Notes on Tekheleth

I recently listened to a lecture by Rabbi Reisman, available here and on YUTorah.org, and Rabbi Lebowitz’s response. I believe that Rabbi Lebowitz did a good job, but I would add:

1. I believe Rabbi Reisman is mistaken with regard to the meaning of the Talmudic Passage from M’nahoth 42b, which discusses testing, not tasting, the tekheleth dye once it is prepared. The confusion lies in the fact that in Mishnaic Hebrew, the verb t’ima is used, and it normally means a taste. As can be seen from Maimonides’ formulation in the second chapter of the laws of Tzitzith, it means to test the brew by dipping white wool strings into it. In this case, tasting is merely a borrowed term. (As a humorous aside, perhaps this has to do with phenomenon that in certain dialects of Hebrew, no distinction is made between the long A sound and the short E sound. ְטֵסְט and טֶסְט would therefore be homophones.)

2. I would refine Rabbi Lebowitz’s answer: Indeed, the Torah commanded us to use genuine tekheleth, and up until Mishnaic times, indigo, which is named for India, was not at all common in the land of Israel or Babylonia. Thus, even if the upper-classes may have already started to use indigo as the source for their coveted blue wool dye, real, snail tekheleth remained in demand, at least among Jews, because that is what the Torah demanded of them. Further, even among gentiles, real tekheleth was still a mark of status because, as Rabbi Herzog first pointed out, it was the cousin of the argaman, the expensive Tyrian purple, which also came from the murex and which could not be imitated by a vegetable dye.

3. As for catching the murex snails with nets, it is true that a man could easily pick up a single snail from the sea bed in shallow waters with a minimum of effort and with his bare hands, and he of course would have no need for professionally tied nets. However, for those who worked in the dying business and needed to obtain large quantities of snails, nets were used to sweep large areas of the sea in deeper waters so that they could obtain large quantities of snails.

4. Both Rabbanim were unaware of the fact that although in Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew the Mediterranean Sea is called hayam hagadol, lit. the Great Sea, or just the yam, the Sea, and the Kinneret is called yam kinneret or yam ginossar, etc., and the Dead Sea is called yam hamelah, literally the Salt Sea, or yam s’dom, the Sea of Sodom, as Rabbi Kappah has pointed out many times, in Maimonides’s writings, in both Hebrew and Arabic, the seas and oceans, including the Mediterranean, are called yam hamelah, lit. the salt sea, because their waters are salty compared to those of freshwaters seas, such as the Kinneret, while the Dead Sea is referred to as yam il-mayath (in Arabic) or yam hamaweth, the Dead Sea, which is the source for the common English name. Thus, when Maimonides says that the snail of the tekheleth is found in yam hamelah, he means that it is found in the Mediterranean, and not in freshwaters such as the Kinneret, and certainly not in saline bodies such as the Dead Sea, which have no marine animals.

5. Concerning the idea that in some circles, tekheleth has become a cultural symbol, comparable to the black hats in certain communities, that “it has taken on a meaning of its own; it identifies the wearer with a certain toirehdickeh velt,” there is indeed a certain advantage in being part of a culture of keeping the commandments. As Maimonides writes, a man tends to behave like those around him, whether in mode of dress, speech, or mannerisms, and perhaps some are (or were back in 2011) wearing the new tekheleth because of some societal norm, just like many wore and wear their Borsalinos. Ashreihem. Fortunate are they who live in societies in which the social pressures keep them away from sinning and encourages them to keep the commandments. Woe unto those who live in societies that actively discourage them from leaving the flesh pots of the diaspora, where they can not fulfill many of God’s commandments and where they are despised by their enemies, and their leaders influence them to expend their efforts and thoughts that should be dedicated to observance of the commandments, the iqqar, on non-commandments, the tafel, like kapparois and black hats. If only every mitzwa was as ubiquitous…