New Evidence in the Techeles Wars?

I wrote the following brief note about five or six years ago, having first benefited from a consultation with one Eli Genauer. I never published it, though, a whole lot of other things getting in the way. I was thus happily surprised when I learned of Eli’s appearance (below) here in Seforim Chatter. In his honor, then, I dug up the old note from the archives, and hereby submit it for the oilam.

Readers of this forum are undoubtedly familiar with the battle being waged over the long-lost mitzvah of Techeles, i.e., the substance used to dye the sky-blue string in the Tzitzis.  With the emergence some decades of the murex trunculus snail, and discovery (or rediscovery) of certain methods used in the extraction and production of its dye, the issue has been brought to the attention of the broader Jewish world. An entire literature has developed both in support of, and against, the identification of this particular murex creature as the Chilazon. An impressive array of sources has been marshalled on each side of the debate, each with well-known scholars and Rabbis in their corner. With an explicit Biblical command at stake, the issues implicated by the controversy cannot be overstated.^[1]

It was with some excitement, then, that I appeared to have stumbled upon an important source entirely overlooked by the combatants. In the introduction to the נהרדעא 2008 edition of the Talmud published by Moznaim/Vagshal, there is a special section devoted to Illustrations in the Talmud, and the history of how they became part of our printed Shas. (I became aware of this through the excellent series of articles published on Seforim Blog by Eli Genauer, dealing with the origins of various diagrams printed in the Talmud, Rashi and Tosfos.) In the opening paragraph, the publishers note how a good illustration can be crucial to properly understanding the text. To illustrate the point - illustrating the importance of illustrations, as it were - the publishers write that Rav Hai Gaon himself had drawn a picture of the Chilazon in his commentary to the Mishna in Kelim (12:1). See the attached photograph of the relevant paragraph.

My jaw dropped. Rav Hai Gaon had drawn a picture of the Chilazon? How could this picture not have been used as Exhibit A in the Techeles Wars? For as readers familiar with the literature well know, one of the chief issues in contention is the physical description of the Chilazon. Is it a fish? Is it a snail? Some kind of mollusk? Whatever Rav Hai Gaon had drawn, surely an illustration, from one of the greatest of the Gaonim, would make for an almost irrefutable proof.

I immediately headed to the standard “Yachin u’Boaz” edition of the Mishna on Taharos, where the commentary of R. Hai Gaon can be found printed in the back. The Mishna, of course, does indeed mention the Chilazon: שלשלת של סיטונות טמאה של בעלי בתים טהורה.  אמר רבי יוסי אימתיי בזמן שהוא מפתח אחד אבל אם היו שניים או שקשר חילזון בראשה טמאה.  “A chain used by wholesalers can become tameh, but one used by homeowners will remain tahor. R. Yose said, that is only where the homeowner’s chain has only one link; if it has two links, or it has a chilazon at the end, it can become tameh.” The word chilazon in question here is translated as a link at the end of the chain, either slug-shaped (Danby, Soncino) or snail-shaped (Blackman). (Blackman also suggests the alternate translation, in a footnote, “or screw.”) One can see why an illustration of this artifact would have been useful for identifying the chilazon. However, no illustration appears in R. Hai’s commentary there, nor is there any allusion to any.^[2]

I thus had to turn to the manuscripts. The commentary of R. Hai Gaon to Taharos was first published in Berlin in 1856, by R. Yehuda Rosenberg, in a two-volume set called קובץ מעשי ידי גאונים קדמונים. Another edition, updated with Genizah fragments, was later published in Berlin by the famed מקיצי נרדמים group in 1921.

In both of these editions, as in the standard editions, no reference is made to any illustration. Indeed, to make matters worse, it is evident that R. Hai Gaon actually did include illustrations in his commentary, many times, as can be seen by his frequent use of, after a description of something (as in, for example, 13:2) the words וזה צורתו (“it looks like this.”)

However, as noted by the editors in the 1921 edition, there are no surviving illustrations anywhere in the manuscript. (See the attached photos of the Shaarblatt front page, and commentary to Mishna 12:1 and Mishna 13:2 with the editor’s footnote 2.)

And moreover, even if there were illustrations at one point in time, there is no indication that R. Hai ever drew a picture specifically of the Chilazon.^[3]

I emailed Mois Navon of the P’til Tekhelet organization (mentioned earlier in footnote 1), asking if he knew anything about an illustration of the Chilazon from R. Hai Gaon. If anyone would know of such a dramatic piece of evidence, it would be Navon, an ordained Rabbi and one of the leaders of P’til Tekhelet (not to mention an inventor and computer engineer.) But he had never heard of any such illustration.

What about the Moznaim publishers themselves? Surely, they would know where they had found the illustration? Well…. they seemed to be difficult to reach. After numerous attempts to reach them by telephone, I finally got in touch with someone who identified himself as a son of the founder of the publishing house. He said I could email him the gist of my question, which he would then forward to the appropriate people. I did that, months ago, and heard back – nothing. I also faxed this query and emailed it to every possible contact I could find, and likewise heard back nothing.^[4]

As such, in the absence of any information to the contrary, I am forced to conclude the editors of Moznaim were in error. R. Hai Gaon never did illustrate the Chilazon. This is indeed something of a letdown, as this would-be piece of dispositive evidence proved to be illusory. On the plus side though, this enables both sides to continue the debate, as befits a true מחלקת לשם שמים, in a manner designed להגדיל תורה ולהאדירה.

* Mr. Farkas, an attorney, received his rabbinic ordination from Ner Israel Rabbinical College in 1999. He lives with his family in Cleveland, Ohio. 

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^[1] Good English-language discussions of the topic, both for and against the murex trunculus identification, can be found in numerous popular Torah journals and websites. The P’til Tekhelet organization, which has done more than any other to promote and produce tzitzis with murex techeles, maintains a large library of educational resources on its website. This brief note makes no attempt to proselytize in any direction, and will remain scrupulously bipartisan.

^[2] Artscroll, cleverly, in both its older and new series of Mishna translation, only transliterates the word and does not translate it, even in the footnotes. It might be noted that even its older edition of Kelim only appeared in 2010, much later than the rest of its Mishna series, and well after the Techeles wars had begun.

^[3] The editor of the 1921 edition, R. Yaakov Nachum Epstein, argued that the work was not the product of R. Hai Gaon, but was actually a composite work of many Gaonim. However, it is still known in the standard editions as the commentary of R. Hai. 

^[4] I remind the reader this note was written in 2018; I have not made any further attempt to make contact.