishnah 7 that the height was also forty cubits).
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English Explanation of Mishnah Shekalim
It was forty cubits long and twenty cubits broad, and was made by eighty-two young girls. The entrance to the hall of the Temple which this curtain hung in front of was forty cubits long and twenty cubits broad. It took 82 young girls to weave the curtain. We should note that this explanation is according to a certain version of the text. According to another textual reading, the curtain was made up of 820,000 strings.
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Bartenura on Mishnah Shekalim
ושמונים ושתים רבוא – this was the number of threads from which it was made. Another explanation: the number of gold dinars that they spent on it. But there are books in which it is written in them that “that with twenty thousand and eighty,” meaning to say that there eighty-two young virgins were engaged in making it.
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English Explanation of Mishnah Shekalim
Two curtains were made every year, and three hundred priests were needed to immerse it. According to the Tosefta’s explanation of this clause, there were two curtains in the Temple, one spread out to cover the doors and one folded up. If the spread out one became impure they would spread out the folded up one and purify the other (see yesterday’s mishnah). On the eve of Yom Kippur they would bring in a new curtain and take out the old one. Because of its great thickness and weight, it required three hundred priests to immerse the curtain outside of the Temple and to spread it out in the Hel (see yesterday’s mishnah). The Talmud admits that three hundred may be an exaggeration, but it still lets us know what a massive undertaking this must have been.
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Bartenura on Mishnah Shekalim
ושלש מאות כהנים היו מטבילין אותה – utensils that were completed even though they were completed in ritual purity, require immersion for holy things, as is found in Tractate Hagigah (Chapter 3, Mishnah 2). The three hundred Kohanim that are taught in our Mishnah is the language of hyperbole and exaggeration, for they did not require so many Kohanim to immerse it.
