Meilah, Chapter 6, Mishnah 1. Until now the masechet has dealt with the person who himself derives benefit from hekdesh. This chapter turns to a different question: what happens when the benefit comes through someone else, an agent sent to do a job on behalf of the one who sent him? Who bears the meilah, the sender or the messenger?
Two Competing Principles
Halachah recognizes the rule of "shlucho shel adam k'moto," a person's agent stands in his place. When someone appoints another to carry out an act for him and the agent does it, the deed is credited to the sender. The agent is simply his extension, his proxy.
Alongside it stands a principle pointing the opposite way: "ein shaliach l'dvar aveirah," agency does not operate in the realm of sin. Send someone off to transgress, and if he goes and transgresses, the guilt attaches to the one whose hands did the deed, not to the one who gave the order. Why? Because the messenger was fully able to refuse. His answer should have been that he does not accept assignments of that kind. Having chosen to proceed, the sin becomes his own, and it is on his account that it is reckoned.
Our mishnah teaches how these principles play out in the laws of meilah.
Meilah Is the Exception
"Hashaliach she'asah shlichuto": where a messenger completed the task assigned to him, and that task turned out to involve the use of hekdesh, the ruling is "ba'al habayit ma'al." The sender is the one who has transgressed meilah; no chiyuv whatsoever attaches to the messenger.
At first glance this contradicts the principle just established. Misusing hekdesh is surely a sin, so we would have assumed that agency fails here as well. Meilah, however, stands outside that rule. Regarding meilah the Torah teaches that whatever the messenger did is placed on the account of the one who dispatched him, and the guilt is the sender's. A pasuk is the source of this exception.
"Lo asah shlichuto, hashaliach ma'al": should the messenger deviate from precisely what he was assigned, the meilah becomes his. The moment he steps outside his mandate he ceases to function as the sender's arm. What he did, he did of his own accord, and a person always answers for what he does of his own accord.
Meat and Liver
The mishnah offers an example of an errand gone wrong. "Keitzad?" How so? The owner instructed: "Ten basar la'orchim," serve the visitors meat, and what the messenger set before them was liver, "v'natan lahem kaved." Or the mirror image: the instruction was "Kaved," liver, and out came meat, "v'natan lahem basar."
Either way, so long as nobody involved realized that the food was consecrated, the mishnah rules "hashaliach ma'al." The meilah belongs to the messenger. Since the errand was not performed as it had been assigned, the deed attaches to him alone, and the sender is left out of it.
When Everyone Is Liable
The next case produces meilah at three levels. "Amar lo, 'Ten lahem chaticha chaticha,'" the householder told his agent to give each guest a single piece. "V'hu amar, 'Tilu shtayim shtayim,'" but the agent announced to the guests that each should take two. "V'hem natlu shalosh shalosh," and the guests ignored even that and took three apiece.
Assuming none of them knew the meat was hekdesh (and this bears repeating: meilah applies only to unintentional use, where the one benefiting is unaware of the sanctity), then "kulan ma'alu," all of them committed meilah: the householder, the agent, and the guests. The mishnah apportions it piece by piece:
- The first piece is charged to the ba'al habayit. For that piece the agent was faithfully transmitting his instructions, so the act flowed through him to his sender. The householder said one piece; the guests did in fact take a first piece, and they took it on the agent's word. That piece is the householder's meilah.
- The second piece is charged to the agent. He was authorized to convey one piece and instead told them two. That addition was his own doing, his own achrayut, so the second piece is his meilah.
- The third piece is charged to the guests. Nobody told them to take it. They took it on their own, so they answer for it themselves.
Coins From the Window or the Box
One last scenario. The owner of the house sends his messenger for money: "Havei li min hachalon," fetch me some from the window recess, or "min hageluskema," from the coffer, and make a purchase with it. Back comes the messenger with money, "v'hevi lo," and the coins prove to be hekdesh, taken from one of those recesses or coffers, and the purchase has already been made with them.
Now, even should the owner protest afterward, "Lo hayah b'libi ella mizeh" (my intention was only this one), meaning that one particular recess or that one particular coffer was what he pictured, "v'hevi mizeh," while his messenger drew from the other, the ruling stands: "ba'al habayit ma'al." Liability for meilah falls upon the sender from the moment the money was spent. An intention never voiced carries no weight in halachah. Measured against the words that actually left his mouth, the errand was carried out faithfully, so the deed is credited to the one who dispatched him, and the chiyuv rests on his shoulders.
Where the instruction was precise, however, the outcome flips. "Aval im amar lo, 'Havei li min hachalon'": the owner named the window recess, and his messenger returned with hekdesh coins out of the coffer, "v'hevi lo min hageluskema." Or the reverse: the coffer was named, "o 'Min hageluskema,'" and the messenger drew from the window recess, "v'hevi lo min hachalon." In both, the mishnah rules "hashaliach ma'al." Having strayed from what he was told, the messenger bears the meilah himself.