“Besides for the fact that it’s clear from the gemara that there’s no problem of having kala ilan as the white strings in terms of the validity of the tzitzis.”

Sorry I meant “as the Techeiles strings”.

“Again, machlokes. You have an interesting habit of dismissing dissenting opinions. You don’t quote any poskim who have svaras/bekius against some of what you’re claiming from other sources.”

Thereare no dissenting opinions, hence I don’t quote them.

If you want to be choshesh for rishonim that we don’t pasken like, be choshesh for the Baal Hamaor that Techeiles is meakev the lavan.

Everyone on my list would also by definition be against the nignaz argument, except perhaps the Yeshuos Malko.

And Lichora the argument could be made that R’ Chaim also holds that mesorah is not an issue because he had to get involved in nignaz.

For those of you who don’t accept rayos from rishonim because they often mean the opposite of what they say, let’s take a look at the gedolim in the late 1800’s when the Radzyner Rebbe first propagated his Techeiles.

RADZYNER REBBE – clearly held mesorah is not an issue

BEIS HALEVI – neither of the two sides of the machlokes about his opinion about mesorah have anything to do with the issue of mesorah that you raise.

R’ YITZCHOK ELCHONON SPECTOR – Agreed b’etzem to techeiles but didn’t wear it himself because he felt it would hurt a matter of pikuach nefesh that was involved in. Obviously he held mesorah is not an issue.

YESHUOS MALKO – Said he doesn’t want to go through the inyan because he didn’t want to come out that you have to wear Techeiles for political reasons. Obviously he didn’t hold that mesorah is an issue.

R’ AKIVA YOSEF SHLESSINGER – Said that R’ Yehoshua Leib Diskin and R’ Shmuel Salant agreed to him on the chiyuv of Techeiles but the Rabbis in vilna told R’ Yehoshua Leib Diskin to stop getting involved in the topic. Obviously they held that Mesorah is not an issue.

R’ YEHOSHUA LEIB DISKIN – see above

R’ SHMUEL SALANT – see above

MAHARSHAM – Wore the Radzyner’s techeiles. Obviously he held that mesorah is not an issue.

R’ ITZELE PONOVIZHER – wore the Radzyner’s techeiles. Obviously he held that mesorah is not an issue.

We have at least nine gedolei hora’a from the late 1800’s that clearly held that mesorah is not an issue.

“TU731: So if this “Mesorah” of yours doesn’t care about what the Rishonim and Achronim say, what does it care about, exactly?”

If I understood correctly, he is claiming that the status quo is the be all end all of Judaism and nothing can change it.

“According to your own twisted reading of them. However, that doesn’t qualify as even marginally relevant.”

Ok, so now the clear pashtus of what they are saying is my own twisted reading and is not even marginally relevant, yet you do not have any other way to read them.

“Usually when people spend 12 pages trying to convince everyone of something that doesn’t relate to them there is a reason.”

No one is trying to convince anyone of something that doesn’t relate to them. This is an open forum for the discussion about the mitzva of Techeiles and the reasons pro and con. Everyone is free to draw there own conclusions or to draw no conclusions at all if they so desire.

“This is nonsensical and irrelevant. You for some reason seem incapable of making what is a fairly straightforward distinction between the initial starting point from which mesora is justified to once it already is there, when the default is that the starting point is that mesora is legitimate until PROVEN otherwise. Claiming that the default is still what “the Torah says” verbatim is intellectually dishonest.”

As you miss the point yet again. We are gufa saying that there is no starting point of the mesorah because there is no such idea in Judaism as blindly keeping the status quo. That is what you have not proven and that is why you are on offense to prove it.

Again no one is chas v’shalom trying to tell you to not follow your rosh yeshiva. We are just presenting the evidence to the uneducated masses of the coffee room to allow them to make an educated decision.

“If someone wears techeiles and their rebbe does not, would you eat in their house?”

I wouldn’t eat in the Rebbe’s house. Just kidding.

What I’m saying is that if your rebbe knows every detail of the subject of techeiles and knows all the metzius then it makes sense to rely on him. If not…

“Two things:

1- You are making up that techeiles not being stopped by choice invalidates a Mesora saying to maintain the practice!!!!!!!

2- You are yet again substituting ignorance for understanding in thinking that you know “the” Mesora / its applicability on this. (This particular point happens to be a machlokes.) Your arbitrary assumptions are without merit in practical application.”

You are being a politician and avoiding my question. How is it that by tzitzis out we can go against the mesorah but by techeiles we can’t. Whether or not in the final analysis it is a halachically binding svara, there is definitely more of a svara to change by techeiles than by tzitzis out.

“Now, on this premise, if there is a shitta advanced by legitimate people that disagrees, or seems to disagree, with rishonim, it is not arbitrary dismissal of rishonim for me to say that in this instance that may be pshat.”

Well we don’t know if it’s a legitimate shitta because you refuse to tell us who it is. We also have no reason to assume that this shitta saw the rishonim and acharonim. So it very well might be a dismissal of rishonim.

“I never claimed you are. The only point I took issue with was your systematic, definitive rejection of R’ Chaim as a valid shitta. Being a valid shitta does not in any way dictate that you follow it.”

I never rejected R’ Chaim as a shitta. I am just pointing out that he is going against very many rishonim and acharonim and therefore we should not follow him.

Now to get to the point. There are definitely people who hold that there is no problem of Mesorah. You quote one unnamed person who is against all the Rishonim, Acharonim, and poskim who do not think mesorah is an issue. So at best it’s a machlokes whether mesorah is an issue. So now we have to figure out which side of the machlokes is on defense. You can’t use the shitta that is being debated to show who is on defense. You have to backtrack to the last point that is agreed upon. Which is that the Torah commands us to wear Techeiles. Hence we are on defense and you are on offense.

“And I don’t have to name anyone in particular, because they’re easy enough to find, and they probably don’t want to be quoted (at least the one I’m thinking of in particular).”

You say that THEY are easy enough to find. Then you say that THEY probably don’t want to be quoted which would probably make THEM not easy to find. Then you admit that there is ONE who you are thinking of, implying that you only know of one Rosh Yeshiva who says this. Which is interesting because you definitely made it sound as “THE GEDOLIM” hold that it’s against mesorah when in reality you have one rosh yeshiva who you can’t even name and with whom you never actually discussed the reasons.

Now let’s address the “nignaz” argument. What does the midrash mean when it says that Techeiles is nignaz? Let’s go through the possibilities:

1) The Chilazon is not around anymore (i.e. the species became extinct or is hidden somewhere beyond the reach of human beings or it lost its dyeing capabilities). (For argument’s sake we will ignore what the Radvaz and the Maharil etc. have said about this.) First off, the midrash doesn’t say that the chilazon was nignaz, it says that Techeiles was nignaz. But let’s say you go for the docheik reading. If you hold that the chilazon was nignaz then you hold that the murex trunculus was definitely not the creature used for Techeiles in Talmudic times. This is a very problematic position. The Gemara in Eruvin(96b) says that if you find techeiles in the shuk, if it’s spun/woven like tzitzis are then it’s kosher because we assume it was lishma because someone wouldn’t bother to do all that unless he was making tzitzis. (There is no concern of kala ilan because the gemara is talking about where you do the chemical test.) Now if the Murex trunculus was not the chilazon, why is the techeiles kosher? We should be worried that it came from a murex trunculus and not a real chilazon. Furthermore, the gemara in menachos(43a) in a discussion about the chemical tests relates that they did both tests and the results were in stira. R’ Achai asked incredulously “This is not techeiles or kala ilan?!” thus indicating that the only sources of the blue dye in those days were the chilazon and kala ilan. Yet everyone knows that the murex dyeing industry was booming. So it would seem that the murex trunculus had to have been the chilazon, in which case the chilazon is clearly still around.

2) Maybe the midrash means that the mitzva of techeiles is batel. This would be very docheik because no reason is given for why it would be batel and we never find a mitzva suddenly becoming batel. Furthermore, the midrash shouldn’t have said “techeiles nignaz”, it should have said “techeiles batel”.

3)The alternative is that the midrash means that the knowledge of what the chilazon is/how to dye techeiles was lost or hidden. Now if we have proven that the murex trunculus is the chilazon and we are able to dye with it tghen we have obviously rediscovered whatever it was that was lost/hidden.

“Personally, I don’t wear techeiles, but for no other reason than most of our gedolim don’t.”

The Radzyner Rebbe wrote (some 120 years ago) something to the effect of saying that the mases don’t wear Techeiles because the gedolim don’t wear Techeiles and the gedolim don’t wear Techeiles because the masses don’t wear Techeiles. Interesting phenomenon if it’s true.

“If your mesora says “don’t change”, for whatever reason, than you don’t, plain and simple. SDL has no place in that equation.”

Still no source that mesorah says “don’t change”.

“The R”Y’s who follow the mesoras have to be able to answer it though. So ask them.”

This makes it seem as though you have never asked them yourself. So how pray tell do you know that there are any Roshei Yeshiva who hold this way? And if you did ask them, we are all waiting with bated breath to hear their answer(s).

“What is the therefore of this??”

The therefore is that since the gedolei haposkim held that Techeiles was not nignaz forever, I am not meshubad to R’ chaim.

“My point was that there is no raya from these rishonim that we absolutely can.”

For the second time, I am not bringing a raya that we absolutely can, I am bringing a raya that the rishonim and acharonim held that mesorah is not a reason to not reinstitute Techeiles.

TorahUmadda: I can’t even begin to fathom how you can think that you are on defense and I am on offense. The Torah says to wear Techeiles. The starting point is that we follow everything written in the Torah. You want to claim that you have a valid reason to not follow this command of the Torah. Therefore you are on offense. Which means that whatever reason you are going to suggest, has to be “proven beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt”. A claim that the mesorah is against Techeiles has to be proven which you have yet to do. I don’t have to prove anything because until you can prove otherwise, the default position is to follow what it says in the Torah. If you want to claim that some mysterious rules of mesorah dictate keeping the status quo, the burden of proof is most definitely on you.