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In the Hebrew bible, there's a commandment to put fringes on garments with corners and to put a blue thread in them: דבר אל־בני ישראל ואמרת אלהם ועשו להם ציצת
by fortran77 3y ago
In the Hebrew bible, there's a commandment to put fringes on garments with corners and to put a blue thread in them:
דבר אל־בני ישראל ואמרת אלהם ועשו להם ציצת על־כנפי בגדיהם לדרתם ונתנו על־ציצת הכנף פתיל תכלת
(from "Numbers 15" in common termonology).
Because we don't know the dye that was used 3000 years ago, today most omit the blue thread, but some people claim that they know what it was (see https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/530127/jewish/Tekhelet-The-Mystery-of-the-Long-Lost-Biblical-Blue-Thread.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/530127/jewish...) and wear fringes with blue.
(It's from a cuttlefish, the "chilazon")
Personally, I wear the blue thread, but I don't think we really know for sure what they used back then.
- stanrivers 3y agoOh interesting - is this in any way related to why the Israel flag went with blue?
- relyks 3y agoYep, that and a bunch of ancient Jewish texts mention using blue within religious contexts with spiritual meaning. It's come to be that blue has been considered by Jews as a color that is representative of the Jewish people
- myth_drannon 3y agoAlso, the two lines in the flag are tzitzit (cords) which are supposed to be blue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzitzit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzitzit
- perihelions 3y agoI found a neat photograph [0] of the process of extracting Tyrian purple from Murex snails. There's a remarkable variety of blue pigments that separate out of that, alongside of the famous purple. (Murex snails being a different hypothesis for the source of the forgotten tekheret dye, separate from the cuttlefish one). [0] https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/05/multimedia/05SCI-PURPLE-sub-bzvt/05SCI-PURPLE-sub-bzvt-superJumbo.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/03/05/multimedia/05SCI-... photo from https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/science/archaeology-tyrian-purple-murex.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/science/archaeology-tyria... ("In Israel, a 3,000-Year-Old Purple Factory")
- 082349872349872 3y ago> Because we don't know the dye that was used 3000 years ago, today most omit the blue thread Were I party to that contract, I (being aware of non-english distinctions) would wear any azure/голубой (sky, not ocean, blue), for: a) a colour is specified, neither dye nor pigment. (pedantically, it need not even be a reflective colour, presumably something emissive, eg blue EL wire, would be equally acceptable) b) 15:39 says the colour is meant for the eyes of the wearer, to remind them, so in this case the proper interpretation of "blue" is not even whatever that colour may have been 3'000 years ago, but whatever suggests "tekhelet" to the garment's wearer, today. (in particular, a tritanope ought to be able to wear suitable grey threads) Caveat: I have no hebrew, and english has lost its second person singular. Is the second person in the original singular or plural? In the latter case, (b) would need to be amended to match a community, not a personal, interpretation, and the tritanope should then be less free and more frum. Edit: I think I see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/אתם#Hebrew https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/אתם#Hebrew in there, so it needs to be a community blue. Sucks to be a tritanope, but presumably english monoglots (who don't make the sky/ocean distinction in their basic colours; compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Color-term_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Color-term_hierarch... ) would be fine with any blue.
- argumentumm 3y agoThis argument is in keeping with tradition, well done!
- myth_drannon 3y ago"Chilazon" is snail.