johndbrey@gmail.com
©
2017 John D. Brey.
Very often people ask, "Where is the blue
thread in the Tzitzith?" ----We
read the section dealing with Tzitzith
twice daily in our prayers and each time, we read the words, "You shall
place on the Tzitzith of [each]
corner, a thread of blue." But when you look at the Tzitzith that people wear, you never seem to find this blue thread.
----Of course, the stripes that are often put on the Tallith are supposed to allude to the blue thread, but still, the
thread itself is missing. If the Torah tells us to put a blue
thread in the Tzitzith, why don't we
do so?
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Tzitzith: A Thread
of Light.
Every prayer shawl, tallit, is supposed to have a
"blue" tzitzit: a
"blue" knotted thread woven into the tzitzit. It's naughty not to have this blue on this knotted thread
and yet not one prayer shawl has had it for quite some time. Many Jewish
authorities claim a prayer shawl without the "blue" is still valid
(since if not, then there could be no prayer shawl, even as there's no temple).
Other Jewish authorities teach that a prayer shawl is invalid without the
"blue" thread.
The Torah itself claims
the prayer shawl must have the blue thread. To say otherwise is not wise
without biblical support:
We do not add the blue thread today because the
art of dying it has been lost. This particular blue is known in the Torah as Techeleth, and according to tradition,
can only be obtained from an animal known as the Chilazon. . . With the
destruction of the Temple, (Beth HaMikdash), the supply of this particular
blue dye virtually disappeared (Ibid.).
The lack of a blue
thread in the tallit is the key to a
great mystery since it seems likely that educated Jews know good and well how
the blue dye was manufacture to color the thread. Since it seems like no
educated Jew could deny the nature of the dye, it’s absence appears to be a most
telling sign of modern Judaism’s desire to hide its sacerdotal deficiencies. If
Jews know how the blue dye was manufactured, and yet wear prayer shawls without
the blue thread demanded by the Torah, how on earth can their prayers be
answered?
The תכלת color, which tradition describes as
blue-violet, is mentioned in God's Law only in connection with the Sanctuary.
----The high priest wore a מעיל כליל תכלת, a mantle all of תכלת color.
When the Ark of the Covenant traveled before the Children of Israel in their
wanderings through the wilderness, it was covered with בנד כליל תכלת מלמעלה,
an outer covering all of תכלת color. The other accessories of the
Sanctuary---the table, the menorah, the altar of incense and all the utensils
used within the Sanctuary ---were covered directly with an inner cover of תכלת.
Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch, The Collected
Writings, Vol. III.
The appurtenances of the
sanctuary, and later the temple, to include the veil in the temple, all used
the blue-purple תכלת color that represents the union of heaven and earth.----
The things of earth use red, scarlet, or crimson, manufactured from the blood
of living creatures, while the blue or violet is associated with heaven. Mix
the two and you produce the blue-purple used to dye the tzitzit on the tallit.
It’s a very simple thing
for a Jew to know that gold represents the same gradation of sanctity and
holiness that blue represents (deity). And it's patently clear that Moses
creates colloidal gold when he turns the emblem of deity, the Jew’s molten-god,
into a liquid associated with the "ornamental" (priestly) clothing
the Jews subsequently remove when they hear the sad tidings that God will
not be accompanying them through their wilderness journey.
When Moses tells Israel
God will not be accompanying them through the wilderness because of their
ithyphallic necks they removed their ornamental clothing with the blue-purple
dye that’s manufactured from the colloidal-gold mixed with red and crimson.
Since the blue (colloidal gold) and the red (the blood of living organisms)
produces purple, or blue-purple, Israel wearing the blue-purple tzitzit signifies their tacit
acknowledgement that the tallit
----with the blue-purple threads ---- represents a union of the blood of deity
and the blood of living things.
Moses manufactures
divine blood by grinding down the golden-calf, burning the hell out of it, the chametz,
and then making it into a fine powder added to water to create colloidal gold.
This divine blood was half the color used to create the ornamental priestly
garments worn by every Jew until they removed their “ornaments” to lament the
fact that God would not follow them into the wilderness.
We know that symbolically
speaking the golden-calf is the virgin born son of the red heifer (parah adumah). That’s documented in
Jewish midrashim. We know the virgin born calf must give its blood (the
colloidal gold) in order to save Israel from her idolatry. And we know Moses
extracts the blood of the virgin born son of the red heifer from the
golden-calf and uses it as the chametz-free elixir of Israel's
salvation.
The knowledgeable Jew
knows there’s certain prohibitions against mixing unlike things. And
nothing seems as unlike as the blood of God, the colloidal gold, and the blood
of living things.
Shatnez is the law against mixing wool and linen which, according
to Rabbi Hirsch, is merely symbolic of other kinds of unlawful mixing. And yet
wherever the blue-purple dye manufactured from colloidal gold and blood is
found, the prohibition on shatnez is
lifted. Shatnez represents the mixing
of unlike properties, vegetative life (linen) and biological life (wool). Shatnez is part and parcel of the Jewish
prohibition on worshiping a god/man (the mixed properties of God and man). . .
But since the blue-purple thread of the tzitzit represents the blood of
God, mixed with the blood of his creatures, the law of mixing unlike things
must be rescinded in order to wear the tzitzit.
And conveniently the tzitzit rescinds
the law of shatnez.
In the temple, the
prohibition of shatnez is lifted
because the temple itself represents the dwelling place of God in man, and man
in God. Israel is supposed to be the living temple such that the blood of God
is mingled with the blood of the Israelite man. Consequently, the
blue-purple thread disappeared from the scene approximately the time the Romans
sacked the temple because of Israel's rejection of the God/man (God mixed with
man), Messiah, i.e., the first true Jew with God's very blood coursing through
his veins. God removed the temple (which represented the lifting of the
prohibition on divine incarnation, the prohibition of mixing unlike things) and
took away the blue-purple thread that represents the same thing.
Not until Israel
welcomes Messiah with open arms will the blue-purple thread be returned to the tzitzit. Not until Israel accepts the
mixture of God and man, the divine and the terrestrial, heaven and earth, will
the blue-purple thread be returned to the tallit.
And since no modern tzitzit is
blue-purple, you can't put a wool tzitzit
on a linen cloth or garment. If you have a linen tallit you have a linen tzitzit.
Since the tzitzit is considered a
permanent addition to a linen tallit
it would break the law of shatnez if
not for the sacerdotal blue-purple (techelet)
that allows the tallit to mix wool
and linen:
Everything in the Torah has a reason, even its
order, so the fact that the commandment of Shaatnez is right
next to that of Tzitzith comes to
teach us something. According to Talmudic tradition, the laws of Shaatnez are
set aside when we must place the blue woolen Tzitzith thread in a linen Tallith.
The juxtaposition of the two commandments comes specifically to teach us this
exception. This was, however, only true when the blue thread was still in use.
We must now take into account still another
rule, that the prohibition of Shaatnez only applies when the
linen and wool are permanently attached together. Thus, the very tradition that
the commandment of Tzitzith can
override that of Shaatnez, teaches us that the Tzitzith must be permanently attached to the garment. The simplest
way of attaching the strings in a permanent was is by tying them on with a
double knot.
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Tzitzith: A Thread of
Light.
Rabbi Kaplan points out
that the reason for the double-knot is to make the tzitzit permanent such that the rescinding of the prohibition of shatnez is being taught both by the
juxtaposition of the law of shatnez
with the law of tzitzit and the
commandment of the double-knot, such that the permanence of the tzitzit requires the rescinding of the
law of shatnez in order for the wool
and linen to be combined.
None of this matters,
none of this can be taught, or observed, if there's no techelet (blue-purple). . . This is very convenient when we
understand what's being taught when the Torah teaches that techelet (blue-purple) rescinds the law of shatnez. -----In other words, it doesn't take a Talmudic scholar,
or a rocket scientist, to figure out what's going on here when the blue-purple
thread rescinds the law of shatnez. .
. And if we figure that out, we can see the need to keep blue-purple off the
scene so no Jew sees a sight that would make for sore eyes.
We have noted that תכלת is the color indicating
the limits of our horizon, the invisible world that lies beyond our physical
field of vision, i.e., the Divine. Therefore, a תכלת-colored thread of
wool in the human garment is the color representing the Divine that has been
revealed to us; it is the color of God's covenant with man, the symbol of the
Divine that unites with the pure human being, permeating and shaping every
aspect of his life.
Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch, Collected
Writings, Vol. III.
Rabbi Hirsch is clear
that "red" (which comes from the blood of living things) represents
the animal; while “blue" represents the Divine in man, such that
"purple," a mixture of the animal and the Divine, represents the
union of the two. Purple is made by mixing "red" and
"blue." The sacerdotal colors throughout the sanctuary and temple are
"blue," "purple," and "red.” -----The "blue"
represents God's blood (nefesh), the "red" represents the
animal part of man, and the "purple" represents what you get when you
place God's blood (nefesh) into the earthly frame of man the animal: the
Godman; Adam, who is created from the earth, like an animal, but such that into
this particular animal, God puts his own blood, making "Adam" (א–דם)
spiritual royalty: purple.
The law of shatnez, which Rabbi Hirsch pointedly
says refers to the prohibition against mixing unlike things, animal and plant,
God and man, red and blue, is rescinded wherever techelet "blue-purple" (the blood of the Divine mixed
with the blood of living things) is found. ------“Blue-purple"
represents the mixture of the ultimate unlike things: God and man.
"Purple," represents the ultimate "royalty" since it mixes
the divine and the human in the original man, Adam, who was created King over
all God's creation.
"Purple," the
color of spiritual royalty, is created by mixing biological blood (תולעת),
crimson, with divine blood, blue, creating the ultimate dye when the animal and
God unite to create a mixture of the two opposites which the rescinding of shatnez is designed to teach us
about. The "purple" found in the sanctuary and the temple were
created by mixing the blood of living creatures with colloidal gold to form the
quintessential royal-purple used in the paroket
that covered the Ark, and the curtain that separated the sacred from the
profane.
Moses was an elite
Egyptian trained in all the cunning arts of the Egyptians. A short time after
he leaves Egypt with the Israelites we're given a story about him grinding down
gold, into powder, fine as dust, and sprinkling it in the water. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the MET) states that the Egyptians knew how
to use a "chemical reduction of a finely ground copper-mineral powder"
to locally lower the melting point of adjacent gold surfaces. Moses was
educated in the manufacture of nanotechnology necessary to create dyes that used
gold, colloidal gold, to dye fabrics in precisely the hues the scripture claims
were used in the fabrics associated with the sacerdotal duties of the priests.
A study of the nature of
colloidal gold, as a product of nano-technology, seems to support the idea that
Moses could have ground up gold and copper and heated them such that the copper
lowers the point at which gold turns to smoke. Thereafter he merely needs to
channel the heated gold (smoke) into a reservoir of water such that the gold
smoke posits the nano-particles of gold in the water. A number of articles seem
to suggest that because of its unique properties, gold smoke retains qualities
that other smoke loses because of the impurities which, when burned, become
oxidized. Gold's relative purity allows it to become smoke and still basically
be gold and not merely oxidation or carbonization of its former glory.
Nanotechnology involves
a new and broad science where diverse fields such as physics, chemistry,
biology, materials science, and engineering converge at the nanoscale. . . It
is also important to understand that nanoscale materials are found in nature.
For instance, hemoglobin, the oxygen-transporting protein found in red blood
cells, is 5.5 nanometers in diameter. Naturally occurring nanomaterials exist
all around us, such as in smoke from fire, volcanic ash, and sea spray.
For many Jews the
mystery of techelet blue-purple,
revolves around the identity of the "hillazon"
thought to be some kind of sea-creature, a squid, or perhaps a snail of some
sort, from which the hue is manufactured. But since the likelihood of that
seems low in relationship to the logic of colloidal gold, there must be a
reasonable etymology justifying the name associated with the source of the
color?
As anyone familiar with techelet blue-purple no doubt knows it's
the ultimate sacerdotal hue. It's the highest priestly color and represents the
very covering of those objects most associated with God's Presence, namely, the
high priest himself, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Most Holy Place of the
Sanctuary (all of which are wrapped in cloth doused in sacerdotal blue-purple).
As Professor Menahem Haran (Hebrew University Jerusalem) points out,
wherever techelet blue-purple is
found, you've actually found not only shatnez,
but since techelet blue-purple is
used to make garments and coverings that mix wool and linen, you've simultaneously
encountered the rescinding of the law of shatnez.
Professor Haran implies
that wherever techelet blue-purple is
found, the bible speaks of a particular "workmanship" (hoseb)
that includes the twisting, or binding, of wool and linen. The binding of wool
and linen appear to be part and parcel of the requirement for a garment to be
baptized in techelet blue-purple.
In his book, Tzitzith:
A Thread of Light, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan points out many interesting
things not just about the tzitzit,
but the tallit which it ornaments.
------Primary among the things he says, so far as the etymology of "hillazon" is concerned, is the fact
that the tallit represents not just a
cloth, but clothing itself. He relates the tallit
to the covering given to Adam and Eve after their sin. Similarly, and
importantly, he points out that God himself is said to wear a tallit:
As mentioned earlier, one place in the Bible
where God's Tallith is alluded to is
in the verse, "He covers himself with light as a garment"
(Psalm104:2).
When Moses first
encounters God on the mountain, his initial sight is that of a "burning
thorn-bush." -----We come to learn that this "burning" bush is
actually the angel of the Lord, who acts as the outer-skene (the fore-skene) of
any scene thought to depict God. And since God's angels are called
"burning ones," it's appropriate that when Moses encounters God, God
wraps himself in the burning ones, the burning bush of thorns, such that Moses
not die by seeing the sight of God not dyed in the wool of the sacerdotal hues
that represent God's own covering angel who is fancied in the fancy cloth dyed techelet blue-purple.
The angel covering God
when Moses encounters him is no ordinary angel. He's the covering of light par
excellent. His name incorporates the very word for "light" or the
"shiny, shining, one": Lucifer. . . . And since "Lucifer" is הילל, "shining one," or
"shining star," perhaps "morning star," it's interesting
that a word for "thorn" is צן. . . such that if we combine the idea
of a "shining" הילל "thorn"-bush, as the covering behind
which God is found, we get the word היללצן, “hillazon."
"Hillazon" is obviously a
transliteration of the Hebrew word. It's the Hebrew word that's important from
an etymological standpoint. So if "hillazon"
isn’t a sea-creature but colloidal gold, a new etymological study based on this
new realization is required.
Armed with the new
facts, the obvious conclusion is that "hillazon"
is actually a combination of the Hebrew word "lucifer," and
"thorn.” This truism is prefaced with Rabbi Kaplan's insinuation that God
himself wears a tallit, and thus a tzitzit, such that since the shining
thorn-bush is where Moses encounters the "veiled" manifestation of
God, and the thorn-bush, which veils God, i.e., his tallit, is taught throughout Jewish midrashim to be a "fiery
one" of God, an angel, or seraphim, the idea of "lucifer," the
"shining one," and "thorn," as in a shiny (burning)
thorn-bush, makes perfect sense in the sense of the veil (tallit) that covers God's most naked essence; a garment covering
God.
A potentially better
etymology replaces the heh in
“lucifer” with a chet.---- חלל means
“to pierce,” such that if we use the chet
instead of the heh, we still get
"hillazon" “or “chillazon,” meaning the "piercing
thorn," or the "piercing thorn-bush." Gesenius points out that
this “piercing thorn,” is associated with breaking covenants and profaning
sanctuaries such that there could hardly be a more perfect source for techelet than the blood of the former
covering for God who is now replaced by the blood signifying his removal from
the office of protector of the covenant between God and mankind.---- This is
significant when we understand that the tzitzit
represents the "sprout" that grows out of the stump once that stump
is cut to the ground to let the Tree of Life, Hashem, grow up in its place. The
tzitzit is techelet, and techelet is
the color derived from the blood of Lucifer, the death of the bringer of death
itself.
Moses grinding down the
golden-calf is strange. The scripture's notation "fine as powder" is
stranger still. But the pièce de ré·sis·tance has to be the statement that
Moses makes Israel "drink" this strange concoction? Numerous concepts
suggesting colloidal gold as the source of the threads have been twisted
together into a whole cloth suggesting Moses is creating colloidal gold by
powdering and burning gold to capture the smoke (nano-particles) in water
thereby transforming the water into the blue elixir Israel allegedly
"drinks" none the wiser.
But drinking the
colloidal gold doesn't segue perfectly with the idea that this blue
gold-smoothie is actually a "dye" made from a dead, sacrificed,
bull-calf?
The flow of the
narrative implies, with many a sage thereafter, that the "ornaments"
Israel removes a few verses after the colloidal gold episode are actually
clothing stained with the sacerdotal elixir associated with priestly garments
(Isa. 61:3, 10). If Israel is having their priestly garments manufactured by
being stained with the blood of a sacrificial bull, in this case a golden
bull-calf, then why does the text read that Moses has them "drink"
the blue hued brew?
To give unto them an ornament of glory for ashes
אפר תחת
פאר הם ל
תת ל
Isaiah 61:3.
The ashes of a golden
bull-calf are to become an ornament of glory (priestly garment). ------ In the
same chapter, clarifying the same comment, Isaiah says this ornament of glory, that
come from the ashes of a bull-calf, are like a bride's "jewels." The
Hebrew word Isaiah uses to discuss the ashes become priestly ornaments is par פאר.
It's the word for a bull-calf, פר with the letter for God, the alef א, in the middle. Put the alef before the peh instead of between the peh
and the reish and you get the word
"ash."
“Tiferet" is the word for the ornament come from the ashes of
the bull-calf with a tav either side
of it. Kind of like how Jesus had a cross (the ktav ivri, original, tav)
on either side of him. Tiferet is the
ornament par, so to say, excellent. This ornament par פאר--
excellent, has a cross, the ancient tav,
on both sides of it, in the word Isaiah uses to discuss the ornament par excellent,
"tiferet" תפארת.
Similarly the crucifix, the most frequently worn ornament of all time,
originally had a ktav ivri tav on either side of it. . . Tiferet, the word, has “par,” God's bull
פ–א–ר (the alef inside a sacrificial
bull) between two crosses (the original tav
was a cross).
ת––פ–א–ר––ת
Since none of us are as
wise and insightful as Isaiah, we have to rely on him to tell us point
blank that if the ornament of ornaments, the high priestly ornament of the most
"splendor" is the par פאר found between two crosses (the ktav ivri tav) ת–פאר–ת (tiferet),
then what do we get when we place the parallel symbol of this ornament of
ornament (i.e., the bride's "jewel" כל) between the same two crosses
(the ktav ivri tav)?
Let's see: ת–כל–ת.
----What’s that spell? ----"Techelet."
----- The blue hued brew par (so to say) excellent.
The word interpreted
"drink" is the word שקה (saqah). -----But Hebrew more
than most other languages doesn't always imply the literal meaning is to be
read into a given word. The word often has multiple legitimate nuances allowing
the spirit of the context to determine the meaning of the word. This is the
case with "saqah." It's used for watering plants, and even
euphemistically for "urinating." Moses is not necessarily having
Israel "drink" the blue brew, he's "watering" God's
"planting," God's "sprout." ------ Just a few verses before
Isaiah 61:3 speaks of Moses transforming ash to priestly ornaments, we read the
preface to Isaiah's bizarre channeling of Exodus 32:19 when the prophet
says:
Then will all your people be righteous and they
will possess the land forever. They are the shoot I have planted, the work of
my hands, the display of my splendor [tiferet תפַארת].
. . [I will] give them an ornament of glory from ashes.
Isaiah 60:21; 61:3.
Isaiah claims the plant,
the basal shoot, that God plants (i.e., the tzitzit),
will be the display of his "splendor." The word "splendor"
is "tiferet." The word with par,
"ornament" between two tav. The ornament of glory par (so
to say) excellent is the ornament that comes from ashes of a bull-calf פר,
with the symbol of God א within its midst פ־א־ר.
Some would-be Hebrew
expert will no doubt poo pooh the idea that Isaiah is speaking of tiferet,
God's "splendor" (ornament of glory), being manifest by techelet blue-purple, even though the
prophet implies this absolutely splendid ornament is made from
the ashes of a bull-calf. They'll poo pooh too the exegesis that says Moses
isn't just making Israel "drink" the blue hued brew, but is in fact
"watering" saqah, them; sprinkling God's
"planting" (Isa. 60:21) with the blue hued brew.
But then many of these
water-closet experts fancy themselves smarter and more biblically renowned than
someone like Rabbi Hirsch who lends his weight to the foregoing (so to say)
when he gives his unique exegetical insight:
אין ציצת אלא ענף. אין ציצת אלא דכר היוצא: ציץ
(Menachot 41, 42). The basic connotation of ציץ and צוץ is a movement characterized
by "breaking through," a forward push to emerge . . . Hence, ציץ, the
parts of a plant--twig, leaf, blossom---that have sprouted, that have
"broken through.". . Thus, "make yourselves tsitsith on
your garments" means: Place branches and blossoming sprouts, as it were,
upon your garments. . . They shall be real, genuine "sprouts" and
"blossoms" for you. They are to help you yourself
"sprout" and blossom forth;" they are to assist you in your
personal development and completion.
The Collected Writings, Vol. III.
According to Rabbi
Hirsch's exegesis, the tzitzit,
colored techelet blue-purple,
represents a “sprout,” a branch, God's planting, his basal shoot,
"breaking forth" from the nations of the earth as his priestly tribe.
"He clothes priests with salvation [yeshua], and priests cloth
themselves with righteousness" (R. Hirsch translation of Psalm 132:9
and 16). ------He waters his planting with ashes that become the ornamental
salvation [yeshua] that clothes the
priestly caste. He "waters" saqah, his priests with holy water
that’s blue as the sea, the sky, the heavens. He waters his planting with blue,
the color made from the ashes of the bull-calf.
Not only does techelet blue-purple rescind the
prohibition on mixing unlike things, shatnez, but in sacred
parlance the very presence of techelet
blue-purple signifies an inverted shatnez,
i.e. the very “requirement” to mix unlike things. This is the case since in the
theological zeitgeist of the ancients, and in this case ancient Israel,
"blue" represents pure, unalloyed, divinity, the divine before any
mixture or alliance with blood and guts, sadness and turmoil, associated with
the bloody world below. Thus, you need the mixture of the blue and the red to
get the techelet.
In the ancient world,
"metal," because of its relative strength, permanence, and luminous
brilliance, represents divinity, while organic materials, plants, insects, and
animals, represent the world of time and tide, mankind, this world. Rabbi
Hirsch and Professor Haran, of Hebrew University, establish the gradation of
sacredness related to metals in the Bible. Gold, like "blue," is the
symbol of unalloyed divinity. -----Silver is “violet” (a form of purple that
exists in the natural spectrum). While "scarlet" (which is the only
organic color of the three) is the color that when mixed with "blue"
(unalloyed divinity) forms "purple."
Once it's pointed out
that "metal" represents divinity, the prohibition against worshiping
a "molten" god (idol) makes perfect sense. Any idol that represents
deity unalloyed with the organic world is a "molten" god. In a
properly deciphered Judaism you can never have gold or silver without the
presence of scarlet. Gold and silver must be intertwined with scarlet. The
golden-calf fiasco was the creation of a molten-god made just of gold. It was
unalloyed divinity. That's its great crime.
When Moses grinds it
down he creates a blue dye out of the unalloyed divinity and sprinkles it on
God's planting, Israel, thereby implying where the ultimate cessation of the
idolatry of unalloyed divinity will reach its ultimate climax in the literal
mixing of God and man in the flesh and blood of the firstborn of Israel.
If “blue” represents
unalloyed deity, then naturally techelet
can’t really be blue since it’s the color associated with rescinding the
prohibition on mixing unlike things. Techelet
has to be purple and not blue after all is said and done.
There are fundamental
theological reasons why this is correct. And these fundamental theological
reasons feed into why Jews feign ignorance concerning the source or whereabouts
of techelet blue-purple. They’ll
never find the source of the color because of a theological switcheroo of
biblical proportions. Without getting too deep into the theology, there’s reason
to believe that since Moses sprinkled the Jews with bull’s blood on the exit
from Egypt, these garments stained with scarlet or crimson were the first stage
of the Jewish priestly initiation. Then, just when it seemed all was lost,
after the golden-calf fiasco, Moses ground down the golden-calf, manufacturing
colloidal gold water, actual blue, and sprinkled it over the crimson bull's
blood that was already on the garments, forming the first Jewish sacerdotal
blue-purple: Techelet (a mixture of
gold water blue, and bull's blood crimson).
It's not an accident
that techelet blue-purple disappeared
shortly after the crucifixion and subsequent destruction of the stone temple.
To know the recipe for techelet
blue-purple is to know the reason for the destruction of the fleshly temple,
followed shortly by the destruction of the stone replica, followed shortly by
feigned ignorance of the recipe for techelet
blue-purple, followed in lock-step by the switcheroo from purple to blue.
Certain of the Pharisaical lords realized the danger of speaking of the nature
of techelet blue-purple when many
Jews were already succumbing to the missionizing of their Christian brothers,
sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.
So they did what we see
them doing when they decide, after the Sages claim Isaiah 53 is Messianic, a
portrait of the "leper Messiah," that no, actually it's not
Messianic, since it looks too much like the crucified one. . . But this is
actually worse. This is the most damning of all. If they're caught in this one
it's gonna leave a mark.
The Ancient
History Encyclopedia website has an article on Tyrian
Purple that lends itself to the topic of techelet.
----- Interestingly, the article claims the color developed sometime around the
14th or 15th century BCE . . . the same time as the Exodus (which is when Moses
first introduced the color techelet). Though the article
incorrectly assumes, with the vast majority, that the color is manufactured
through snails (as is the case for certain other blue hued dyes), there's
evidence beneath the surface narrative of the article that justifies what's
been said about techelet here.
The article points out
that the, ". . . highest quality cloth was known as Dibapha,
meaning 'twice dipped'." ---- This "twice dipping" justifies
the idea that techelet was manufactured through a twice
sprinkling procedure. Moses first sprinkled the communal priesthood's
garments with the blood of a bull as they exited Egypt (Exodus 24:6-8),
and then not long thereafter he sprinkles these same priestly garments a second
time with the blue-blooded golden-calf (colloidal gold).
The first
"dipping," or sprinkling, was from the blood of a living bull,
"red." The second "dipping"/sprinkling” was with the blue
color manufactured from colloidal gold representing the blood of a deified calf
-- a heavenly calf. ----- When this royal "blue blood" (as it were)
was mixed with the "red" of the living calf, it produced a magnificent
"purple" which, because it was formed by blood, and the
nano-particles of gold, created a hue that was stubborn as an ox (so to say) to
remove. One of the unique qualities of both Tyrian purple and techelet is
how stubbornly the hue adheres to cloth. It was the longest lasting color and
held its hue more perfectly than any known dye. The nano-size of the particles
allows them to enter into the keratin of wool garments making the removal
nearly impossible.
Ironically, the article
on Tyrian purple uses the very two colors associated with techelet, red
(living calf's blood) and "blue" (colloidal gold, divine blue blood),
as the two colors the "twice dipping" used to create the purple:
"Purple could be produced from certain lichens by first dyeing using
red (madder) and then overdyeing using blue (woad)." ----- The article
even gets the order correct according to the scripture. The red comes first
then the blue is placed over the red to create the purple.
“Blue" and
"red" are at opposite ends of the visible color spectrum, thereby
making their unification through the twice dipping, or the twice sprinkling
that Moses gives to the communal priesthood's garments, the perfect symbol for the
transgression of the commandment not to mix unlike things: shatnez. Another
telling clue concerning the relationship between techelet and Tyrian purple is its rarity and cost. It was so
expensive that wherever any article discusses Tyrian purple, the color is
directly related to gold, and the value of gold:
Such figures also explain why the dye was worth
more than its weight in gold. In a 301 CE price edict from the reign of Roman
emperor Diocletian, we learn that one pound of purple dye cost 150,000 denarii
or around three pounds of gold (equal to around $19,000 at the time of
writing). A pound of pre-dyed wool would set you back one pound of gold.
There's a reason why
this glorious (tiferet) blue-purple (techelet) is constantly
compared to gold, and is of the value of gold. ------The scripture makes it
patently clear. ------It's manufactured from gold (Ex. 32:20).
The high value of purple cloth is further
indicated by its presence on tribute lists alongside other precious goods such
as silver and gold which Tyre was obliged to pay to the Assyrian kings in the
9th and 8th centuries BCE. Alexander the Great, too, was said to have come
across 5,000 talents in weight of purple cloth at Susa, likely acquired through
tribute and kept as a permanent deposit of high value.
Tyrian purple was
treated as gold. It was kept in storage as though it were a precious metal,
which, in a sense, it was. This blue-purple hue, which holds on to the visible
spectrum by a thread, was so expensive that just one thread of it could cost a
Jew as much as thirty pieces of silver.
The status-conscious Romans were particularly
fond of purple garments and reserved them for the elite only. The imperial
family, magistrates and some elites were permitted to wear the toga praetexta which had a purple border, and
generals who celebrated a Roman Triumph could wear on their big day the toga picta which was entirely purple with a
gold border.
The tzitzit is
a gold border on the priestly Jew's toga tiferet. -----Don't let
the purple hue deceive you. -----There's gold in them thar threads.
תולעת שנִ and ארגמן are both wool dyed with red
coloring matter. Like the substance itself [the wool], the coloring matter,
too, is an animal product. . . [On the other hand] a תכלת colored thread of
wool in the human garment is the color representing the Divine . . ..
In these statements from
his Collected Writings, vol., III (p. 181), Rabbi Hirsch
points out that the red dyes (תולעת שני and ארגמן) are not only mixed with
wool—which is an animal product ----but the dye itself is made out of animals.
He points out that on the other hand, techelet (תכלת )
represents not the animal part of man, but the divine part of man. Based
on his own logic, that the "red" (representative of the animal part
of man) uses dyes manufactured from animals, suggests that techelet ----which represents the divine ----should
come from dyes that are manufactured from other than organic materials.
Furthermore, in the same
passage, Rabbi Hirsch explicitly links the dyes, their color, with metals in a
descending gradation of holiness:
If we look at the sequence in which the textiles
. . . תכלת ארגמן. . . שנִי are named along side the metals, זחב וכסף ונחשת,
we will note that both textiles and metals are listed in a descending order.
Just as זחב represents the highest form of metal and נחשת the lowest, so too, we
must consider תכלת as the highest color of all . . ..
Rabbi Hirsch says that
the colors techelet, argamin, and shini, form a
descending order of sanctity just like gold, silver, and brass. Not only does
Rabbi Hirsch associate techelet
directly with gold, but by doing so he allows us to see behind the power of techelet to
transgress the commandment against mixing unlike things: shatnez.
Rabbi Hirsch makes it clear that the transgression of the law against mixing
unlike things is paramount in the nature and meaning of the tzitzit,
and thus techelet. -----He says, "It is important that the
prohibition against these mixtures are immediately followed by the commandment
of tsitsith, with which the shaatnes prohibition is closely associated in
halacha (Yebamoth 4b)."
The command of tzitzit is
given specifically in line with the commandment not to mix unlike things so
that the tzitzit, which transgresses the law, is highlighted by the
juxtaposition. -----The very commandment of tzitzit is the
"glory" that cancels out the Law and more importantly its punishment.
-----Rabbi Hirsch juxtaposes the gradation of holiness of sacerdotal metals
with sacerdotal colors. ------Gold is the most holy, with brass
representing the lowest sacerdotal metal.
Consequently techelet
is paralleled with gold, in sanctity. Such that brass, which is red, is
paralleled with "red" dye (שני). -----Since the natural color
spectrum is "blue" to "red" (with "purple" not
being part of the natural spectrum) the typical exegete naturally assumes
that since gold is "blue" even as copper is "red," techelet must
then be "blue." And this is where Rabbi Hirsch and all the other
exegetes get twisted up in the Gordian-knot that suffices for
the true tzitzit; it’s the
Achilles' heel that trips up well-intentioned Jewish exegetes.
If gold is blue, and
copper is red, then it seems like silver would represent "purple"
which would rob techelet (if it's purple) of its relationship
to gold as the highest sanctity color. If gold is blue, and copper is red, then
silver must be (stationed as it is in the middle), purple. But techelet is
treated with all the pomp and ceremony associated with purple throughout
history and religion; which is ironically the same pomp and ceremony meted out
in the world of metal for gold.
Purple isn't part of the
natural spectrum of light. It's not a spectral color. It's a mixture of two
colors within the spectrum, blue and red, but is not itself, technically,
within the spectrum. It's a hypostasis of colors within the spectrum. It's unique.
In contradistinction to
"purple," "blue" is a natural color within the natural
spectrum. Silver, argamin, is thus "violet." ------- So
that within the natural spectrum, gold is "blue," silver is
"violet" and copper is "red." In the specific verses
of scripture where blue-purple, violet, and red, are connected with the
sanctuary, temple, or the ornamental priestly clothing (which makes the priest
a facsimile of the sanctuary or temple), the flow is gold, silver, copper-----
blue, violet, red. Techelet is
unique. It’s a mixing of the blue and the red.
"Each to its own species!" Each to its
own purpose and task! Each group of men, and especially the Jew, must remain
true to his own kind and species. For the Jew, this means that he must remain
true to his vocation both as a human being and as a Jew. He must function and
develop only in a manner worthy of a human being and a Jew, and move only
within the parameters of the Law that desires to make man aware of the command למינהו
[each to its own species], which dominates the entire organic world but which
man must accept and observe of his own free will in order to fulfill his
purpose.
Rabbi Hirsch then segues
into the law of shatnez where he says, "The mixture of
these two particular substances must have a very special relation to our
purpose, must be especially relevant to our own "law of species;"
i.e., our purpose as human beings":
Wool and flax are not different kinds of one and
the same species; they are not even different species of one kingdom. They are
substances from two distinct kingdoms, and their relationship to one another is
the same as that between plants and animals.
Metal and animal are not
different kinds of one and the same species. In theological terms, they're not
even species of the same kingdom. Metal represents deity, the divine; while
animals are those creatures with blood coursing through their veins. Which
is why, if you're gonna mix the divine and the human, the gold and blood, you better
know you're gonna have to break some serious laws. You're gonna have to break
the law "each to his own species." You're gonna have to break the law
of shatnez.
Which is why, perhaps,
the tzitzit, which Rabbi Hirsch claims represents all of God's commandments,
and which is designed to make the Jew remember his God, must first transgress
all the laws and commandments, to include shatnez, before it can
mix two unlike things; the two most unlike things that have ever been: God and
man----gold and blood ----- blue and red . . . creating techelet purple;
the color that breaks all God's commandments in order to allow God to become
man.
The Jew who
rejects tzitzit, who refused to believe it's made from gold and
blood, from the "red" par-excellent,
the blood of a living bull, and the "blue" פאר-excellent, the blood
of the divine bull, colloidal gold, therein employs his or her birthright as a
Jew to remain a nature worshiper of the highest order. They remain within the
natural spectrum, abiding by the law not to mix unlike things, and thus imply techelet is blue (a natural hue) rather
than purple (which is outside the natural spectrum).
In this sense the
natural born Jew can be considered a member of a world class phallic-cult, in
that he or she chooses their natural birthright, their phallic paternity, over
a relationship with a God who transgresses all nature-religions, par-a-mount
among them modern Judaism, which has chosen the natural birth right, phallic
paternity, over a God who, because he became a man apart from nature, and
natural paternity, transgressed the very law misinterpreted to make the natural
born Jew the "chosen" of God by right of natural birth rather than
subject Abraham's covenant making blood-rite to a right and proper exegetical
cutting.
In the spectrum, gold
and copper are at the poles with silver in the middle. Gold is blue, copper is
red. Silver is violet. Violet is composed of blue and red, even though in the
color spectrum it's not in the middle of blue and red. Violet is a composite of
red and blue and is a real, natural color. ----- Purple is different. It's
unique. It's not part of the natural world, the natural spectrum. Which is why
it's been revered for millennia as the color of royalty and priestly class
distinction. And it's why a purple thread can disregard the law of shatnez. The law of shatnez applies only to the natural world, and the natural born
Jew. The priesthood is different. They're set apart as mediators between the
divine and the human. They're not held to the same natural law as the natural
born Jew.
And why isn't the priest
held to the same natural laws as the natural born Jew? Because in type he's the
son of God and man so that he can mediate between the two poles, blue, and red.
In the ancient world,
the ritual of jus primae noctis was practiced by making the
virgin bride enter the temple on her wedding night to mount an anointed organ
of the god. This organ, usually a precious metal, usually gold, was
"lubricated" to make the sotah's ordeal as
painless as possible. In the symbolism, the "firstborn" of a man's
virgin bride belonged to god. It was his offspring. He sired it.
Furthermore, this firstborn of a man's virgin bride was called the
"anointed one," because he was conceived (ritually) through the anointed (lubricated) organ of god.
Jewish ritual is
drenched in the same salubrious anointing. Circumcision was originally a
wedding ritual performed under the chuppah.
The father-in-law (which in Hebrew is the word for "circumciser") cut
the organ of the groom so that it would be too sore (at a minimum) and
non-existent (in the extreme) on the night when God, and not the human father,
would conceive His anointed one: Messiah. Similarly, according to Rashi and
Jewish midrashim, Abraham was sitting in the breezeway of his tent tending to
his sore membrum-virile when the angel of the Lord passed over to tell him that
by God's hand Sarah would have a firstborn son the next year. As Rashi points
out, Abraham had just been circumcised such that his own organ was out of
commission when Isaac was conceived by the hand of the Lord.
In Exodus chapter 13
we're taught that every man's firstborn "belongs to God." God is the
sire of the Jewish firstborn. It's his anointed one. He conceived the firstborn
from a virgin woman before she cheated on God with her husband.
Ramban (Nachmanides)
actually implies that in the sotah
water ordeal, where a woman is set before God to test her fidelity, she says
twice that she hasn't been unfaithful, which Nachmanides interprets to mean she
hasn't been unfaithful to her husband, or to God with her husband. She
conceived her firstborn with God (as Eve thought she had) and only thereafter
was she allowed to have legitimate conjugal intercourse with her husband. In
the symbolism, every firstborn Jew is a priest. He's not just red. He's purple.
He's garmented in purple, signifying his unified relationship to the divine
world and the world of man. God is his father. And a virgin Jewish bride is his
mother.
Jesus is the reality of
the statement in Exodus that the firstborn "belongs to God." Jesus of
Nazareth is the reality of a woman becoming pregnant through jus primae noctis, druit du seigneur (the Lord's right to the first night). -----Jesus is
the true firstborn of God. The first actual priest: God and man, and thus a
fitting mediator between humans and God.
Jesus' mother is the
only Jewish woman who has ever lived who could truly pass the sotah water ordeal; let her hair down
before God, and tell him she wouldn’t be unfaithful to him, wouldn’t have
intercourse with a man, until she’d conceived his child, the true high priest,
whose existence is required for any of the ritual priesthood to have blood
coursing through its veins; and whose sacrificial death mixes the symbolism of
the sacrifice with the life of the sacrificer (they’re one and the same), so we
can makes sense of every decree found in the Tanakh.
In the pagan ritualization
of jus primae noctis, the virgin bride has symbolic
phallic-intercourse with the god. The god uses the natural means of procreation
(phallic-sex) to birth his firstborn son. But in Judaism, which corrects the
pagans, there's no golden phallus. In a profound understanding of the nature of
God, the Jewish ritual replaces the golden phallus of god with the blood of the
human father's phallus. In effect, the human father sacrifices his own right to
his virgin on his wedding night (symbolized by the blood-rite of brit
milah). Similarly, he sacrifices his own right to father a firstborn son,
which is in effect sacrificing his firstborn son for God's sake. God meets him
half way by sacrificing his own blood, his own right to father a firstborn, and
his own firstborn. The two bloods mix, God's and mans, so that the offspring of
this bizarre syzygy produces the fleshly mediator between the divine and the
human:
Tzitzith, which has been given to us as a protective
reminder in our intercourse with the vulgar, mundane world, is designed only
for the period of this intercourse----namely, day-time. . . Physical birth
belongs to the night . . . but milah,
conception as a Jew, belongs to the daytime.
Horeb, p.185; Hirsch Chumash, Gen. 17:23.
According to R. Hirsch
and others, the tzitzit represents a
visible representation of the invisible God. The tzitzit, is an incredible thing in that by breaking the prohibition
of mixing unlike things -- shatnez
--- it even breaks the prohibition on what would generally be considered sheer
idolatry: looking at some visible thing that manifests the invisible God:
The purpose [of tzitzit]: To remind the eye, which perceives that which is
present and visible, that those things which are invisible and past and which
exist beyond the ken of what is visible and present also have reality. . . The
number of threads, eight, and the number of knots, five, added to the numerical
value of the letters in tzitzit,
six-hundred, give us a total of 613, which is the sum-total of precepts,
positive and negative, and so the law revealed in the past is made real to us
in the present.
Horeb, p. 183.
It’s an amazing thing
that Rabbi Hirsch has just said. He said the tzitzit, the colored thread, is a visible manifestation of the
entire law. The invisible nature of the author of the law, the invisible life
of the law, is made visible by means of a colored thread whose primary purpose,
according to Rabbi Hirsch, and other sages, is to provide a visible
manifestation of the invisible: an idol by any other name is still and
idol:
Who, after having pondered the significance of tzitzith, cannot apprehend the meaning
of the pronouncement of our Sages: "He who observes the duty of tzitzith well will reach to behold the
face of the Omnipresent God?" (Orach Chayim 24).
Horeb, p. 186.
The tzitzit, which Rabbi Hirsch says represents the entire law, breaks
the law of shatnez, therein
transgressing, or completing, the entire law, in a manner that breaks one of
the greatest prohibition of all, idolatry. This bizarre rescinding of the law
is the key to one of the most dark and mysterious passages in the entire
Tanakh; one the careful exegete passes over in fear and trembling: Isaiah
chapter 44.
The rescinding of the
law of shatnez is a rescinding of the
entire law to free man to judge for himself what is righteous and good rather
than leaving mankind slaves to the written law that makes visible
manifestations of the invisible idolatrous. No one can read Deutero-Isaiah well
without realizing that much of what he writes about in the last twenty chapters
of his prophesy are related to the rescinding of the commandment against
idolatry, which is, truth be known, based on the rescinding of the prohibition
of God and man having real, genuine, non-phallic, intercourse, through the
mouth and ear, of course.
To be sure, the Word of God has essentially achieved
its purpose by having us attach fringes to our garments and thereby
proclaiming: Whenever you look at these fringes, remember Me. This would be
true even if there were no other connection between the physical reminder as
such and the subject which it ought to remind us. Yet, it
is difficult to conceive that the Divine Law should have chosen such a reminder
at random without a deeper rationale. We are certainly justified in the
assumption that here, too, there must be an intimate link between the symbol
and the idea that constitutes its object.
Rabbi Samson Hirsch, Collected Writings,
p. 112.
