A tangible reminder
Ki Tetze
Deuteronomy 21:10 - 25:19
In this week's portion, we find a second instruction regarding the wearing of a fringe (here called g'dilim, more commonly tzitzit): "You shall make tassels/twisted cords (g'dilim) on the four corners of your garment. . ." (Deuteronomy 22:12) The more familiar and extended passage about fringes in Numbers 15:37-41 is also familiar as the third section of liturgy known as the Sh'ma.
Jewish tradition attached great importance to the mitzva of the fringe/fringed garment. The evolution of the traditions surrounding the wearing of the tzitzit illustrates how successive generations of Jews both received and reinterpreted a basic observance.
Numbers 15:37-41 tells us several things about the wearing of the fringe, not all of which survive to present-day practice. We learn that the Israelites were supposed to place fringes on the corners of their garments. This seems to suggest that all garments required tzitzit; today, the wearing of tzitzit is restricted to the large prayer shawl (tallit) or the undergarment (arba kanafot or tallit katan) that observant Jews wear at all times to fulfill this mitzva.
Later rabbinic tradition telescoped g'dilim and tzitzit into one observance, but it is tempting to consider that during the biblical period Israelites maintained two separate traditions with regard to the fringe.
One fringe — despite customary Jewish practice, the tzitzit seems the likely candidate — may originally have been a running fringe that went along the entire edge of the garment, much as, in more mundane circumstances, a running fringe often appears along the edge of curtains or bedspreads. This tradition may survive in the gathered knots of fringed material that run along the edge of a tallit today. The other fringe — the g'dilim — seems to have been the original twisted cords/tassels that we today associate with the long knotted fringes on the four corners of the tallit.
A fringe running along the bottom edge of a garment would not have been unusual in the ancient Near East. Archaeological research reveals illustrations of Near Eastern people wearing robe-like garments with fringes along the hem. We also read in the New Testament (Mark 5:25-34) that when someone touched the "hem" (fringe?) of Jesus' garment, Jesus had the sensory association of having been touched on his person.
My teacher Rabbi Ivan Caine referenced biblical scholar Ephraim Speiser's suggestion that in the ancient Near East the fringe of a garment may have been a "personality projection" and that someone could "sign" a legal document by pressing his fringe into wet clay. The conjecture here is that the custom of touching the tzitzit on a tallit to the Torah scroll when ascending the bima for an aliya is a survival of this ancient practice — a Jew, as it were, "signing on" to the message of the Torah by touching the fringe to the parchment.
Regardless of the ubiquity of fringes in the ancient world, the corner fringe may have been unique to Israel. This fringe, with a thread of blue required in both Numbers and Deuteronomy, may have been emblematic of the Israelites' identification as a unique community set apart from other peoples.
The tradition of the blue thread disappeared nearly 2,000 years ago. The mollusk from which the blue dye was extracted apparently became increasingly rare, perhaps extinct, and this would have made it impossible to produce the necessary color. Or the relative rarity of the dye may have made its price exorbitant, leading to a rabbinic ruling that white fringes alone could suffice.
The Torah, of course, had something more in mind than simply a wearing of cultural clothing. We are commanded to wear the fringes "that you may remember and do all My commandments and be holy unto your God." (Numbers 15:39) The tzitzit were to serve not only to identify Israelites, but to recall the implications of that identity: that they were to live in fidelity to God's commandments in a quest to impart holiness to their lives.
It is unfortunate that the wearing of the fringes has today largely been relegated to the tallit alone, since that garment is worn only for prayer, and for most Jews this is, at best, a weekly event. The perpetual presence of the fringes was a tangible reminder that all of life is an opportunity to manifest holiness through an awareness of being in the presence of God.
When Judaism becomes narrowed to the observances of Jewish religion alone, we lose the meaning associated with our understanding that Judaism is a way of life — a system of values that affects our politics, economics, and human relationships — indeed, all facets of society.
While the daily wearing of tzitzit may no longer be the way in which Jews remind themselves of the presence of God in all of life, the significance of the fringes should not be lost on us, as we continue to strive toward fulfilling our charge to become "a kingdom of priests and a holy people." Finding ways to retain identity and focus behavior in godly ways remains a worthy goal.
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