So l’shitascha that ???? means blue the Chazon Nachum is a kashya on you because he is saying that the body of the chilazon is blue. Which is not true by the Murex Trunculus.

Although it does seem that that is what the midrash in tehillim is doing.

The citation is the very next words after he says “?? ????? ???? ???? ????? “.

Regarding the Techeiles being nignaz, this was already discussed on page two.

I am not arguing with the Chazon Nachum. In fact Rashi says that techeiles is green. I was merely pointing out that l’shitascha you should wear green techeiles.

Chacham: My point about the girsa was first of all that there are respectable meforshim that don’t change it (which presumably means that they did nit think it was a mistake) and secondly that it’s irrelevant if the girsa was changed because I still brought a raya from the gemara.

If my girsa is right then the Rambam is a kashya on you. If your girsa is right then at best the Rambam is not a kashya on you although the gemara still is.

Eleven lines prior to stating “gufo domeh l’yam” the gemara quotes R’ Meir “Techeiles Domeh L’yam”. Now if the chilazon and techeiles are both domeh l’yam then they should probably be domeh to each other. Regardless of any girsa changes you want to make in the Rambam.

And your point about the list of 900 snails is only relevant oce you have decided that the chilazon is in fact a snail.

I don’t know why the Rosh and the Rif don’t bring down the braisa. It could be that since it is merely a description it doesn’t qualify as “halacha”. But in the absence of any other explanation of what the braisa is doing, we have to assume that it is describing the chilazon, kipshuto. Go look at a picture of a murex trunculus and think how you would describe it to someone. If you are intellectually honest, I don’t think “it looks like a fish” and “it is the color of the sea” would be high up on the list. Yes I know that when it is covered in sea fouling it is indeed the color of the sea. But it is very unlikely that the braisa would describe a creature by some external thing which b’etzem has nothing to do with the creature. And anyway, any creature covered in sea fouling will be that color. So that is tantamount to the braisa saying that if the chilazon was painted yellow then it would be yellow.

Zvei Dinim – A direct quote from Mendel E. Singer Ph.D. regarding the lashon of chilazon: “Petil followers offer some linguistic arguments in attempting to support their position. The word

chilazon is a general term for snail, not only in modern Hebrew but in some other languages as well. Aside from not

pointing specifically to murex trunculus, it is not clear which species chilazon referred to at the time of the Gemara.

It may have been a general term for mollusk. Did it only include gastropods, or could it have included cephalopods

purple or murex). Rabbi Herzog raises this issue and dismisses it rather handily.67 He points out that everywhere

else (including that same chapter) the Septuagint uses iakinthos for techeilet and porphyra for argaman, and shows

how the Hebrew text they must have been given could not have matched our Masoretic tradition, and that the

translation was probably given for argaman, not techeilet. Some have suggested that Raavya (Berachot 9b Siman 25) equates techeilet with porphyrin, the Greek

word for murex, though they do not supply a full explanation of this statement by Raavya and do not mention that in

both Greek and Latin the word for murex and the word for purple are the same. Let us examine the passage in

question. Raavya quotes a Yerushalmi (a part that is no longer extant) explaining the time for reciting the morning

[from the time when one can distinguish] between techeilet and karti, between porphyrin and parufinen,

comparison bein porphyrin bein parufinen is a color distinction that would be as hard to tell apart in the dark as blue

consistent with the hagahot where this color is equated with argaman. Thus, bein porphyrin bein parufinen might

mean to distinguish between the purple border of a robe and the rest of the garment. Petil suggests that this Yerushalmi is equating murex with techeilet. Obviously they cannot mean that

techeilet is the murex, but rather the source of techeilet is the murex. However, this logic would render the

it is difficult to see how a purple coat could be the source of karti. Karti is usually understood to be green, like a leek.69 There is a minority view that karti is not green, but a different color close to techeilet.70 However, even if

you rely on this view, which is based on a citation from Aruch which is no longer extant, to explain a Yerushalmi

as equating murex with techeilet.”

I think the Bikurey Yaakov was using the rov. The biur halacha is the one who tries to extend the rov to allow you to make a bracha.

1)I do not agree that there is no excuse to not wear techeiles. I was merely demonstrating that sbeph’s pshat cannot be correct, because it is against the shulchan aruch/mishna berura, in which case we would not pasken like Reb Chaim, in which case we would not be able to rely on reb chaim to not wear techeiles. However, since respectable poskim bring down this reb chaim as a reason to not where techeiles, it would seem that it is reliable. I was merely using this as a hechrech to say a pshat in which reb chaim fits in with the SA/MB. However afterwards I saw that Rav Shlomo Miller writes that there are rayos against it from ??? ?????? but it is still b’etzem a svara yeshara and you can’t just knock it off easily. I don’t know what to make of that because it does seem very clear from all the afformentioned halachic literature that we don’t pasken like that.

2)My point with the sfek sfeika was that if you take a safek esrog you wouldn’t remain in the same state of chiyuv i.e. you would not have to take a second safek esrog because it would be a sfek sfaika. But you would have to take a vadai esrog so maybe reb chaim considers that as still being in a state of chiyuv. But Lemaaseh I may have to retract the whole sfek sfaika thing anyway because I saw that the radzyner writes that (according to the teshuvos mutzal me’aish, I don’t know if anyone argues) by a mitzvas asei we even say sfek sfaika l’chumra.

3) As to whether or not the murex trunculus is a safek, that would be taluy on the previous four pages of rayas that were mentioned both ways.

4)Can you please explain what tenai you would make.

Maybe you could dochek out of this by saying that even in the case where you only know one sound, the state of chiyuv that you remain in would only obligate you to blow the two other possibilities and lu yetzuyur you knew how to you would vadai be yotzei.

But even if you say that, you still have the problem that in various cases of safek kosher tefillin the halacha is that you wear them.

According to sbeph this reb chaim is actually in stira to all those cases by tefillin.

Furthermore, everyone agrees (you can check on any pro techeiles website) that the murex trunculus and plant indigo produce the same dye. It is molecularly the exact same thing. The only differnence is how the dye is harvested. When both are harvested the same way (vat dyeing or something like that) they are equally fast and adherent. Accordingly, no test will be able to tell them apart. The techeiles people perform the test after using a different process for the plant indigo and that is why it is not as strong. They base this on the claim that in the ancient times they probably did not use vat dyeing for plrant indigo.

1)The Murex Trunculus is not rare and hard to aqcuire; it is expensive simply because of the minute amount of dye contained within each one. Thus it does fit into Rashi’s pshat.

2)Tosafos says that the chilazon flops on the ground hastening it’s death. I don’t know of any snail that does this.

3)The Gemara warned against kala ilan. Kala Ilan has the same chemical formula as the Murex Trunculus dye. It is plausible that the Murex Trunculus dye is included in the warning against kala ilan, considering that both dyes are the same thing just one comes from a plant and one comes from an animal.

4)The Ya’avetz never saw Pliny nor did he ever see a “real” chilazon so when he says that Pliny was talking aboout techeiles, that is an assumption not a halachic psak.

5)According to Rav Shlomo Miller’s pshat in Reb Chaim we would not apply the rule of safek d’oraisa l’chumra in a situation where acting l’chumra does not resolve anything. In the case of Lulav and shofar (which are brought as kashyas on Reb Chaim) by acting l’chumra there is nothing more that can be done hence we say safek d’oraisa l’chumra. But in our case, even after you don your Murex Trunculus dyed techeiles the safek has not been resolved, and there is still more that can be done namely using any of the other suggested possibilities(I know of two others). And obviously you can’t wear three different pairs of tzitzis because then two of them will vadai not be techeiles. Therefore in our case we would not say safek d’oraisa l’chumra.

To answer one of your previous kashyas:

I didn’t realize this earlier – Rav Shlomo Miller wasn’t saying that plant indigo is not kala ilan. He was saying that since murex trunculus is the same exact chemical(s) as plant indigo, mimayla murex trunculus is also kala ilan. This answers your kashya of why the gemara didn’t warn against using murex. It did. The Gemara warned against using Kala Ilan, which includes Murex Trunculus.

I do like most of what he said especially since he seems to be agreeing with most of what I said

“What I intended with the radvaz is to show that coming up every 7 years is derech nes and after the churban that stopped happening. This is his lashon ???? ???? ????? ?? ??? ???? see his full lashon in siman ???”?”

Pliny the Elder who lived well before techeiles was lost and even before the churban writes about the Murex Trunculus. He mentions a seven month harvesting cycle, but nothing about coming up once in 70 years(or any cycle of abundance). Thus we see that even before the churban, the Murex Trunculus did not fit this criterion.

“If so the shape of one snail will be more ‘domeh ldag’ than the other snails.”

While that may be true, the braisa is describing the chilazon to someone who doesn’t yet know that it is a snail. Saying that it looks like a fish is only helpful if we already know that it is a snail.

Furthermore, in almost every picture on that page(save one or two) the Murex did not look like the color of the sea.(And it was on page 52 not 58, but I’ll forgive that)

“Thus we had samples of dye extracted from snails that had been dead for 15min, 30min, 45min, etc.. “

To prove me wrong you would also need a sample of dye extracted from snails that had been killed mere moments ago and show that the dye is worse than from a live snail

“Patur aval assur: Those who wear techeles for the most part (Rav Schachter is an exception) hold that they are doing it to be yotze a safek. “

Why would you do something to be yotzei a safek if you don’t have to.(There’s a famous Reb Chaim which postulates that the rule of safek d’oraisa l’chumra would not apply in this type of situation

“Why don’t you go ask rabbi miller why someone would use an expensive forgery?”

That would be a kashya on the murex being kala ilan. That doesn’t mean that according to the conventional pshat that plant indigo is kala ilan that you can’t say my afforementioned svara.

“Very simple. Look in shabbos 75a once again. ??? ??? ????? ????? ?? which means that you are dyeing it after it is already dead.”

Yes that is the first answer that the gemara gives. I was quoting the Gemara’s second answer. The implication of the second answer is that there it is important to keep the chilazon alive. Whereas with the murex there would be no point in trying to keep it alive considering that the dye would be just as good right after it dies. However, it does seem that the two answers are in stira to each other.

“Now if you research this you will find out that in the water and the first few hours a after it comes out of the water, the shell is the color of the area it is taken from either blue or green.”

Keep in mind that the braisa was trying to describe a chilazon. If one was asked describing the murex trunculus, saying that it is the color of the ocean is a very poor description.

“Why not? have you ever seen a good picture of it? how about a picture of any other snail? which one looks like a fish and which one does not?”

Snails don’t look like fish.

“See the radvaz in chelek 2 in 685 that says nignaz means it stops coming up.”

I’m not sure how this addresses my point.

“You were mechavein to tosfos in shabbos 75a dh ki. I will quote it for you ????? ?? ?”? ??? ????? ????? ?????? ????? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ???? ??? ???? ????? ???? ??? ?? ??? ????? ??? ??? ?? ?????? ??? ???? ??? ?? ???? ?????? ??????”

Where in this quote of Rabeinu Tam do you see that it is not the blood that is used for dyeing but rather a different secretion?

“Yet at the same time we know for a fact that it was caught using nets (see shabbos 74b)”

Again I am not sure how this addresses my point.

It is also clear from the afforementioned Gemara in Shabbos that the dye of the chilazon is better when the chilazon is alive, and therefore people would try not to kill it when extracting the dye. The Murex Trunculus dye starts deteriorating several hours after its death which would make completely unnecessary to try to keep it alive.

As to the fact that the gemara does not warn against using Murex Trunculus, that can be simply attributed to the fact that the Gemara was only warning against things which people actually would use as a forgery. Kala Ilan would be used as a forgery because it is very cheap. No one would use Murex Trunculus as a forgery seeing that it is just as expensive as the actual Techeiles.

Just for the record, Rav Shlomo Miller holds that the Murex Trunculus is in fact Kala Ilan.

“They are chemically identical in color. but the chemical that comes from the Murux has a stronger cleavage and will stay on stronger.”

I’m not sure what that means. I assume chemically identical means the same chemicals.

” Now the gemara gives us a test that should make the kla ilan should come off. But it doesn’t. So this is not a question on the techeiles but a question on kla ilan.”

Actually it would prove that they are doing the test wrong.

” but Rav Schachter holds that since we have the real Techeilis nowadays it’s better to not wear Tzitzis at all than to wear Tzitzis without Techeiles.”

You first have to prove that it is the real techeiles.

” But what i am prooving from the bleach is that there still is a chiluk between kla ilan and the murex in the strenth of the dye.”

As far as I know the Gemara’s test does not mention anything about bleach.