I was pleased to finally finish this one; it took me far too long to write. Here is my Ke Tetse commentary. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah for today is Ke Tetse or “when you go out” and covers Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 10 through chapter 25, verse 19. You know, as a young congregation, there are still many among us who notice all the things we do – things we take for granted – and they wonder, “What’s up with that? Why do you do that?” And this week’s parashah allows me the opportunity to address one such issue, which comes to us in:
Deuteronomy 22:12
Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear.
This is an abbreviated version of the original command given to Moses in Numbers. We’ll find this to be familiar because it is part of our weekly prayer service, and there is more detail offered here in:
Numbers 15:38-41
Speak to the children of Israel and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, putting a thread of blue upon the corner fringe. They will be a fringe for you to look upon and remember all the L-RD’s commands and do them. And that you follow not after your own eyes, after which you used to go astray; that you may remember and do all my commandments and be holy to your God. I am the L-RD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the L-RD your God.
To understand this tradition, we must first understand its context. As related in the preceding verses of Numbers, an Israelite was found to be gathering wood on the Sabbath, the day the L-RD commanded no regular work be done. And the penalty was severe; the man was stoned to death. But almost immediately, the L-RD offers this command to put fringes on the corners of garments as a reminder of His commands.
Now, I’m sure most of you have forgotten something you were supposed to remember at one point or another. For me, sometimes, it seems like it’s a daily occurrence. And if you’re forgetful, what is some common advice?
That’s right. “Why not tie a string around your finger to help you remember?” It’s not a big stretch to suggest that this old nugget of advice had its origins in this command of the L-RD. The concept of a visual reminder of a promise is nothing new; the same concept is the reason people wear wedding bands when they get married; as a visual reminder that they are vowed to someone and no longer available to anyone else.
So that’s what the tzitzit are, basically; a visual reminder of the L-RD’s commands and our promise to follow them. Now, we know what the L-RD commands here; to make tassels or fringes on the four corners of our garments as a reminder of His commandments. But beyond the command to do so, how does one fulfill this command? For example, how many threads should one use in these fringes? Beyond the thread of blue, what color should they be? How should they be tied? How long should they be? For most of these questions, the Torah is silent.
That means there is some freedom in how to observe this command, so long as you observe it. One source a person can turn to for examples in observance of this command, of course, is Jewish tradition and practice.
Now, one must be cautious in this area. This is not an endorsement of all rabbinic traditions or everything that the rabbis teach. Yet if one is searching for a “how do I do this” response, certainly one can find some examples as a guideline in this area, within the realm of Jewish tradition and practice.
Look at my prayer shawl and fringes a moment. On each corner, there are eight strands; seven white and one blue.
The blue thread is significant. It is the only thread singled out in the Torah command, and the word used for blue here is t’chellet. There is more than one school of thought on the meaning of t’chellet blue.
One school of thought insists that t’chellet blue is made from the blood of a creature the Torah calls the chilazon. This rare fish at some point was thought to have gone extinct and the use of the thread of blue in the fringes, for many, passed out of practice with it. However, some Jewish scholars believe a rare fish found in the ocean near Israel, called the cuttlefish, matches the description of the chilazon and have reintroduced the use of the thread of blue through cuttlefish blood.
Another school of thought holds that t’chellet blue was derived from a rare type of snail, and so you’ll come across fringes made with that kind of t’chellet blue also. A few – such as Karaite Jews – believe that any blue will do the trick because the Torah does not refer to a specific dye.
No matter how one interprets t’chellet blue, however, its meaning is also a source of various views. Some teach that the blue was chosen to remind people of the ocean, which in turn reminds them of the sky, which then in turn reminds them of God’s throne, which finally reminds them of the L-RD’s commands. Among Messianics, the blue thread is a reminder of the Messianic promise, and therefore of the Messiah Yeshua.
Now, the rest of the threads are white; typically, they will be white, although if the main prayer shawl is another color – black, for example – then the rest of the strands would be the color of the main garment. No matter what fabric the prayer shawl is made of, the tzitizit are to be made of wool.
The white strands are typically forty inches in length, while the blue strand is to be sixty inches, so it can be the thread used for winding. Also, the blue strand only needs to be dyed blue on about half to two-thirds of its length, since it needs to be white on the other end, so that when these four threads are doubled over for tying and winding, there are seven strands of white and only one strand of blue.
The next area for diversity is in how to tie the tzitzit. Mine are wound in an Ashkenazi style. What that means is this: we start the tying of the tzitzit with a double knot, then use the t’chellet blue thread to wrap around the other strands several times, then do a double knot again, then go back to windings. This pattern repeats for a set of four windings and ends in a final, fifth double-knot. The end result of this is that in Hebrew the numerical value of the word tzitzit is 600. There are then five knots and eight strands, which added up gives you a total of 613, the number of commands in the Torah.
I called this style I use the Ashkenazi style. There are two main styles: Ashkenazi and Sephardic. For those who don’t know, Ashkenazi refers primarily to the Jews of eastern Europe – Germany and parts of northern France, primarily – while Sephardic refers primarily to the Jews of Spain and Portugal.
The Ashkenazi style of tzitzit tying follows a pattern that also includes four sets of windings: seven winds in the first set, then eight windings, then eleven, then thirteen windings. That totals thirty-nine windings. In biblical Hebrew, thirty-nine is the numeric value of the Deuteronomy 6:4 phrase, “ADONAI echad” or “The L-RD is one.” This is how I’ve done my windings.
The Sephardic style uses the pattern of ten windings, followed by five, then six, and then five. This pattern follows the Hebrew numeric value of the name of the L-RD: yod-hey-vav-hey. Ten, five, six and five. Either way, the point is to remind the wearer of the L-RD, and this turn his attention toward God and His commands.
So, there are some ideas on how to tie these fringes and why to tie them that way. Yet some of you may be saying to yourselves, “That all sounds good, but it sounds like a lot of human tradition to me. Where is Yeshua in all this?”
Again, let’s be clear: there is freedom for those of us who are Messianic in how to tie the fringes, since how to do it – other than including a thread of blue – is not included in the written Torah. These examples were just that – examples, taken from the traditions of thousands of years of Jewish customs – which do not hold the same weight as Scripture, obviously, but which do have some good ideas and symbolism.
Yet where is Messiah in the fringes? Everywhere. To understand this, first we must reiterate the point that one of the titles for the Messiah is the Living Torah. Since the fringes point us toward the Torah, ultimately they are pointing us toward the Messiah Yeshua who, like the cord of blue that binds all the other strands together, is the force that binds the written Torah together, gives it form and shape and substance and meaning. The very act of looking on the fringes should not only remind us of the commands of the Torah, but also of the one who is the Living Torah – Messiah Yeshua.
That being said, there is deeper significance in the connection between the fringes and the Messiah. There is an episode that will reveal to us that Yeshua Himself wore tzitzit, and they played a role in His ministry. We read this in:
Luke 8:43-48
And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. “Who touched me?” Yeshua asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.” But Yeshua said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.” Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
In the NIV, the key phrase is “she touched the edge of His cloak.” However, the New Living Translation says, “she touched the fringe of his robe,” and that agrees with the Complete Jewish Bible, which translates the phrase in question this way: “[the woman] came up behind him and touched the tzitzit on his robe; instantly her hemorrhaging stopped.”
Now, this is a nice story, but it raises the question… where did she get the idea? Well, this Jewish woman must have known her Tenakh, because this is what is written in:
Malachi 4:2
But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.
One of the titles for the Messiah is the “Son of righteousness” and the promise is that this Son will have healing in his “wings.” One of the nicknames for the fringes of a prayer shawl is “wings.” So you can see that she took this promise quite literally and her faith has healed her. But was it faith just in the tzitzit? No, it was faith in the words of the L-RD through the prophet Malachi. And again, who is Yeshua? He is the Word of the L-RD, the Living Torah, so ultimately it is her faith in Yeshua that is praised here.
Of course, for every good and positive command, what always follows close behind? The enemy looks for ways to take the good things the L-RD commands and makes them a source of sin. Did this happen with the tzitzit?
It did, as we read in:
Matthew 23:1-5
Then Yeshua said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long;
It’s not a bad thing to wear tzitzit, it’s obedient; Yeshua Himself wore them. But as with many things, one can go overboard or make the practice a source of attention-getting, a way to look that much holier than the next guy.
That’s what Yeshua is referring to here; tzitzit are a reminder of the L-RD’s commands for who? For the one wearing them. So they really don’t need to be extremely long; they don’t even need to be visible to others.
Rather than a large prayer shawl like this, which is appropriate for Shabbat service, one could wear a small tallit katan, which means small prayer shawl, with fringes tied and worn under the outer garments, so that only the wearer knows it’s there.
The point, therefore, is to remind yourself – not others – and that is what the Pharisees of Yeshua’s day were ignoring; they wore their tassels extra long and always visible, to draw the attention of others, to be seen wearing them, rather than to simply wear them – as the command states – as a reminder. A reminder of the L-RD’s commands, so we do not forget to obey them – and also of He who spoke those commands to Moses at Sinai – the Living Torah Himself, the Messiah Yeshua.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: Ke Tetse, Torah commentary
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Torah.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
My 2009 Ke Tetse Commentary
September 1st, 2009 by Craig Hansen
I was pleased to finally finish this one; it took me far too long to write. Here is my Ke Tetse commentary. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah for today is Ke Tetse or “when you go out” and covers Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 10 through chapter 25, verse 19. You know, as a young congregation, there are still many among us who notice all the things we do – things we take for granted – and they wonder, “What’s up with that? Why do you do that?” And this week’s parashah allows me the opportunity to address one such issue, which comes to us in:
This is an abbreviated version of the original command given to Moses in Numbers. We’ll find this to be familiar because it is part of our weekly prayer service, and there is more detail offered here in:
To understand this tradition, we must first understand its context. As related in the preceding verses of Numbers, an Israelite was found to be gathering wood on the Sabbath, the day the L-RD commanded no regular work be done. And the penalty was severe; the man was stoned to death. But almost immediately, the L-RD offers this command to put fringes on the corners of garments as a reminder of His commands.
Now, I’m sure most of you have forgotten something you were supposed to remember at one point or another. For me, sometimes, it seems like it’s a daily occurrence. And if you’re forgetful, what is some common advice?
That’s right. “Why not tie a string around your finger to help you remember?” It’s not a big stretch to suggest that this old nugget of advice had its origins in this command of the L-RD. The concept of a visual reminder of a promise is nothing new; the same concept is the reason people wear wedding bands when they get married; as a visual reminder that they are vowed to someone and no longer available to anyone else.
So that’s what the tzitzit are, basically; a visual reminder of the L-RD’s commands and our promise to follow them. Now, we know what the L-RD commands here; to make tassels or fringes on the four corners of our garments as a reminder of His commandments. But beyond the command to do so, how does one fulfill this command? For example, how many threads should one use in these fringes? Beyond the thread of blue, what color should they be? How should they be tied? How long should they be? For most of these questions, the Torah is silent.
That means there is some freedom in how to observe this command, so long as you observe it. One source a person can turn to for examples in observance of this command, of course, is Jewish tradition and practice.
Now, one must be cautious in this area. This is not an endorsement of all rabbinic traditions or everything that the rabbis teach. Yet if one is searching for a “how do I do this” response, certainly one can find some examples as a guideline in this area, within the realm of Jewish tradition and practice.
Look at my prayer shawl and fringes a moment. On each corner, there are eight strands; seven white and one blue.
The blue thread is significant. It is the only thread singled out in the Torah command, and the word used for blue here is t’chellet. There is more than one school of thought on the meaning of t’chellet blue.
One school of thought insists that t’chellet blue is made from the blood of a creature the Torah calls the chilazon. This rare fish at some point was thought to have gone extinct and the use of the thread of blue in the fringes, for many, passed out of practice with it. However, some Jewish scholars believe a rare fish found in the ocean near Israel, called the cuttlefish, matches the description of the chilazon and have reintroduced the use of the thread of blue through cuttlefish blood.
Another school of thought holds that t’chellet blue was derived from a rare type of snail, and so you’ll come across fringes made with that kind of t’chellet blue also. A few – such as Karaite Jews – believe that any blue will do the trick because the Torah does not refer to a specific dye.
No matter how one interprets t’chellet blue, however, its meaning is also a source of various views. Some teach that the blue was chosen to remind people of the ocean, which in turn reminds them of the sky, which then in turn reminds them of God’s throne, which finally reminds them of the L-RD’s commands. Among Messianics, the blue thread is a reminder of the Messianic promise, and therefore of the Messiah Yeshua.
Now, the rest of the threads are white; typically, they will be white, although if the main prayer shawl is another color – black, for example – then the rest of the strands would be the color of the main garment. No matter what fabric the prayer shawl is made of, the tzitizit are to be made of wool.
The white strands are typically forty inches in length, while the blue strand is to be sixty inches, so it can be the thread used for winding. Also, the blue strand only needs to be dyed blue on about half to two-thirds of its length, since it needs to be white on the other end, so that when these four threads are doubled over for tying and winding, there are seven strands of white and only one strand of blue.
The next area for diversity is in how to tie the tzitzit. Mine are wound in an Ashkenazi style. What that means is this: we start the tying of the tzitzit with a double knot, then use the t’chellet blue thread to wrap around the other strands several times, then do a double knot again, then go back to windings. This pattern repeats for a set of four windings and ends in a final, fifth double-knot. The end result of this is that in Hebrew the numerical value of the word tzitzit is 600. There are then five knots and eight strands, which added up gives you a total of 613, the number of commands in the Torah.
I called this style I use the Ashkenazi style. There are two main styles: Ashkenazi and Sephardic. For those who don’t know, Ashkenazi refers primarily to the Jews of eastern Europe – Germany and parts of northern France, primarily – while Sephardic refers primarily to the Jews of Spain and Portugal.
The Ashkenazi style of tzitzit tying follows a pattern that also includes four sets of windings: seven winds in the first set, then eight windings, then eleven, then thirteen windings. That totals thirty-nine windings. In biblical Hebrew, thirty-nine is the numeric value of the Deuteronomy 6:4 phrase, “ADONAI echad” or “The L-RD is one.” This is how I’ve done my windings.
The Sephardic style uses the pattern of ten windings, followed by five, then six, and then five. This pattern follows the Hebrew numeric value of the name of the L-RD: yod-hey-vav-hey. Ten, five, six and five. Either way, the point is to remind the wearer of the L-RD, and this turn his attention toward God and His commands.
So, there are some ideas on how to tie these fringes and why to tie them that way. Yet some of you may be saying to yourselves, “That all sounds good, but it sounds like a lot of human tradition to me. Where is Yeshua in all this?”
Again, let’s be clear: there is freedom for those of us who are Messianic in how to tie the fringes, since how to do it – other than including a thread of blue – is not included in the written Torah. These examples were just that – examples, taken from the traditions of thousands of years of Jewish customs – which do not hold the same weight as Scripture, obviously, but which do have some good ideas and symbolism.
Yet where is Messiah in the fringes? Everywhere. To understand this, first we must reiterate the point that one of the titles for the Messiah is the Living Torah. Since the fringes point us toward the Torah, ultimately they are pointing us toward the Messiah Yeshua who, like the cord of blue that binds all the other strands together, is the force that binds the written Torah together, gives it form and shape and substance and meaning. The very act of looking on the fringes should not only remind us of the commands of the Torah, but also of the one who is the Living Torah – Messiah Yeshua.
That being said, there is deeper significance in the connection between the fringes and the Messiah. There is an episode that will reveal to us that Yeshua Himself wore tzitzit, and they played a role in His ministry. We read this in:
In the NIV, the key phrase is “she touched the edge of His cloak.” However, the New Living Translation says, “she touched the fringe of his robe,” and that agrees with the Complete Jewish Bible, which translates the phrase in question this way: “[the woman] came up behind him and touched the tzitzit on his robe; instantly her hemorrhaging stopped.”
Now, this is a nice story, but it raises the question… where did she get the idea? Well, this Jewish woman must have known her Tenakh, because this is what is written in:
One of the titles for the Messiah is the “Son of righteousness” and the promise is that this Son will have healing in his “wings.” One of the nicknames for the fringes of a prayer shawl is “wings.” So you can see that she took this promise quite literally and her faith has healed her. But was it faith just in the tzitzit? No, it was faith in the words of the L-RD through the prophet Malachi. And again, who is Yeshua? He is the Word of the L-RD, the Living Torah, so ultimately it is her faith in Yeshua that is praised here.
Of course, for every good and positive command, what always follows close behind? The enemy looks for ways to take the good things the L-RD commands and makes them a source of sin. Did this happen with the tzitzit?
It did, as we read in:
It’s not a bad thing to wear tzitzit, it’s obedient; Yeshua Himself wore them. But as with many things, one can go overboard or make the practice a source of attention-getting, a way to look that much holier than the next guy.
That’s what Yeshua is referring to here; tzitzit are a reminder of the L-RD’s commands for who? For the one wearing them. So they really don’t need to be extremely long; they don’t even need to be visible to others.
Rather than a large prayer shawl like this, which is appropriate for Shabbat service, one could wear a small tallit katan, which means small prayer shawl, with fringes tied and worn under the outer garments, so that only the wearer knows it’s there.
The point, therefore, is to remind yourself – not others – and that is what the Pharisees of Yeshua’s day were ignoring; they wore their tassels extra long and always visible, to draw the attention of others, to be seen wearing them, rather than to simply wear them – as the command states – as a reminder. A reminder of the L-RD’s commands, so we do not forget to obey them – and also of He who spoke those commands to Moses at Sinai – the Living Torah Himself, the Messiah Yeshua.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: Ke Tetse, Torah commentary
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Torah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.