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Bottom Line
This 2001 exchange lays out one of the more substantial early critiques of the Murex identification. Seth Mandel does not argue that Murex is impossible; his position is that the evidence had not reached the level needed to re-establish a mitzvah whose practical mesorah had been lost. He distinguishes this from cases like kosher locusts, where at least one community preserved an actual living tradition.
His main objections are cumulative. The archaeological evidence proves a major ancient Murex dye industry, but not necessarily that the dye was Techeiles rather than royal purple. The UV discovery produces blue indigo, but that raises the kala ilan problem because the color-producing molecule is the same as plant indigo. He also argues that the Gemara’s descriptions — including the rarity of the Chilazon — do not naturally fit Murex, and he raises a practical halachic concern that if the blue strings are not genuine Techeiles, they may not count as lavan either.
Micha Berger pushes back on nearly every point. He questions whether the mesorah was ever completely lost, pointing to recurring identification of Techeiles with purpura; argues that chemically similar dyes can still contain different accompanying substances that might matter for the Gemara’s tests; and suggests that chilazon need not mean one modern biological species, so several related Murex species could potentially qualify. He also argues that the Gemara’s descriptions may be descriptive rather than a strict halachic identification checklist.
Bottom line: Mandel’s case is fundamentally a burden-of-proof argument: because the mesorah was no longer operative, archaeology, chemistry and textual parallels had to do more than make Murex plausible — they had to establish it convincingly enough to justify changing practice. Berger’s reply challenges that standard and argues that the surviving textual, archaeological and chemical evidence may itself amount to a meaningful continuation or reconstruction of the identification. The real dispute is therefore not simply whether Murex fits individual simanim, but how much proof is required before a lost mitzvah-identification can be restored in practice.
Main Text
Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 19:48:48 +0000
From: “Seth Mandel” <sethm37@hotmail.com>
Subject: [none]
I had intended to post on Avodah a list of my responses to the identification of t’kheles with Murex trunculus indigo dye. My thanks and congratulations to R. Mendel Singer, who in his post last week not only covered most of my points, but did it better than I should have been able to.
There are just a few things I would like to add.
First of all, as R. Micha has noted, the subject has become somewhat of a “religious” belief by certain individuals and groups. Some of those who wear the P’til T’khelet dye and some Bratslave chasidim view it as almost a holy campaign to convince all Jews to start wearing their t’kheles. So it is proper for anyone writing about it to reveal his own biases. I am an agnostic regarding this subject. I first investigated the subject some 25 years ago, and have gone back to it 5 times since, and I am still waiting to be convinced.
Back 25 years ago what was available were the 3 things published by the Radzyner Rebbe, R. Leiner, and R. Herzog’s work. I had access to a library that had them all, and waded my way through them. In line with R. Micha’s comment about religious biases on the subject, it is and was clear that the Radzyner Rebbe was a true believer, and his material naturally reflected his belief that he had rediscovered t’kheles. R. Herzog, OTOH, attempted to objectively discuss all the pros and cons for identifying the hilazzon and t’kheles. I still recommend his work above all others for anyone who wants to see an analysis of all of the issues. The proof of his objectivity was that he himself never produced t’kheles dye, despite the fact that he had settled in his work on a certain kind of mollusk, Janthina, as the most likely candidate. He specifically considered the Radzyne t’kehles and murex trunculus dyes and rejected them, both for several reasons. [The P’til Tekhelet brochure misleadingly states that he “realized that all the evidence pointed to Murex trunculus as the most likely cnadidate for the tekhelet source. Two problems, however, prevented Rav Herzog from positively identifying that snail with the Chilazon.” This is an example of where their status as “true believers” have led them to exaggerate. When you read R. Herzog’s work you see that there are more than two problems that he had with the Murex trunculus, and he never thought that “all the evidence” pointed to that identification; just that the work of Lacaze-Duthiers and other chemists convinced him that the Murex trunculus and brandaris and Thais haemastoma were the sources of the royal purple dyes.] The Radzyne chasidim made claims that R. Herzog clandestinely wore Radzyne t’kheles on his tzitzis, but this remains an unconfirmed chasidishe mayse, since he never did so in public, and his widow never publicly stated that he did so clandestinely.
This leads me to a general comment. A case where one group of Jews and its talmidei hakhomim have preserved a tradition about something (e.g. the Teimanim with the kinds of grasshoppers/locusts that are kosher) is, to my mind, completely different from a case where NO Jewish group has preserved a masorah. In the former case, one can argue about whether the group’s traditions are trustworthy and whether members of other Jewish groups would be permitted to rely on it. However, in the latter case, there is an agreement among all Jews who observe Torah that we DO NOT KNOW. Quite apart and separate from the position of the Beis haLevi as preserved by RYBS that we cannot and may not create a masorah where there is none, at the very least we would need clear and convincing proof for the identification. There was no clear and convincing proof at the time of R. Herzog; there were just a number of possibilities, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
So when the movement arose in the 80’sto identify Murex trunculus as the source of t’kheles, and spread to several rabbis at YU, I was very interested to learn what had changed from the time of R. Herzog. The answer given by P’til Tekhelet and by Rabbis Lamm and Schachter was 1) chemical discoveries, and 2) archeological discoveries.
The chemical discovery was the discovery by Prof. Otto Elsner with Ehud Spanier that trunculus dye, normally blue-purple, is converted into pure blue by exposure to ultraviolet radiation. The major problem with that is that the dye is converted to pure indigo, the same chemical that is obtained from the indigofera tinctoria plant. It is obvious that if the dyes are chemically the same, then the method the g’moro gives of distinguishing them will never work, regardless of the chemical details of how the test is supposed to work. So the discover was a ma’aseh listor.
The archeological evidence was the discovery of massive piles of Murex and Thais shells, all broken near the gland that would produce the blue-purple dye. But this evidence was not new. As P’til Tekhelet notes, the original discoveries were made in 1864, and Dedekind in 1898 deduced that the dye produced was the royal purple. R. Herzog know all about this, and the only thing new since his time was that more piles were discovered.
Now P’tel Tekhelet makes a big issue about all of these piles, the dye industry, and the fact that t’kheles was mentioned as coming from northern Israel, near Tyre. They mention the well-known historical fact that Tyrian purple was a very expensive and sought-after dye, and was at certain periods under Roman imperial control. But they fail to discuss some of the implications of this. The historical evidence predicts the archeological discovery of huge dye facilities with the source of the dye nearbye. But we are looking for t’kheles, not royal purple. The Jewish dye industry would have been small (remember, fake t’kehles was rampant, so a lot of the frume Yidden who wore t’kheles were sold a fake). If, in fact, t’kheles was produced at the same facilities that produced royal purple, we would expect to find almost no evidence of it. The quantities of it would have been miniscule in comparison to the royal purple, unless t’kheles was a dye commonly used by gentiles. That is possible, but there is no evidence. The g’moro certainly gives no indication that t’kheles is a common dye used by gentiles. If the t’kheles were produced at separate, Jewish facilities, they have not yet been discovered, and since they were likely small, they may never be.
P’til also makes much of the fact that the Murex brandaris and Thais haemastoma shells are found together, apart from the Murex trunculus. So the former were both used in the royal purple, and the latter in something else: it must be t’kheles. But the Murex trunculus produces a beautiful purple-blue dye, and when you gather Murex brandaris you also get a lot of Murex trunculus, so for sure the dyers would have used them for some dye. T’kheles? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the quantities of the shells are far beyond what would have been required for the Jewish t’kheles industry. So at the end of the day, we are where we were at the time of R. Herzog, and the reaction the g’dolim at that time was a refusal to start wearing any sort of t’kheles dye, because there is NO convincing evidence. I am not going to say that the g’moro’s simanim prove that Murex trunculus indigo cannot be t’kheles, but they certainly don’t prove that that it was, and as R. Singer has shown, it is a big stretch to reconcile the g’moro with Murex trunculus.
We still have no conclusive proof of any sort about what constitutes t’kheles. All of R. Herzog’s points remain open.
Now to R. Micha’s comments:
<FYI, I wear murex trunculus derived indigo on my tzitzis. I do so because I feel the identification likely enough to warrant spending the money — not that I feel it is vadai. As the Radziner Rebbe asked, what do you lose if you’re wrong?)>
A ta’ana argued at great length by the Radzyner Rebbe: why not wear it?
But, R. Micha, the g’dolim of the time did NOT wear it, despite the Radzyner. None of them, and there were giants at that time. The Chofetz Chayyim, R. Chayyim Brisker, the Alte of Kelm, of Slabodka, of Novardok, the heads of Telz, Mir, Slabodka, Lomzhe, Novardok, R. Yitkhok Elkhonon in the misnagdishe velt. None of the many chasidishe g’dolim.
I do not claim to know their reasons, but LAD there is a simple one: if you are wearing the wrong color, you have lost the mitzva of lovon. There are two shittos among the rishonim about what lovon is. The Rambam says it is the exact color of the garment on which the tzitzis are to be hung.
Ashk’nazi rishonim say it is colorless: undyed wool. If you died some of the hutim of tzitzis red, for example, and put them on a white beged, you would not have lovon, nor would you have t’kheles. In the case of the modern t’kehles, if you dye one/two/four strings with the dye, then you have one/two/four strings that are not lovon, and if they are not t’kheles, then you have no mitzva at all. I agree. But at least they should match. They match Murex as closely as they match cuttlefish or octopodes or Janthina, and match many species of fish much better. The only thing special about Murex is that we know produces a good dye.
<we’re only warned about a single alternative dye of that color. Chazal knew of the murex dye. They didn’t warn about tzitzis dyed with indigo made from the murex when they warned about kala ilan. If it isn’t techeiles, why not?>
As I believe R. Singer has since pointed out, you would have to be crazy/m’shuggener/a member of xxx [fill in the blanks: MO, RW, L, Tikkun] to make fake t’kheles with the Murex, if it indeed is not t’kehles. The Murex dye industry was controlled by powerful merchants even before imperial control, and they operated like mafiosi in the time of the g’moro: you open up a Murex dye operation, and very unfortunate things would happen to your workers and equipment. Totally coincidentally, of course. That’s the way business operated during the late lamented Roman Empire. Besides, you would need 8,000 snails for one gram of dye. A money losing operation, for sure, besides being dangerous to your health and during some times illegal. The only way an honest cheat could make fake t’kheles dye AND make money at it was using the old reliable plant source. Very low tech, too: just take some leaves of the indigo plant, put them in water until they rot, add some lye. Very cheap, very reliable, and indistinguishable, according to the g’moro, from the real thing.
Yes, very rare, but not rare in the sense that it is continuously present at a low frequency. A Bes Din Qatlonis would not “kill” people by 10% continuously every year. Once every 70 years would mean that the hillazon is more available at periodic intervals, even if not 70 years exactly, even if it was present to a lesser degree at other times. The cuttlefish of the Radzyner, the Murex of P’til, are available all the time, with no known cycle at all. At least R. Herzog’s Janthina lived in the middel of the sea, and only were available on shore after a big storm. Not so the Murex snails, who live at the sea bottom and are never blown ashore.
Finally, what to me is very convincing. Why did R. Herzog conclude that the Radzyner was wrong? To a large extent because he discovered that the Radzyner t’kheles was Prussian blue, and could be made from any organic source. Yes, you could make it from squid ink, but you could also make it from squid, snails, snakes and steaks. So why was the g’moro insistent that it was rare because you could only make it from the hillazon? P’til Tekheles makes a lot of this proof.
But they fail to point out that Murex trunculus is not the only source of indigo dye. Murex brandaris and Thais haemastoma normally give dibromide indigo, which is purple, but is converted to pure indigo by ultraviolet radiation, just like from Murex trunculus. So according to P’til, you would have three recognizably different species that produce the same dye. Are you then to claim that any of the species are the elusive hillazon? I would need a lot more proof before I would do what all the European g’dolim at the time of the Radzyner would not.
Seth Mandel
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 16:10:04 EDT
From: Joelirich@aol.com
Subject: Re: Tcheilet
2 questions
1. Did anyone ever wonder about the medrash that korach dressed his followers in bgadim that were kulo tcheilet? Where did he get the money or the tcheilet???
2. R’ Mandel mentions the lack of usage by the gedolim in the previous incarnation of this controversy. Does anyone know if they stated the specifics of their objections? What do those who wear it today do with R’ Mandel’s “white only” objection?
SS Joel Rich
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 09:57:57 -0400
From: Micha Berger <micha@aishdas.org>
Subject: Re: Tcheilet
On Fri, Oct 05, 2001 at 07:48:48PM +0000, Seth Mandel wrote:
This leads me to a general comment. A case where one group of Jews and its talmidei hakhomim have preserved a tradition about something … is, to my mind, completely different from a case where NO Jewish group has preserved a masorah….
Your argument is interesting, because it answers a question my father raised over Shemini Atzeres: Would RYBS argue that a kehillah that couldn’t get their hands on an esrog for a couple of generations should not bench lulav and esrog now that they can?
This point is basically in debate between the Maharil and R’ Chaim Brisker (at least according to RYBS’s version of his objection to Radziner techeiles). Oddly enough, the Maharil, a man often described here as the paragon of one who only uses texts as secondary to mimetics, is the one who paskened based on the assumption that techeiles might be identified any day. Whereas RCB, the textualist fount of Brisker chumros, concluded that without a mesorah, we can’t use science to recreate one. (IOW, that science isn’t sevarah, but an outside chachmah.)
In either case, the Maharil does not take your approach.
Also, is it so clear that the mesorah was entirely lost? Yes, no one seemed convinced enough to actually act on the idenfication. But as RBS lists in the reply his web page:
7. Equating tekhelet with purpura and the color of purpura.
The Chavot Ya’ir in his M’kor Chayim … The Shiltei haGiborim … The Musaf la’Aruch … Midrash haGadol from Yemen …, and the Aruch…
The idea that techeiles and royal purple have the same source recurs throughout the period in which techeiles wasn’t worn. One could argue that at least a theoretical, if not practical, mesorah did exist.
The major problem with that is that the dye is converted to pure indigo, the same chemical that is obtained from the indigofera tinctoria plant. It is obvious that if the dyes are chemically the same, then the method the g’moro gives of distinguishing them will never work, regardless of the chemical details of how the test is supposed to work….
Actually, the dyes are NOT chemically the same.
The particular compound that causes the color is the same. However, the dye is a mixture, containing numerous other sorts of molecules. AIUI, the other chemicals are not centrifuged off. Including the bromine that is taken off of the indigo. Which is why I suggested that it might be the difference that a fermentation-based test would pick up.
I never checked, though, if a significant amount of the bromine floating around in the solution ends up on the wool. And also, if that is necessarily true, or if older ways of applying the dye would hace left more bromine on the strings, thereby making them more proof to the test. This last point might end up significant — it could be that in order for techeiles to be kosher, it must have some of the bromine left in to guarantee the right level of colorfastness!
Now to R. Micha’s comments:
…
I agree. But at least they should match. They match Murex as closely as they match cuttlefish or octopodes or Janthina, and match many species of fish much better. The only thing special about Murex is that we know produces a good dye.
But isn’t that alone sufficient proof? (Given what I write below.)
As I believe R. Singer has since pointed out, you would have to be crazy/m’shuggener/a member of xxx [fill in the blanks: MO, RW, L, Tikkun] to make fake t’kheles with the Murex, if it indeed is not t’kehles…
And yet, lema’aseh, we find murex shells. Wouldn’t this argue in favor of a strong reason to make such dye, one strong enough to drive people to mesiras nefesh?
Yes, very rare, but not rare in the sense that it is continuously present at a low frequency. A Bes Din Qatlonis would not “kill” people by 10% continuously every year. Once every 70 years would mean that the hillazon is more available at periodic intervals…
Intervals, not necessarily periodic ones. In any case, RBS’s web page addresses this point. It would seem that forever the reason, murex was farmed by the dying industry at spaced-out intervals. That’s what the mounds of shells look like. His suggestion that the reason is due to over-harvesting is just a guess, but the maskanah seems to be borne out.
But they fail to point out that Murex trunculus is not the only source of indigo dye. Murex brandaris and Thais haemastoma normally give dibromide indigo…
Which simply could mean that “chilazon” refers to more than one species of that family. I see no reason to assume that a given Hebrew word refers to a single species, the entire concept of species as used today for taxonomy isn’t muchrach. By parallel, there are numerous species that are kosher for “aravah”/”hoshanah”. I would therefore think that m. brandaris and th. haesmastoma are equally chilazon, and their dyes are equally kosher.
At this point I’m going to assume that people interested enough to be following this thread read RBS’s full reply at <http://www.tekhelet.com/ResponseJHCS.htm>. His post here really doesn’t do his arguments justice. If you didn’t, you might as well skip the rest of this email; since the reply is already available electronically, I am going to comment on the article without posting it in full.
Dr. Singer … states that “the strongest criteria for identifying the chilazon come from the Gemara Menachot” and specifically from the braita found in Menachot 44a. This assertion is very difficult to reconcile with the fact that most rishonim, in their discussion of the topic, do not quote this braita….
This is a stronger form of the same argument that I brought. The criterion given are not a halachic definition that uniquely identify the chilazon, but rather an aggadic discourse on the meaning of chilazon-ness.
But then RBS writes:
As mentioned, the braita provides general descriptive information regarding the chilazon. It would make most sense to describe the outward appearance of the organism before going on to its internal appearance, especially given that internal examination requires painstaking procedures…
This paragraph assumes that the the gemara /is/ out to identify the chilazon for pragmatic purposes. I think the original comment is sufficient to address the point of whether the description need be taken to be that of the chilazon’s body rather than a non-unique aspect of its shell. Taking this tack is inconsistent.
The following line about shell fouling is IMHO very important, as it shows a makor for this peshat in the gemara:
Indeed, this interpretation is not new; the commentary on the Sefer Yitzirah attributed to the Raavad similarly understands this passage.
The fact that it’s not unique to any particular snail plays into how I understood the gemara when I first looked at it.
2. The murex Trunculus is not a fish.
…
The Oxford dictionary in the first entry under Fish defines it:
Usage of the English word fish is totally irrelevent.
But to get back to RMES’s point:
First, a limited definition of the word dag would be a setirah with the description of it having a nartiq.
OTOH, it would make sense to spell out the fact that the snail in question is a sea creature, dag in the broader sense. Since there are also land and amphibious snails. In fact the identification with “sefunei temunei chol” might otherwise lead one to believe the chilazon is amphibious.
5. The chemical tests to determine true tekhelet.
…. One thing is clear though: a sample subjected to the described procedures that does not fade, passes the tekhelet test…
Is it so clear? I thought this was a da’as yachid found by the Tif’eres Yisrael, that any sky-blue colorfast dye was kosher.
The fact is, however, that indigo (kala ilan) dyed wool also passed the chemical tests. To reiterate, this is not a problem as far as murex tekhelet is concerned, but rather an academic problem in understanding the Rambam and the Gemara….
Much like the gemara’s hard-to-understand discussion of how to test for besulim.
-mi
— Micha Berger Time flies… micha@aishdas.org … but you’re the pilot. http://www.aishdas.org – R’ Zelig Pliskin Fax: (413) 403-9905
