Question: I have noticed that some Jews wear tzitzit, or sometimes a tallit, that has a blue string woven into it, but not everyone does. Why is this?
Jews are commanded in the Torah to tie fringes, called tzitzit (plural: tzitziyot), onto the corners of their garments. Numbers 15:38 tells the Israelites to “make … fringes on the corners of their garments … let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner.”
We see these fringes often in Jewish prayer spaces — they are part of a tallit gadol, or prayer shawl, that many adult Jews wear during prayer. We see them in ordinary spaces too, as some Jews wear an undergarment called a tallit katan in order to practice the mitzvah of tzitzit all the time. But most of the tzitzit we see are white, not blue, even though the commandment specifies that one thread be blue. What’s the story here?
The Tosefta in Menachot (9:6) specifies that the blue dye used — called techeilet in Hebrew — must be the product of a certain snail, called the hilazon. The hilazon was a rare and expensive sea creature, and over time most Jews lost access to it. White tzitzit — that is, the natural color of wool — became the norm.
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The hilazon is now widely understood to be the murex trunculus snail. Archaeological evidence has been found in Israel indicating use of the snail going back thousands of years. Some Jews have thus begun again to use this rare and expensive dye for threads of their tzitzit.
So why do only a minority of people use the dye of the hilazon in tzitzit today? There are two concerns at play. One is doubt about whether the murex trunculus really is the hilazon — doubt that derives from having lost the thread of that tradition.
The second is whether the embrace of blue tzitzit might actually express a subtle rejection of centuries of white tzitzit. If white tzitzit were good enough for our ancestors for more than 1,000 years, who are we to innovate? This might seem a bit narrow-minded, but there are some important values involved. For one thing, do we want to subtly impugn the practice of our ancestors? Second, traditions should not be too quickly discarded, even if we think they are no longer suitable. There might be a value in preserving the white tzitzit.
For some, these arguments, though meaningful, are not persuasive. The Torah commands a dye of techeilet, we have such dye — why not use it? Right now, we see Jews living between these two positions. What will the future bring?
Rabbi Eric Woodward is the rabbi of Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel in New Haven, Connecticut.
