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Tekhelet Baruch Sterman “There is an obligation upon all who are
capable, to search for [tekhelet], to merit (Rabbi G. E.
Leiner, the Radzyner Rebbe) The Bible in
the book of Numbers relates God’s charge to Moses: Speak
to the children of This passage,
part of the kriyat shema prayer complex, is recited twice daily by
observant Jews who till this day can be seen with fringes - tsitsit -
dangling from their prayer shawls. The eleventh century Biblical commentator,
Rashi, explains how looking at the
fringes reminds one of all God’s commandments. The word tsitsit -
fringes - is numerically equivalent to 600. Tsitsit are traditionally
tied with eight strings and five knots for a total of 613 - the number of
commandments in the Torah.[2]
Linguistically, however, the subject of the sentence - that which is to
remind us of God’s commandments - is not the tsitsit, but rather the
thread of blue, the tekhelet. The secrets of
the tekhelet color, its source and method of manufacture have been lost
for over 1300 years. As a result, many of the laws pertaining to its use have
been deemed “academic”[3],
and their study was, to a certain extent,
neglected as compared with the more prosaic statutes. What is the
significance of the blue thread and why has this commandment fallen into
disuse? Over the past
few years, there has been an increasing awareness and renewed discussion
regarding the Biblical dye tekhelet. In this article, I would like to
survey the history of the search for tekhelet and describe the recent
advances in our understanding of the topic in light of archeological,
chemical, and biological findings. Tekhelet in the ancient world
One of the
earliest recorded mentions of tekhelet is in the Tell-el-Amarna
Tablets (1500-1300 BCE). subâtu sâ takílti - a garment of tekhelet -
is listed as one of the precious articles sent to From the start,
the colored garments were greatly revered, as can be attested to by a Minoan
priestess figurine dated 1600 BCE which has what appear to be dark blue
decorations on her attire.5 The dyes were rare and
valuable, and wool colored with them was worth up to 20 times its weight in
gold.[9]
These precious dyes were reserved for royalty; they colored the robes of the
kings and princes of Media, Moreover, the
ancient scholars write about these dyes in great detail. Pliny[11]
and Aristotle[12]
describe the snails, how and where to find them, and the procedure for dyeing
with them. Vitruvius mentions that there is a connection between the varied
colors (purple through blue) obtainable from the snails and differing degrees
of sunlight to which they are exposed. “For it does not yield the same color
everywhere, but is modified naturally by the course of the sun... As we
proceed between the north and west it becomes a leaden blue.”[13]
Scholars have positively identified these shells (purpurae and bucinae
in Pliny’s terminology) with the mollusks Murex trunculus, Murex
brandaris, and Thais Haemastoma. By the time of
the Exodus from Tekhelet was worn by
nobility and priests throughout the ancient world. It is found in those
contexts within the Bible as well; it adorns the Tabernacle and comprises the
special clothes of the high priest. On this basis Professor Jacob Milgrom has
suggested an explanation of the significance of the blue thread on the Jew’s
garments. ...
Tzitzit
is the epitome of the democratic thrust within Judaism which equalizes not by
leveling but by elevating: all of Talmudic descriptions of tekhelet and
the hillazon
Aside from the
secular references, Jewish sources have maintained a tradition as to the
nature of tekhelet, and its marine source, the hillazon. Though
there is some confusion as to the precise hue of the dye,[17]
one authority’s charming, if not totally convincing proof deserves mention:
“the simple tradition in all of The Talmud
relates that due to the extreme scarcity of tekhelet, avaricious
individuals introduced a counterfeit dye, kala ilan, obtained from a
much cheaper vegetable source. This fraudulent counterpart provides
the most direct demonstration of tekhelet’s color. The Talmud states
that it was absolutely impossible to outwardly distinguish between true tekhelet
and kala ilan,[22]
- consistently identified as indigo[23]
- which is the color of a clear sky. Perhaps the
most important characteristic of the tekhelet dye was that it was
steadfast in color. Maimonides writes that “its dyeing is well known for its
steadfast beauty and does not change.”[24]
Jewish sources
have also described the source of the tekhelet - the marine organism
called the hillazon. One must be careful not “[to huddle up] all
references to the hillazon as applying exclusively to the tekhelet-hillazon.”[25]
Indeed, hillazon in modern Hebrew is used to describe all kinds of
snails, both land and sea species. This having been noted, a portrait of the hillazon
can, nonetheless, be surmised. The hillazon
was found along the Northern coast of The suppression and eventual demise of
the Jewish tekhelet industry
Due to the
lucrative nature of purple and blue dyeing, and the status associated with
wearing garments colored with those dyes, control over the dye industry was
always coveted and often a source of tension. It has been suggested that the
war between the Caananite general Sisera, and the Israelites led by Deborah
recorded in Judges 4-5 were over this issue.[33]
During the Roman period the contention reached its climax as the dye industry
slowly came under imperial control. Caesar and Augustus restricted the use of
the dyes to governing classes.[34]
Nero (d. 68 CE) issued a decree that gave the emperor exclusive right to wear
purple or blue garments.[35]
Under Constantius (337-362) the restrictions were slackly enforced.[36]
In 383, an edict by Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius deemed the
manufacture of higher quality purple and blue a state monopoly[37]. Hints of the
political complications associated with tekhelet are echoed within the
Talmud and Medrashim. It seems clear that In the
beginning of the sixth century, tekhelet was still being brought from The search for the ancient dye by
secular scholars
Guillaum
Rondelet (d. 1566) was the first to identify Pliny’s purpura with the
species Murex brandaris,[44]
and Fabius Columna in 1616 further suggests Murex trunculus as having
been utilized in the ancient dyeing process.[45]
In 1685, William Cole noted that a colorless fluid in the hypobranchial gland
of marine mollusks (Purpura lapillus) found off the coast of The search for tekhelet by Jewish
scholars
During the
mid-19th century, the issue of tekhelet began to surface among Jewish
writers. (It should be noted that the secular research on this topic was as
yet unknown to the rabbinic community.) Along with the renewed
Messianic interest and questions regarding the rebuilding of the The new
tekhelet was not widely accepted by the general rabbinic world. The Radzyner
wrote two more books, P’til Tekhelet and Eyn Hatekhelet, to explain his ideas and to counter
opposition from other rabbis. These books still stand as the definitive works
on the subject, and form the legalistic foundation for any discussion
on the topic. In 1913, Rabbi
Isaac Herzog, then Chief Rabbi of Dublin and later the first Chief Rabbi of
the State of Israel, as part of research towards his doctoral thesis, sent
samples of the Radzyn tekhelet to leading chemists and dye experts in
Germany, France and England for analysis. The results that he received were
surprising. The experts determined that the blue dye of Radzyn was not
organic in nature, but rather was the inorganic dye known as Prussian Blue,
or ferric ferrocyanide. Herzog refused to believe that the Radzyner Rebbe
would have purposely misled his followers and wrote to the dye masters of
Radzyn asking for their process. Upon investigation, the solution to the
riddle became apparent. The Radzyn recipe called for heating the squid ink to
very high temperatures and then for the addition of iron filings. What in
fact happens under these conditions is that the organic molecules break down
and the constituent atoms of carbon and nitrogen recombine with the iron,
yielding Prussian Blue dye. The squid ink is not an essential component for
this reaction; any organic substance could be substituted, since the
structure of the molecule is irrelevant and only the elemental components are
utilized. Herzog could not accept the notion that the Talmudic requirement
for a specific marine source, the hillazon, could be based on such an
indirect and vague relationship. He therefore concluded that the Radzyn tekhelet
could not be considered authentic.[52] (As an
interesting side note of history, during World War II with the destruction of
East European Jewry, the tekhelet factories of Radzyn were ruined and
the process lost. When the survivors of Radzyn made their way to Herzog himself
was unable to come to a definite conclusion regarding the hillazon.
Virtually all of his doctorate deals with the snails from the Murex
family, showing how the consensus among the scientific community is that they
(trunculus in particular) were the source of the tekhelet dye.
“Of the species known to have been used by the Phoenicians in
purple-dyeing, the one which furnishes a dye answering at least to some
extent to the tradition of the tekhelet nuance is none other than the Murex
trunculus.”[53]
Herzog shows conclusively that these mollusks were used in ancient times for
dyeing blue, and he notes the difficulty with the contention that Jewish tekhelet came from some
marine animal different than that used by the entirety of the ancient world,
an organism that was unknown to the ancient scholars, and has left no
archeological evidence. Herzog admits that “it is very unlikely that the tekhelet-hillazon
is not the snail called Murex trunculus, but though unlikely, it
is still possible.”[54] Despite the
overwhelming proof, Rabbi Herzog was unable to categorically identify the hillazon
with the trunculus, for a number of reasons. First, he felt that trunculus
did not fit the Talmud’s description of domeh l’yam - having the
appearance of the sea. In fact,
however, Herzog had seen only specimens cleaned and polished. In that state,
the shells are colored with brown and white bands. Trunculus found in
the ocean, on the other hand, are covered by small organisms whose texture
and color varies from place to place, but the same sea-fouling will be found
on all the rocks and shells in each region. Sometimes the coating has a blue
or green coloring, and this would fit the description as similar to the sea.
Moreover, since the word yam in Biblical and Talmudic Hebrew also
means “sea bed”[55],
perhaps the hillazon is being portrayed as similar to the surrounding
landscape, which is a perfectly fitting representation of the trunculus
in its natural habitat.[56]
Second, trunculus
has no periodic cycle corresponding to seven or seventy years. Herzog admits
that “Science knows nothing of such a septuagenerian ‘appearance’ of any of
the denizens of the sea.”[57] Maimonides does not mention the periodical
appearance of the hillazon, which has led commentators to conclude
that he did not consider this an essential characteristic of the animal.27
Indeed both he[58]
and the Radzyner Rebbe[59]
deal with this particular criterion of the hillazon. They raise the
possibility that the cycle refers to periods of greater or lesser
availability or accessibility, but that the animal itself is always
obtainable. Third, Herzog
was under the impression that the dye obtained from the trunculus was
not a steadfast one. Modern dye experts disagree with this and contend that
both indigo and dibromoindigo do indeed bind tightly to wool and are among
the fastest natural dyes. Though indigo is not known to be a particularly
enduring dye, this is true only of cotton dyed indigo. Both dibromoindigo
(purple) and indigo, however, bind very tightly to wool and will neither rub
out nor fade over time. Prof. Otto Elsner[60],
a leading dye expert, has asserted that these dyes were among the fastest
dyes available to the ancient world. Our own experience has shown that
strings dyed with trunculus blue have maintained their color through
daily wear and periodical washing for more than ten years. The fourth, and
most substantial problem that Herzog had with trunculus, was that the
dye obtained from that snail produced a blue-violet color, and not the
sky-blue hue traditionally associated with tekhelet. This issue was
really the core of the difficulty in identifying the hillazon with the
trunculus. “However”, Herzog writes, “if we unequivocally determine
that the appearance of tekhelet had no violet (purple) component, then
this would be enough to dislodge [disprove] the assertion that [Murex
trunculus is the hillazon].[61]” Herzog proposed
another candidate for the hillazon - the snail Janthina. Though
he had never dyed with that snail, the fact that the shell had a violet color
fit well with the description of being similar to the sea. Modern research,
however, has shown that Janthina could not have been used in any
dyeing industry. It lives in floating colonies and washes up on the shores of
the The science of tekhelet
In the early
1980’s while researching ancient dyeing techniques, Otto Elsner of the
Shenkar College of Fibers in
The chemistry
and bio-chemistry of the dyes can be summarized as follows: Inside the
hypobranchial gland of the snail, only the precursors to the dye exist as a
clear liquid. (The indigo molecule contains a substance called indole, also
found in the intestines of animals, which is a waste product of the proteins
that constitute most of meat. Indole is a poison and does not pass out of the
body directly. In order to remove it, animals unite it with sulfur, and this
harmless combination is excreted through the kidney. Murex snails
incorporate bromine and potassium, in addition to sulfur, to neutralize the
indole and the resultant molecules become the dye precursors[63].)
When the precursors are exposed to air and sunlight in the presence of the
enzyme purpurase which also exists within the gland, they turn into the dye
material. Purpurase quickly decomposes, so in order for this reaction to take
place, the gland must be smashed soon after being taken from the live snail,
(in accordance with the Talmudic passage that the tekhelet is taken
from the hillazon while still alive). In the trunculus, these
reactions result in a mixture of dibromoindigo (purple) and indigo. The dye
must be put into solution (usually accomplished by reducing the dye molecule)
in order for them to bind tightly to wool. In this state, if dibromoindigo is
exposed to ultraviolet light, the bromine bonds will be broken and it will
transform to indigo, turning the trunculus colorant from purplish-blue
to pure blue. (It should be noted that the blue dye obtained from Murex
trunculus is molecularly equivalent to indigo the Talmud’s counterfeit kala
ilan. If trunculus dye may not be used for tekhelet,
then, as Herzog argues, the Talmud would have had to assert that not only is kala
ilan unacceptable, but even tekhelet obtained from some marine
animals - namely the Murex - is also unsuitable for the mitzvah,
since the two dyes (kala ilan and Murex blue) are equivalent[64].)
Tekhelet today
Over the last
few decades, much work has been done to reestablish the tekhelet dying
process. Dr. Irving Ziderman, from the Israel Fiber Institute has published a
number of articles describing the scientific aspects and religious
implications of the Trunculus dye. Rabbi Herzog's doctorate has
finally been published after nearly 80 years, while Rabbi Menakhem Borstein
has published a book surveying the relevant Jewish legal aspects of tekhelet.
Prof. Tzvi Koren from the Shenkar College of Fibers has done rigorous
chemical analysis of the dye from present day snails as compared with samples
from archeological artifacts dating back to 3500 BCE. But until a few years ago, the knowledge
had remained mainly in the laboratory and the library. In 1985, Rabbi
Eliahu Tevger of |
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