“This is beyond absurd. Mesorah, by it’s very nature, can change the default muchzak. Mesorah says that this safek was already addressed by earlier people. Therefore, legabay us, it is not considered an ongoing halachic safek (unless a safek arises within what the Mesorah itself is saying). Also, Mesora can function as a birur. Also in which case the safek is removed.”

You may have completely missed my point. You are claiming that the Mesorah makes it not a safek. But the safek that I am talking about is gufa whether mesorah discusses this issue. If you can’t prove that it does then there is a safek that it might not in which case we would have to wear Techeiles. So as I said, until you can prove that the mesorah is against Techeiles, safek d’oraisa l’chumra prevails.

“Even if yes, it is a valid argument that he wrote it almost 1000 years ago, and there are plenty of differences betw. now and then.”

What are some of the plenty of differences that would result in a change of shitta?

“Not true. What I’m saying is only on the tzad that techeiles is legitimately being suppressed. If Rabbeinu Yonah held, in his day and age, that it was improper, fine. But that is no raya to us bizman hazeh.”

To make such a claim you would have to explain what changed from then to bizman hazeh.

” And the comparison to Shabbos and the Holocaust is beyond absurd. To point out a few of the glaring canyons separating them from techeiles: 1- chiyuv misah; 2- an issur which 2b- has an attendant action vs a non-issur that is passive in nature; 3- a few years of “mitzva loss” vs hundreds; 4- the nature of the conditions that caused the “loss”. etc, etc, etc, etc.”

If I wanted to be like you I could just say that you are arbitrarily making up distinctions that may be irrelevant. But I won’t. Now I could just as easily replace the example of shabbos with esrog about which your first two objections would not be true. Your fourth objection is stam not true because it was the same conditions – persecution of the Jews – that led to both. Your third objection only has weight if you can show that hundreds of years of not doing something is mevatel it, which you have already agreed that you cannot show.

“Just because they wrote about techeiles being reinstituted does not mean that we nowadays have a basis anymore to do so.”

I never claimed that this gives us the right to reinstitute anything. All I am proving from here is that they obviously felt that we could have Techeiles despite all your claims about mesorah. It’s not like you just discovered the concept of mesorah and when the rishonim and acharonim wrote about this there was no such issue.

In summary:

Let’s say we grant that it’s possible that “The Mesorah” is against Techeiles and it’s possible that “The Mesorah” is not against Techeiles. Now we have a shaila about wearing Techeiles. The rule of safek d’oraisa l’chumra posits that the burden of proof is on you to PROVE that we should not do the mitzva. We do not have to PROVE that we should do the mitzva because by a mitzva d’oraisa the default position is if we can’t prove either way then you have to do the mitzva. Therefore, the burden of proof is on you to prove that “The Mesorah” is against Techeiles. Until then, safek d’oraisa l’chumra prevails.

“Perhaps one can add one who says ‘I will invent my own methodology of understanding Torah concepts and textual statements’.”

If you would research this topic you will find that I can take very little credit for inventing anything about Techeiles. Basically anything you can say for either side has been said already.

“You are arbitrarily making up this distinction between intended discontinuation and passive discontinuation. Who said that is even a relevant criterion??”

If you can’t understand the difference between something that was leachatchila b’shita done and something that we was done unwillingly and for no other reason than that it was impossible to do otherwise, then as they say “you can bring the horse to the water but you can’t make it drink”.

All the vitriolic diatribe notwithstanding, you failed to address my simple point. I ask you again to provide a source anywhere in kol hatorah kula (I know that’s exceedingly redundant) that you need a mesorah to allow you to do a mitzva, or that if people were unable to do a mitzva for a period of time then it becomes batel mevutal leolam va’ed.

Again it is clear from the gedolei rishonim and acharonim that a mesorah is not necessary – they talk about Techeiles coming back. That also means that they held that “nignaz” does not mean hidden away forever. In fact the Eitz Yosef on the Midrash says that “nignaz” means forgotten, based on Rashi in Pesachim.

Also if you read R’ Elyashiv’s teshuva and R’ Shternbuch’s teshuva, although they come out against techeiles, there is no mention of mesorah.

And how can you say that once a mitzva is discontinued it is a deviation to reinstitute it? That might hold true if the mitzva was specifically discontinued (e.g. the chachamim were gozer not to blow shofar on shabbos so we cannot reinstitute it). But that is not the case by Techeiles. There was never a gezeira to not wear Techeiles. What happened was that people were unable to wear it hence they didn’t wear it. Let’s say the government would prohibit importing esrogim and no one was able to get an esrog. Would you say that we can no longer fulfill the mitzva of esrog because it’s not part of the Mesorah?

Sam2: It’s a machlokes what the bais halevi said. The Radzyner Rebbe printed in his sefer the response that he received from the bais halevi’s camp, which said that if the suggested chilazon has always been around and it was known how to dye (blue) with it and our ancestors didn’t use it then that is as if we have a mesora that this creature is not the chilazon. That is a far cry from saying that we need a mesorah to identify the chilazon. However, The Rav claimed that the Bais Halevi actually held that you need a mesorah to identify the chilazon. Now first of all, even within the Brisker dynasty this is not quite agreed upon. Second of all, R’ Elyashiv said that the Radzyner’s version seems to be the right version based on how the halachic system works. Even The Rav’s Talmid R’ Hershel Shachter disagreed with him on this. So for all you guys who on every other topic consider the Rav to be an apikores but suddenly by Techeiles want to follow his shitta, just bear in mind that this shitta has nothing to do with Techeiles. The Rav held that you need a mesorah to identify anything. This was already spoken about at length in one of the other techeiles threads in regards to rice ayain sham.

Funny that you should say that the charedim made it up when the vast majority of chareidim are against it. And R’ Slifkin himself wrote that he thinks the Murex Trunculus is the chilazon but he doesn’t wear Techeiles for a reason which he wrote will be forthcoming in a future post.

The Tifferes Yaakov says befairush that there’s only one string of Techeiles. His pshat therefore is that it’s awesome that you can have such a manifestation on a mere string. And granted that if you held two or four strings you could say the same pshat, but the Gemara doesn’t say “strings” and the Tifferes Yaakov doesn’t prove that it’s lav davka.

The problem with this pshat is that bringing in Asavim and Ilanos to clarify that you meant blue is like shooting yourself in the foot. It should have just said yam domeh l’rakia (which in fact it does in the Talmud Bavli). Asavim and Ilanos only add to the confusion.

The Mizrachi quotes the Gemara as “????? ?? ????” and “?????? ?? ??????”.

The mefarshim discuss an apparent contradiction: Here we see that the mitzva was due to Avraham’s zechus but in the end of parshas Noach we see that it was due to Shem’s zechus. The mefarshim all give different answers but all explaining some kind of combintion of Avraham’s zechus and Shem’s zechus. Utilizing this concept, this could be viewed as each of them contributing to half of the mitzva. Thus it would be accurate to refer to Avraham’s share as “??? ?? ????” even according to Rashi/Tosfos because that’s Avraham’s half.

The sefer Daf al Daf brings this up and says that it’s lav davka and that even according to the Rambam and the Raavad you have to say it’s lav davka because according to the Rambam there are four techeiles strings alltogether and according to the Raavad there are eight alltogether. But he does conclude that it’s mashma more like the Rambam/Raavad. And for some reason he has Tosfos as agreeing with the Raavad instead of with Rashi.

How do Rashi/one pshat of the Ritva/the Kli Yakar (and anyone else who says the Domehs are progressive) fit into the gemara minay ubay? R’ Meir’s statement is that Techeiles is unique among all colors in that it ultimately reminds you if G-d’s glory. But according to the aforementioned mefarshim there are three colors that are better than Techeiles in this regard – the color of the yam, the color of the rakia, and the color of the kisey hakavod.

I wouldn’t quite consider it choshed bekshairim since I definitely gave off the impression that I don’t wear Techeiles. But I’ll take the bracha anyway. I wear four per corner. Which is quite annoying because they only sell Rambam and Raavad so I had to buy two Raavad.

I saw that they found some synogogue from the Tannaic era (when there was no safek as to what color Techeiles is) in which there were drawings on the wall and one of them depicted the kohen (gadol), and the Bigdei Kehuna that contain Techeiles were blue.

I agree that I have no answer to what the Chachmei Umos Haolam. (To quote a very respected poster on this thread: “( and generally speaking [without sparking a huge hashkafa debate] we only listen to these chachmei umos haolam as long as they are not being soiser chachmei yisrael like the radvaz)”)

By the way, I think that you once posted a link to a biography of the Chazon Ish about using Techeiles if there’s a safek. Do you remember where that was?

And it’s pretty clear that “leeks” is referring to green (besides for the fact that leeks are green) because the reason Rabbeinu Yona doesn’t like that pshat in Karti is that Techeiles is blue which would not be similar enough to Karti, and therefore he explains karti as some type of blue.

The Radzyner agrees to me: “??? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ???????

????? ????? ???? ???? ??? ???? ???? ????”

In other words, if you hold that “yam” means blue and you have to choose between the girsa of “yam domeh l’asavim” and “asavim domeh l’yam”, it only makes sense to choose the latter one. In fact the Radal says that the girsa of “asavim domeh l’yam” should be the girsa in the yerushalmi as well.

Regarding the test, I quote from Dr. Baruch Sterman, the pre-eminent advocate of Murex Trunculus Techeiles: “On the basis of current understanding of the dye chemistry and the standard interpretation of the Talmudic tests, those procedures would not cause any change in cloth dyed with plant based indigo, kala ilan, which was meant to fade under their influence. If one wants to uphold the chemical efficacy of the tests, one would have to posit that there are some yet-to-be-understood reactions that involve, perhaps, the methods by which the ancients dyed. If this is true, then one can take that reasoning further and apply it ti murex dyeing as well. After all, there are significant amounts of many other substances along with indigo in murex-derived dye. Even if those additions are too small to be detected by the eye and change the perceived hue, they may play some little understood chemical role that is picked up via the Talmudic tests.” (The rarest blue endnote 57)

Sam2: Dr. Baruch Sterman says that he performed the Gemara’s test on plant indigo and it did not fade. (Granted, that is a problem but I think that it’s a completely different problem than the problem you are talking about.)