Masechet Meilah, Chapter 6, Mishnah 5. This chapter continues to examine who bears the guilt of meilah when hekdesh money passes through more than one pair of hands. Our mishnah takes up another case of a person who handed hekdesh coins to someone else for safekeeping, without knowing that the money belonged to hekdesh. The question in every part of the mishnah is the same: when the coins were handed over, were they handed over to be guarded, or were they handed over to be used?
Coins Deposited With a Money Changer
The mishnah begins with "Hamafkid ma'ot etzel hashulchani," a man who leaves coins in the keeping of a money changer, having no idea that what he is depositing belongs to hekdesh. Everything turns on the state in which the money arrived. Were the coins "tzerurin," gathered into a bundle or fastened shut with a knot? For that situation the mishnah rules "lo yishtamesh bahen": the money changer has no right to put them to any use of his own.
The reasoning is built on the appearance of the deposit. A bundle, or a knot tied in a recognizable way, announces that the owner wants the package to stay exactly as it is. That is the language of safekeeping, not of business. The coins were entrusted to the money changer to be watched, and nothing more.
"Lefichach, im hotzi, ma'al." Therefore, if the money changer spent those coins, he is the one who has committed meilah. Nobody gave him permission to spend them; he acted entirely on his own initiative, and it is his act that removed the money from hekdesh. The guilt is his alone.
Suppose instead that the money was "mutarin," lying free, with no wrapping around it and no knot securing it. Then the mishnah rules "yishtamesh bahen": the money changer may go ahead and use it. Currency handed over in a shape that is ready for immediate circulation carries its own implicit consent. A money changer's livelihood is built on small coins; he needs a supply of them constantly at hand. To place unbound coins before such a man is in practice to tell him that he may spend them now and hand back their equivalent later.
Since the coins were given to him with permission to use them, the transfer itself is what took the money out of hekdesh. "Lefichach, im hotzi, lo ma'al." Therefore, if the money changer spends them, he has not committed meilah. He functions here as the agent of the depositor, and the depositor is the one held liable. The money changer did nothing improper: he was entitled to use the coins, and the responsibility falls on the man who placed them in his hand.
Coins Deposited With an Ordinary Householder
From the professional the mishnah moves to the private individual: "Etzel ba'al habayit." Here the hekdesh coins were unwittingly left with an ordinary householder, a man whose livelihood has nothing to do with currency. The ruling for him is "bein kach uvein kach", meaning in either circumstance, knotted or lying free, and the ruling is that "lo yishtamesh bahen", he may put none of it to use.
Here the form of the deposit makes no difference. An ordinary householder is not in the business of exchanging money and has no standing need for small coins. There is no basis for assuming that the coins were placed in his hands as business currency. Whatever their arrangement, they were plainly given to him to guard.
"Lefichach, im hotzi, ma'al." Consequently, should this householder go ahead and disburse the coins, the meilah is charged to him. The money came into his possession purely as a trust, never as currency he was licensed to borrow, so he stands in no one's stead as an agent. Whatever the circumstances, the deed is his own and so is the liability.
The Shopkeeper: Rebbi Meir and Rebbi Yehuda
The mishnah closes with a dispute about an intermediate case: the shopkeeper, the chenvani, who buys and sells produce and spices but is not in the currency trade. How do we classify him? Is he like a money changer, since he is a businessman handling transactions, or like an ordinary householder, since coins are not his stock in trade?
The mishnah's first answer is "Hachenvani keba'al habayit," placing the shopkeeper in the same category as the private individual just discussed. Currency exchange is not his profession, and therefore anything put into his keeping is assumed to have been placed there for guarding rather than for spending. It follows that he may not draw on the coins at all, and should he lay them out while they belong to hekdesh, the meilah is his. Such is the ruling of Rebbi Meir, "divrei Rebbi Meir."
"Rebbi Yehuda omer, kashulchani." Rebbi Yehuda holds that the shopkeeper is treated like the money changer. Everyone knows that a shopkeeper needs change on hand for his customers, so when loose coins are handed to him, the assumption is that they were given with permission to use them. Consequently, if he was given loose hekdesh coins and spent them, it is the depositor, not the shopkeeper, who bears the liability for meilah.