[Avodah] techelet

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 05:10:37PM +0200, Eli Turkel wrote:
:> Not clear to me what the chidush is in this article. The item they found is
:> not tzitzit. We already know that trunculus murex was used to produce dye,
:> based on archaeological evidence of dye factories with murex shells.

: The material that was found was a darker blue than that of ptil techelet.
: This was much closer to black.

But the same murex derived indigo / dibromoindigo mixture for the
dye. Just used differently -- much more of it.

A R' Ari Greenspan of the Amutah commented on RDE's blog
<http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7309929059139673041&postID=6799467053063050128>:
> I was at dr. korens lecture. It was disappointing in my
> estimation. while his science is good his conclusions are mistaken

> what he claimed to have discovered has no bearing on tekhelet.

> 1. it is not tzitzit

> 2 it was found on masada which for most of its usage was roman and not
> jewish so this cloth in no way is jewish.

> 3 it is a small fragment embroidered onto a cloth in his words "found
> near the shul"

> it IS a snail dyed fragment but that is it.

I want to strengthen this point:

RDZK found a patch on a woven garment from Masada. Not a tassle with
a blue string or two. For this dying to have been lesheim mitzvah we
would have to be talking about bigdei kehunah. I don't think there is
a beged kehunah which is mostly white with blue decoration. The only
beged of the 4 begadim that could be tekheiles would be the avneit,
but that's all blue. Do any of the 8 kehunah qualify? And in any case,
why would anyone expect to find the begadim of the kohein gadol at Masada?

And we do know that the murex-derived dye was used for divrei chol,
at least by wealthy non-Jews.

I therefore am eager to hear from RET how R' Dr Koren concluded that
the use was for tekheiles, even if the dye is the one the Amutah (and
before them, Josephus [who wore bidgei kehunah in one period in his life]
and the Arukh) say is the one used for the mitzvos.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It's nice to be smart,
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