We'll talk about another type of Kinyan (acquisition). The Mishnah says, “Anything that needs to be evaluated in order to be used as payment for something else.” That's just a complicated way to say any movable object. This is a type of Kinyan that we'll talk about: Chalipin, which we switch, we trade one item for a different type of item. So any type of movable object that's going to be used as payment for something else has to be evaluated for its price before we do this exchange. As soon as one person acquires one of the items, the other person becomes responsible for the other item that he is going to take. So we're basically talking about a trade of one object for another object. It's a type of Kinyan where, if I'm trading with somebody and I take the item from them, they then automatically take responsibility for the item that I'm holding, which I'm supposed to give over to them.
We'll give an example to make it understandable. How does it work? Somebody's changing an ox for a cow. We're talking here about things that are of equal value. There's no money being exchanged; it's just animal for animal. Or a donkey for another person's ox. One of them acquires the other person's animal. Let's say I'm the one who has the ox and I want to take the cow. Once I acquire the cow, the ox that was in my possession automatically becomes the property of the person I'm trading with, and he becomes responsible for it. That means he acquires that animal right at that time. That's a standard Kinyan Chalipin.
But let's talk about another similar type of Kinyan, one that's similar to Chalipin. Let's say I have an item I want to sell to somebody: my cow. But that cow is in Long Branch. It's in a different town, and they can't do the Kinyan with it. They can't pick it up. Like in that case we just spoke about, the Shor (ox) and the Hamor (donkey), the person does an actual Kinyan with the animal. He pulls the reins. He does something to it that shows that it's his. But let's say there's an animal far away that I want to sell to somebody else. And we know that an animal cannot be acquired with Kesef (money). So the person wants to pay me, but he also wants to acquire the animal that's far away. And he can't do a Kinyan on it. So in that case we could do something called a Kinyan Chalipin. I have something that's a very low value, like a handkerchief. We see this all the time at weddings. And what we tell the person to do is acquire that handkerchief. He's taking it from my hand. With that handkerchief, he's automatically also acquiring the object of value that's far away, that cow that's in Long Branch. And he's also paying me on the side. So he can acquire something else, Agav, along the Kinyan Sudar, with the handkerchief that he's acquiring from me, both at once.
We'll now talk about how somebody acquires objects from the Beit HaMikdash (Temple). The Beit HaMikdash is not a regular person, and therefore they can acquire things in a way that a regular person cannot. The Reshut HaGavoah BeKesef, the treasury of the Beit HaMikdash, could acquire movable objects by paying for it, unlike people, unlike us. We can't. Ordinary people can't pay for something to acquire it. The Beit HaMikdash can even pay for something and acquire it. The moment that the Beit HaMikdash pays for something, it becomes their property, and you don't have to do another form of a Kinyan. An ordinary person can only acquire a movable object by Chazakah, by taking hold of it, by doing a Kinyan with the item itself, as we spoke about: picking it up, handing it off, or Meshicha (pulling) it. These are all different forms of Kinyanim that a person, an individual, can use to acquire an item. In addition to that, if somebody makes a statement to give something to the Beit HaMikdash, it's as if he's handing something over to an ordinary person. Like when we do Mesira (handing over) something to an ordinary person, that's an actual Kinyan. When it comes to the Beit HaMikdash, as long as it is said that something is going to be handed to the Beit HaMikdash, it automatically becomes property of the Beit HaMikdash.