R’ Avigdor Miller on Shlach 5782

Our Royal Symbol

That was the introduction. Now we come to our subject.

At the end of this week’s sedrah, Hakodosh Boruch Hu is talking to the Am Yisroel and He’s teaching them about the mitzvah of tzitzis. וְעָשׂ֨וּ לָהֶ֥ם צִיצִ֛ת עַל־כַּנְפֵ֥י בִגְדֵיהֶ֖ם לְדֹֽרֹתָ֑ם  – You should make fringes on the edges of your garments for all your generations. וְנָֽתְנ֛וּ עַל־צִיצִ֥ת הַכָּנָ֖ף פְּתִ֥יל תְּכֵֽלֶת – and you should add on a psil techeiles, the tzitzis had strings of blue wool originally and the purpose of the blue is royalty.

In ancient times this techeiles, that’s a certain kind of blue – royal blue – was forbidden to anyone except members of the royal family. That’s why it’s called royal blue. Nothing to do with the royal navy. Royal blue means in the olden days, techeiles was worn only by princes; and so Hakodosh Boruch Hu said, וְהָיָ֣ה לָכֶם֘ לְצִיצִת֒ – this shall be your fringes. “Others will wear their own fringes,” Hashem says. “Some may put feathers in their hats. Others will have badges, insignias, and medals. But I, the King of the universe, I confer upon you an eternal sign of royalty, the blue threads of the tzitzis. All day, every day, you’ll be walking around with royal garments.”

Becoming Fashionable

I remember when I was in Europe I was once passing through a town where Jewish glaziers were putting windows into a building. The Jewish glaziers were wearing beards and their tzitzis were flowing in the wind. They were on top of a building – it was a gentile place — and they were putting in glass panes. I was watching those Jews on top of the building and their tzitzis were flowing in the wind; they were proud. I was proud too.

In America, a lot of this pride went away. If you walked among Jews in America you had to have emunah that they were wearing tzitzis because you couldn’t see them. You had to be a big believer! Of course, if you went into the synagogue it was possible to see people who put on taleisim but Orthodox Jews on the street never demonstrated that they wore tzitzis.

Boruch Hashem, it has become a fashion lately among Orthodox Jews to display them. Today if you walk in the better neighborhoods you’ll see men and boys and they have tzitzis hanging out of their pants. It’s frequent to see Orthodox Jews with strings trailing down from under their coats.

And it means royalty! Whatever else tzitzis means, this is number one – we are royalty! Everything else that is included in the mitzvah is built on this idea – that it’s a beged of royalty.