Ticheles Nowadays; Legit or Not?

Hello jO jO,

This the story in short. For more information go to tekhelet.com .

Attempts have been made in the past to find the lost method of extracting the tcheles dye, the main obstacle having been the difficulty in identifying the sea creature (chilazon)that provides the dye. The Rizhnitzer rebbe in the 1800s thought he had found it, but it had three problems. One, it did not match any of the criteria that the gemara mentions as simanim for the creature. Two, many other creatures can produce the same exact dye. Three, the dye itself did not fulfill the criteria of the gemara and so it was clear that there was nothing unique about the rizhnitzer dye other than that it was a pretty color of blue. Tcheiles it was not.

Rav Yakov Herzog zt”l, Chief Rabbi of Israel after Rav Kook, a true Torah genius, had written his doctorate as a young man on this subject, and was convinced he had found the true chilazon . The process of the extraction of the dye produced ALL of the necessary properties of true tcheiles as stated in the gemara, except for one. The problem? Tcheiles is supposed to be blueish, and no matter how hard he tried, the color that he found was….purple. Rav Herzog eventually became discouraged and gave up on his attempts. He died still wondering where he had gone wrong.

By chance, a relatively short time ago, someone was playing with the process of Rav Herzog, and sure enough, came up with the same purple color. However, without serious thought he left the bottle with the purplish wool on the windowsill, and when he came back the next day, lo and behold, the color was sky blue (domeh larakia). He had accidentally discovered the missing link. At a specific stage in the process, the dye had to be exposed to sunlight, which within minutes turned it from purple to blue. Rav Herzog did all his experiments inside a laboratory and so the wool was never exposed to sunlight at the right moment and hence remained a fast purple.

I must mention that this tcheiles fulfills every single nuance that the gemara describes, including the indistinguishability from kala Ilan, a plant source dye which the gemara says looks identical. Chemical analysis shows that the two are indeed chemically identical.

The tcheiles institute conducts tcheiles making workshops in the western galil, I participated in one, it was fun and it works. Obviously for tztitzis purposes the the process must be strictly controlled, we are not dealing with finger painting after all. This is a mitzvah mede’oraiso.

One more point. Whether bizman hazeh one should wear tcheiles is a separate issue and has many sides to it. Many rabbonim claim that since the mesorah was lost, we cannot reinstitute it. This is not a simple issue and is beyond the scope of a site such as this. But it is beautifully clear that the original tcheiles has indeed been identified.

Mayan – by any chance, would you say that they are all YU people? And does the worst case scenario (wearing a blue string that is not tcheiles) not make the tzitzis posul?

Squeak, some of them are YU people, but what’s the difference? I know people who learned in a Monsey Yeshiva, and got the okay from Rabbi Senter (chof-k) and Rabbi Rudinsky. I know people who live in Boro Park, Flatbush and Monsey who you’d consider “Yeshivish” (some are Chasidish) who wear techayles.

Having blue colored tzitzis does not make it posul. Please learn the halachos before going any further, as it is evident you don’t know enough to talk about the matter. I spent months just learning about tzitzis (not even about techayles) with a prominent Rav from Flatbush, who now has a Yeshiva in Lakewood.

I think this is one of the more interesting topics on this site. I have always been fascinated by techeiles, and my Rov brought back some from Eretz Yisroel, which he personally researched and was absolutely convinced is authentic. It is exciting to me whenever something of ancient Judaism is brought into our modern day world, especially since it is a mitzvah d’Oreisa to put techeiles on the Tzitzis. It truly connects us with our ancestors. I hope that the dye that is being called techeiles now, is in fact the real McCoy. What I have seen is more of a teal/aqua/skyblue combination, and I am wondering if each one of us perceives the shade of blue differently. In any case, I have felt uplifted by what I have seen, and find it very beautiful. And I don’t even get to wear it!

I think it should also be noted that all the zilbermans in the yeshiva in the old city, plus r’ zalman nechemia goldberg (son in law of r’shlomo zalman) also wear this tcheiles.

Also, from that which i’ve heard the problem with the rizhiner is that the color doesn’t come from the squid, rather from the other chemicals put in the mixture.

mayan_dvash:

about rabbi rudinsky’s psak regarding the techeiles, here it is first hand:

it is kosher, but not mandatory. the issur of techeiles being of the wrong color is on teh seller, not the wearer. if the wearer thinks he is wearing techeiles, he is fine. the peiople selling this, they have done tremendous amounts of research, and truelly believe they have found it. so that issur is moot. he said that until moshiach comes and tells us for certain that this is the techeiles, their is no mandatory obligation to wear it. there are people in his shul that wear it, but few. in his yeshiva there are also a few, but not wveryone. as far as rabbi ari senter’s psak, it may be based on his rebbe’s – rabbi rudinsky- psak, which he was there for shabbos afternoons about 10 years ago, when this techeiles was found. for more shiurim from rabbi rudinsky, for those that have no clue who he is, and the vast amount of knowledge he posseses, they can be downloade3d and heard at ohrreuven.com. his sefer mishkan bezalel is also available there. he was on of the talmidei muvhak of reb yaakov kaminetzky, and learned bechavrusa with him from the age of 5-6 till reb yaakov’s petira.

BTW, one very strong rayah the pro-techeiles camp has is that the fact that the gemara goes to great lengths to teach us how to differentiate between the plant dye and the real techeiles, but never warns us of another fraudulent animal dye means that there is no other such animal. Otherwise, why did the gemara not give simanim as to how to differentiate the two animal dyes, the fraudulent and the real techeiles, just as it gave simanim on how to differentiate the plant and animal dyes? The pro-techeiles camp therefore says that we must have the real thing, since there is only one possible animal that produces a blue dye.

At any rate, because of the kashyas listed in my previous post by the anti-techeiles group, Rav Perr is opposed to the use of the current mollusk dye because he feels it will then take on the status of a mesorah, when it is still a safek, and in the future, people may come to rely on the mesorah, although it hasn’t be proven 100%.

I highly recommed getting a copy of the OU sourcebook. The topic is fascinating.

I forgot who was the who said this however some shu”t sefer wrote that our “lack of mesora” comes from the fact that we moved away from the middle east area to europe but in the area around e”y there still is tcheiles

Pashuteh Yid: no problem, just wanted to make sure. i have met the people behind it, and they are emes. whether or not your rov agrees, is fine, just letting it be known that there are two tzedadim. and btw, half in not more of the people on here think the ou is trief, so saying to read that here is technically useless.

The OU sourcebook shows that the murex trunculus techeles are NOT clearly the right ones. Too many kashyes:

1. The dye is chemically indistinguishable from kala ilan (indigo). Yet, the gemara says there was a test to distinguish techeiles from indigo.

2. The murex trunculus shells are not the color of the sea.

3. Murex trunculus doe not come up every 70 years.

There were a slew of other kashyas which I don’t remember offhand. But the bottom line is, it’s not a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination. Tishbi yetareitz.