Berachos 6a.

[Tumah]

. . . I agree with Rabbi Samson Hirsch that the tzitzit is the home of the techelet. The techelet is the soul and or spirit of the tzitzit. Without the techelet, the tzitzit is like a body without a soul; perhaps a golem. Or in a more derogatory sense, a zombi: neither alive nor dead; like a Torah-text with no oral spirit. A dead-letter not technically dead. But definitely not alive.


John

I don't really care who you agree with or what you think you know. What the text says is what matters and the text clearly differentiates between the commandment of tzitzis and the commandment of the blue string. And that is consistent with our practice.

 

[John D. Brey]

I don't really care who you agree with or what you think you know. What the text says is what matters and the text clearly differentiates between the commandment of tzitzis and the commandment of the blue string. And that is consistent with our practice.

. . . The text doesn't have a voice, nor even the breath of life. It just sits there on the desk or the coffee table helpless until someone who does have the breath of life, and who does have a a voice, takes up the cause to speak on behalf of the text. . . That's what I'm doing.

My voice (on behalf of the text) may or may not be acceptable to your traditional reading of the text; but it's more alive than the text itself, or the text calcified into orthodox tradition.

As I read the text, and I'll accept any reasonable correction, 15:39 seems to imply that only after the blue thread is added does it fully become a "tzitzit"? The flow of the communication seems to imply that the blue thread is fundamental to the entire purpose of the tzitzit.

I believe great sages in the past have indeed produced golem. And that's an absolutely amazing feat. But a golem isn't the same as a living man. And in my opinion there's a sense in which a Genitile person is a golem, while only a Jew (transformed on the eighth day) is a human in the full spiritual and soulish sense.

The techelet thread is the eighth thread in the zitzit. Without it, the tzitzit is merely a Genitile embellishment of the shameful body of fallen man. With it, the body itself is transformed. It doesn't really need a covering except as a reminder from whence it has come, and gone, and where it has now, finally, arrived.


John

 

[Tumah]

. . . The text doesn't have a voice, nor even the breath of life. It just sits there on the desk or the coffee table helpless until someone who does have the breath of life, and who does have a a voice, takes up the cause to speak on behalf of the text. . . That's what I'm doing.

My voice (on behalf of the text) may or may not be acceptable to your traditional reading of the text; but it's more alive than the text itself, or the text calcified into orthodox tradition.

As I read the text, and I'll accept any reasonable correction, 15:39 seems to imply that only after the blue thread is added does it fully become a "tzitzit"? The flow of the communication seems to imply that the blue thread is fundamental to the entire purpose of the tzitzit.

Your voice may or may not be alive, but it's attached to a brain that has trouble critically reading texts.

According to the way you are reading it, it should say:

"and they shall make tassels (a la Deut. 22:12) on the corners of their garments for generations. And they shall put on the tassels of the corner a blue string. And it shall be for you for tzitzis..."
​

In this rendition, the blue string combined with the tassels is what creates "tzitzis".

But that's not what it says.

38 Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them and they shall make tzitzis on the corners of their garments for generations. And they shall put on the tzitzis of the corner, a blue string.

39 And it shall be for you for tzitzis, and you shall see it and you shall remember all the commandments of G-d...​

If the blue string is a fundamental part of what makes it "tzitzis" then you can't put a blue string on the tzitzis because it's not tzitzis until you put the blue string. The last words of verse 38 imply that the blue string is something you add to tzitzis, not something that creates the status of "tzitzis". You admit this when you try to call something "fully tzitzis", implying the basic status of tzitzis has already been fulfilled before the addition of the blue string.

I believe blah blah blah

Whatever

 

[John D. Brey]

Your voice may or may not be alive, but it's attached to a brain that has trouble critically reading texts.

According to the way you are reading it, it should say:

"and they shall make tassels (a la Deut. 22:12) on the corners of their garments for generations. And they shall put on the tassels of the corner a blue string. And it shall be for you for tzitzis..."
​

In this rendition, the blue string combined with the tassels is what creates "tzitzis".

But that's not what it says.

38 Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them and they shall make tzitzis on the corners of their garments for generations. And they shall put on the tzitzis of the corner, a blue string.

39 And it shall be for you for tzitzis, and you shall see it and you shall remember all the commandments of G-d...​

If the blue string is a fundamental part of what makes it "tzitzis" then you can't put a blue string on the tzitzis because it's not tzitzis until you put the blue string. The last words of verse 38 imply that the blue string is something you add to tzitzis, not something that creates the status of "tzitzis". You admit this when you try to call something "fully tzitzis", implying the basic status of tzitzis has already been fulfilled before the addition of the blue string.


Whatever

. . . What you dissed, with the phrase "whatever," is fundamentally important to my argument. . . A man is a man at birth. But not a Jew until the eighth day is added to his existence.

A tzitzit may be a tzitzit, as a man is a man, before the eighth thread is added to its existence. But we, you and I, should not think of it as a fully Jewish tzitzit until the eighth string comes, like the eighth day comes.

And with that statement Rabbi Hirsch is probably all thumbs.


John