Reply To: Techeiles 🔵❎🐌☑️🐟

In honor of Techeiles being in both last week’s and this week’s parsha:

When we left off approximately a year ago we were debating whether there is a possibility that Techeiles is not blue. There are several indications of this.

1)None of the Talmudic Era sources say that Techeiles was blue. The only information that we are given is in the form of comparisons to the sea the grass the trees the sky the throne of glory the saphire stone the”light” the rainbow etc. Many mefarshim (e.g. Rashi, Ritva, Kli Yakar…)explain this as a progressive comparison i.e. Techeiles is not Domeh to the saphire the throne or the sky, it is only Domeh to the first step which is in turn Domeh to the next step and so on. These mefarshim explicitly say that it is not Domeh to the latter steps.(And the same Chacham Tzvi that said that you can say “Domeh” even if it’s not so Domeh, said that you can’t say that it’s not Domeh if it is Domeh.) Now lets take the set of comparisons mentioned in the midrash on Tehillim. There are two different versions, both of which have the grass and the trees as early steps. Now if Techeiles is blue, then in effect these mefarshim are saying that blue is Domeh to green but not to blue. If Techeiles would be some shade of green then it would make sense that the comparisons start with green and go to blue. (Granted one of the versions says that Techeiles is Domeh to the sea which is Domeh to the grass, but as several people said before, the sea can be green.)

2)I have yet to find any of the classic commentators on either Chumash or Gemara use a term that definitively means blue. They all use ambiguous terms such as yarok or various comparisons. The only Rishon that I have seen who definitively says that it is blue is the Rambam in Hilchos Tzitzis 2:1 where he uses the word kachol.(Although it is mashma from Tosafos in Chullin 47b that it is blue.) If all these other Rishonim held that it was blue why didn’t they say “kachol” like the Rambam and like Rashi in Chulin(ibid) instead of using a word that can refer to at least three different colors? It seems that there was a machlokes as to what color it was, because there are those who do compare Techeiles directly to the sky etc. Unless they are arguing over what the Gemara means when it says “sky”. Furthermore, It seems as if the Mileches Shlomo understood R’ Shlomo Sirilov as saying that Techeiles is green. And the mefarshim explain “karti” as yarok which is not very helpful if the mishna is distinguishing between Techeiles and karti and you explain them both as yarok yet you mean two different colors. Whereas if Techeiles was green it would merely be using the same word to describe two shades of the same color much the same as what we do in English.