Here’s the typo-cleaned version, with the WordPress HTML kept intact:
Techeiles on Tzitzis is a mitzva in the Torah from Parshas Shlach. But it wouldn’t have happened without the initiative of Rabbi Elya Kaufman and his son-in-law, R’ Eliyahu Tavger, personnel from Haifa University and Shenkar College of Fibers, a $5,000 contract, open-sourcing the recipe, and a few enthusiastic people wanting to jump-start this Mitzva.
Rabbi Elya Kaufman recently told someone the precise story about how Techeiles was rediscovered by Otto Elsner. Rabbi Eliyahu Tavger, R’ Kaufman’s son-in-law, is notoriously a low-profile person whose intent was to restore the mitzva of Techeiles as best as possible, and to date has not seen a penny from his efforts. Everyone having met R’ Tavger has only good things to say about his character, middos, knowledge, ability to learn, and Torah. As an aside, R’ Dovid Auerbach, R’ Shlomo Zalman’s brother, was a huge influence in R’ Tavger’s development into a Talmid Chacham. It therefore should come as no surprise that this endeavor truly was done Lishma on his part.
It all started in the early 1980s, when R’ Tavger was learning in a Kollel in the Muslim quarter in Yerushalayim, in Toras Kohanim with R’ Moshe Petrover, and started to learn about Tzitzis. With Tzitzis comes Perek HaTecheiles. He was wondering all about Techeiles and that’s how he got involved: it fell right into his lap. He looked at the scientific and physical aspects and together with R’ Kaufman started to fish for it. Two people influential in helping him realize murex was the source were Prof. Otto Elsner and Ehud Spanier, both at Haifa University at the time. R’ Tavger would go in with his black hat and shmooze with the professors, both having a mutual understanding, in terms of the Chilazon as well as many aspects of nature.
R’ Tavger was having difficulty in getting Techeiles attached to the wool for a number of weeks. The dye needs to become part of the fiber – you can’t take a paintbrush to place it. The end result is they went to the Shenkar College for design and art, where there is a section dedicated to ancient dyes. With Dr. Elsner, they were able to secure the murex dye, and dye with it. Rabbis Kaufman and Tavger sat in a large office, where the director of the school was there, as was the head of the department, and there were two secretaries taking notes there. They said that they will show the entire process from beginning to end and they can do what they want from it. There were two conditions, however. The first was that they receive a percentage of every sale of Tzitzis. R’ Tavger and R’ Kaufman looked at each other and agreed that that’s not a problem: only the two of them would be wearing this Tzitzis anyway. The second condition though was to pay the school $5,000 up-front to cover development, personnel and research costs. That set them back. R’ Kaufman said, “Okay, draft a contract and send it to my lawyer.” That lawyer happened to live down the street from him. The lawyer received the contract a few weeks later and told R’ Kaufman that the reality is that the personnel at Shenkar are in the driver’s seat: they have what the two of them want. But there were a few things the lawyer could make changes to see if they will approve it so the terms were relatively more reasonable. The revisions were sent back but in the meantime, R’ Kaufman and Tavger didn’t hear back from them. In the meantime R’ Tavger had a friend who was a chemist, who had the ability to get “professional accommodation” in the Science review. In those days Google wasn’t around and this therefore was a way to get information from someone who knows something about it. The day that the revised contract was sent back to R’ Kaufman and R’ Tavger, R’ Tavger called R’ Kaufman saying that Shenkar College had a conference in Japan, and they made the presentation for the murex, and the formula how to dye! Shenkar College essentially open-sourced a recipe via a different avenue which they otherwise would have charged two Rabbis $5,000 plus a cut of the sales! That was how they got started, though that still wasn’t easy, but everything managed to get settled.
Before that, the two of them went fishing. R’ Tavger had a couple of volunteers to go scuba diving, and they went to a part of the Mediterranean to go fishing. They went with a station wagon and filled up the entire wagon with the suits, gas tanks and gear for 3-4 people. The water was very choppy and they couldn’t get anywhere. They then went to Tel Aviv to fish, where their efforts were fruitless. They then went up north near Achziv, as a team of 6-7 people, including Baruch Sterman, Joel Guberman, and Ari Greenspan, and had a chance. There was no organization in the setup: two friends made the Shidduch for this fishing arrangement to occur. After six hours, they collected 150 shells, with approval of the Environmental Protection Agency of Israel, which was useful since they showed up on the spot. They took the snails back and R’ Tavger worked on that.
R’ Tavger made himself the first pair and R’ Kaufman had the second. This group then started as Ptil Tekhelet and started developing the idea of making strings for Klal Yisrael. They have done an unusual job to bring something completely new.
In the Charedi community, though, Techeiles is one mitzva that’s difficult to adopt as it’s a very visible change in one’s minhagim. But R’ Yisroel Belsky, who was a friend of R’ Elya Kaufman from years back, and who R’ Kaufman worked alongside at Camp Agudah, would say that he wears the Techeiles due to R’ Eliyahu Tavger and his Maamer on Techeiles, and his Chiddushim on the sugya of Techeiles in the Gemara. And he was impressed and this is the real reason why R’ Belsky wore Techeiles.
Today, in almost every shul and Shteibel you visit, you just might find at least one person wearing Techeiles, thanks in no small part to the endeavors of these two modest, great people.
