Gifts from the Seashore

The tallit is one of the most recognizable of Jewish ritual objects. Though classically white with a broad stripe of black, it can be fashioned in any color, arrayed in any design.

There are only two rules that determine its status: it must be a four-cornered garment and it must have knotted fringes on each corner.

Oh, there is a third: it must have a blue thread braided into its fringes.

The Bible tells us the following:

"Speak to the Children of Israel and bid them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put upon the fringe of each corner a blue thread (tekhelet). And it shall be for you as a fringe, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of G-d, and do them..." (Numbers 15:38-39)

When I was growing up, we would read this commandment about the blue fringes, and wonder, for the fact was, all the fringes we wore were white. That discrepancy (which was explained to us only when we asked) was because the source of the blue dye and the process to make it were lost. It seems that one extended family was charged with guarding the secret formula which they handed down faithfully from generation to generation. But somewhere in the exile, dislocations and exigencies of history, the secret was lost. No one seemed to make a big deal of this, but at least to me, it seemed huge.

To a young and gullible child, the loss of this essential dye was one of those shocking yet intoxicating hints that the rock-solid adult world we were being initiated into was not quite as whole, safe and predictable as we were led to believe. Rather, it was full of challenge, and surprises, and change. That was both a frightening and alluring prospect.

For how many children, I wonder now, over how many generations was this disconnect between sacred expectation and human capacity a coming-of-age moment like it was for me? But that is not the point I wanted to make.

This much we know from the Talmud - that the sacred blue dye was derived from a tiny Mediterranean Sea snail called hilazon. But for centuries, no one knew exactly what that was. Modernity has offered a suggestion: murex trunculus.

This small inter-tidal snail matched the rabbis' descriptions of being the color and texture of the sea. It was readily harvested at various times of the day and year. (Interestingly enough, as seen in the photo above, its stripes even look a bit like those on a contemporary tallit, though I wouldn't make too much of that.)

To make the dye, hundreds of these thumb-sized snails are gathered and cracked open; and from them a pea-sized, yellowish gland is harvested. From this, a clear, viscous liquid is extracted, hardly a promising start to a process of blue-ing. But, when this substance is exposed to the air of the land and the light from the sun, its color begins to turn. First it becomes a deep purple, then ultimately, with more sunlight it changes to a lustrous, majestic blue.

It took vast amounts to dye the priests' clothes their unique blue; and it took vast amounts to supply all male Jews with the blue woolen threads for the center of their fringes.

That we bothered to create this dye for everyone (today we can add women to the male subjects of the commandment) makes a point: that every Jew (and today we can add: every person), no matter their station or profession or wealth, is, in their own way, majestic and worth bothering over.

The gifts we each possess are like the snail's: though always present, they may not be readily accessible. Just as the snail itself is sometimes easily harvested (when the tide is out and the sea bottom exposed) and other times covered over and hidden (when the tide is in), so are our capacities sometimes evident and sometimes hidden. Just as the liquid first looks non-descript but later explodes in color, so our gifts might be mistakenly overlooked and under-estimated but later found to add luster and notable strands of blessing to this lush, variegated but needy world of ours.

The secrets of the blue dye are returning to us. It is now possible to purchase blue fringes on-line or at your local Jewish bookstore. As the secret of the blue dye returns, so may it bring with it an expansive discovery of personal gifts, properly mined and rightly applied to the world, as well. Lord knows we need them.