The Brazenness of Priests

18. At first they would bring in the skins of sacrificial animals to the chamber of the parvah [in which skins were salted], and they would divide them in the evening among the entire household [of priests who served in the Temple] that day, and the most powerful of the priests would come and take them by force. [Then] they decreed that [the skins] would be divided on Friday afternoons [before the Sabbath] to each and every group of priests.

19. But the most powerful of the priests would still come and take [the skins] by force. The owners [of the skins] stood and sanctified them to heaven [so that the priests could no longer have them]. They said that it was only a few days until the priests covered the entire Temple entrance area with tablets of gold, one hundred by one hundred, the thickness of a golden dinar. They covered [the Temple] up until the pilgrimage festival, and at the pilgrimage festival they folded them over and put them on the steps of the Temple Mount so that the people would see that their work was beautiful and so that nothing would happen to them after the pilgrimage festival. They returned and fixed them back in their places. [ . . . ]

21. Regarding [all these atrocities] and their outcomes and similar events, and regarding those who acted in a similar manner, Abba Saul ben Botnit and Abba Yosi ben Yoḥanan, a man from Jerusalem, would say: Woe to me from the family of Baitos . . . woe to me from the family of Kardom . . . woe to me from the family of Ishmael ben Piavi, who were great priests, and whose children were treasurers, and whose sons-in-law were Temple trustees, whose servants would come and beat us with sticks.

Translated by Matthew Goldstone.