Presence

As I'm trying to get back into the whole blogging thing, I thought I'd breifly outline why I don't wear techeles, despite the fact that they would quite handsomly match my blue Shabbos shirt.

It comes down to a question of tradition (mesorah). To me, the issue of techeles strikes at the very heart of how one views halacha. Some feel that the evidence in support of one animal or another as the true source of techeles is sufficient grounds to reinstate the practice; others hold that since we lost the tradition, there's nothing we can do to bring it back. I'd be in the latter camp, with one small addition: by bringing back techeles you're altering the framework of halacha.

Halacha works on tradition; we do the things we do not because they are written in some book somewhere, but because our parents learned from their parents who learned from their parents (etc., etc....) that this is what we do, and how we do it. To throw that to the wind, in my mind, is making a gigantic statement, tantamount to a paradigm shift in the nature of Halacha.

I've always been a bit confused about R. Schachter's opinion on this matter. A number of years ago, I asked R. Schachter if recent discoveries of texts indicating that silka probably means wood chips, not beets, had any effect on the halacha of ain techina b'ochlin. He answerd emphatically that it had no effect whatsoever; once the Halacha was established and became part of the tradition, textual resolutions that came to light later on mattered not a whit. So I found it strange that R. Schachter deviates in the case of techeles, not only from the position of R. Soloveitchik, but from the ideal of mesorah in Halacha. And yes, I understand many a distinction could be made between an issur and a kiyum; I'm looking at it from an idealogical perspective, which I would think, overall, would carry more weight. Brisker chakiras aside, I'd like to think this is the real reason the Rav was against techeles.

And of course, this post wouldn't be complete with out the requsite link to Rupture and Reconstruction.