Debate Responses
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“…‘ציידי חלזונות מסולמא דצור עד חיפה’—קו החוף… והרמב״ם כתב רשתות לצוד… מוכרח מקום צידה עיקרי בים… ‘עולה להרים’ לפרקים, אבל עיקר מציאותו בים.”
English: “The trapping area is the Tyre–Haifa coastline. Rambam’s mention of nets proves the main capture was in the sea. Rashi’s ‘to the mountains’ = rare episodes, not the norm.”
📖 Source: תגובה לקונטרס לחלזון במשנת הראשונים, עמ’ 6
R' Yaakov Emden says it's the only place found
Shabbos 26a talks about Chilazon found between Tzur and Haifa. Mounds of murex shells were found there. However, R’ Yaakov Emden in Mitpachas Sefarim 4th perek, says that the chilazon shel Techeiles was found, and that this was the only place where it was found. Also see the Korban Eida in Peirush Yerushalmi, Perek 7 in Shabbos. The above said, the Murex is found everywhere. Therefore, there’s a problem with the murex.
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Emden isn’t charting fish biology; he’s cleaning up sources. He tosses the Kinneret and the Dead Sea – one belongs to Naftali, the other can’t support life – and then he pins the Techeiles operation to the Tyre–Haifa coast, exactly like Shabbos 26a says (trappers from Sulma d’Tzur to Haifa). That’s a map of where the industry ran: boats, guilds, ports, taxes, know-how. It’s not about a decree about where the animal could never live. You can have a local fishery and a wider species range at the same time. This happens all the time in real markets.
So the jump to “see, the chilazon only existed there and not across the Med like Murex trunculus” — that’s overreach. Emden is arguing trade geography and textual accuracy, not a full zoology report. He even blames later hands for swapping bad place names into Zohar prints. This actually is a classic Emden move: he fixes the sources with hard facts, and doesn’t rewrite nature because the Zohar – which he was attacking this whole time – rewrites it.
