For the source text click/tap here: Bechorot 50
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Our daf opens with money, not with mourning. Bekhorot 50a is fixing the value of the five sela'im paid to redeem a firstborn son, and Rabbi Yohanan proposes a practical measure: the worn gold dinars of Hadrian and Trajan. The coins of the emperors who suppressed the Diaspora revolt and the Bar Kokhba rebellion become the standard by which a Jewish father redeems his child. Into this setting the Gemara inserts Rabbi Oshaya's report:
They sought to withdraw from use all the silver and gold in the world because of the silver and gold of Jerusalem, until they found a verse: "And lawless men shall enter it and profane it" (Ezek 7:22).
We explore the scale of the anxiety. The concern is not limited to Jerusalem or to Judaea. Rabbi Oshaya speaks of "all the silver and gold in the world." The plundered Temple has become, in imagination, a contaminant distributed through the whole Roman economy. The holy did not vanish when the building burned. It travelled, and it travelled as money.