תכלת (חלק 2)

00:01 This is Igris, and yesterday we began our discussion of the Rebe Shita on Techeles, that blue string that the Torah commands us to affix on our tzitzit. We lost the tradition of how to make that dye, and the identity of the chilazon, which is supposed to be some sort of creature, maybe a snail, that produces the dye, and we lost this tradition thousands of years ago. We mentioned yesterday that one of the first modern attempts to revive Techeles was in eighteen eighty-seven when the Radzina Rebbe examined all of the traditional sources, collected semonim for the chilazon. He visited an aquarium, I think it was in Berlin, but again, I didn't check, and concluded that the cuttlefish was the chilazon. The, uh, problem was the cuttlefish made a black dye, and as you probably know, the dye of Techeles is supposed to look like the sea, which looks like the sky, which looks like the throne of glory. It's supposed to be blue, and it made only black dye. He consulted with some chemists, and they solved this problem for him. They told the Radzina, "Add a little, add a little iron sulfate to the black dye, and it will turn blue." What he didn't know is that the chemist tricked him. Rabbi Herzog later on when he was writing his thesis on Techeles confirmed this, that this was a trick, that if you take any organic compound and mix it with iron sulfate, you end up getting a blue color. Uh, whether it's cuttlefish ink,

01:02 bologna, uh, human blood, I mean, you can use literally anything. If it's organic and you mix it with, uh, with iron sulfate, it'll turn blue. This is something called Prussian blue. It's a synthetic color that comes from the iron sulfate. So, uh, they tricked him. In any event, long before that, long before it was discovered that this Radzina Techeles was incorrect, the Radzina and his successor sent letters to all of the gedolim at the time sharing his work and his conclusions, and it was broadly rejected. Just about everybody knew that he didn't have the right Techeles and said it in one way or another. Uh, they also sent a letter to the Rebbe Rashab, and we saw that letter yesterday. That was what we learned yesterday, the letter from the Rebbe Rashab. We saw that he was, on one hand, thrilled to receive the Radzina's books. He was very excited, said that he'd been hoping to see them for some time, but he could not agree with the conclusion for one central reason. He couldn't adopt the Techeles for the main reason being that the Alter Rebbe in a Maamar in Likutei Torah brings the Arizal's statement that bizman hazeh, nowadays, we don't have Techeles. And the Rebbe Rashab says, "I don't have any choice." The Alter Rebbe says that there's no Techeles nowadays. The Arizal says there's no Techeles nowadays. There's no Techeles. So you can give me all the best proofs in the entire world that you found the Techeles, I can't agree

02:05 that the Alter Rebbe is, chas v'shalom, wrong. So if it's between you and the Alter Rebbe, I'm gonna choose the Alter Rebbe who brings the Arizal b'pshatos. That's the, that's the Rebbe Rashab's answer in a nutshell. Now, the Rebbe Rashab elaborates. It's a long letter. He elaborates by explaining that the-- he explains the Kabbalah behind our missing Techeles. He says that we can't draw down the lofty levels, these hamshachas, that used to exist. We used to put on Techeles, it would draw down these incredible hamshachas, and nowadays we can't draw these things down because we're in galus. And if you were to ask me, even more importantly, he adds a second half to this where he gives a halakhic reason why he thinks it's a problem to wear Techeles nowadays. The Rebbe Rashab in this letter, he links it to halakha. He introduces a very creative principle, a real risky principle if you're not the Rebbe Rashab. He says any mitzvah asei, any positive commandment that loses its Kabbalistic value due to galus is canceled if there's any risk, even a chashash rachok b'yoser, that it might cause someone to violate a Torah commandment. So that is once a mitzvah asei loses its Kabbalah boost, if I can find any reason why it might cause an aveira, i cancel it. And then he gave an example. The example is shofar on Shabbos. Uh, it lost its Kabbalistic value after the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. Nowadays, shofar doesn't do anything that Shabbos isn't already doing

03:09 by itself, and therefore we cancel shofar on Shabbos because there's a very remote risk, a chashash rachok b'yoser, that it might cause someone to carry on Shabbos because they take the shofar outside to get somebody to teach them how to blow shofar. Similarly, the Rebbe Rashab says, since in galus the Techeles doesn't have its Kabbalistic value anymore, and it's not able to draw down any of these very special hamshachas, we need to cancel it if we can find any concern whatsoever that Techeles could cause an aveira. And he finds one. He says, "Here's the distant and unrealistic concern. Someone might wear wool Techeles on a linen garment." Now, that's mutar d'oraisa because the pasuk g'dilim is right next to the pasuk of kilayim. Uh, but he might keep wearing it at night. If he wears it at nighttime, he won't be chayav in tzitzit. At that moment, when he's not chayav in tzitzit, he's wearing shatnez, and he'll violate shatnez. Now, how could we cancel a mitzvah like Techeles just because some simple guy might mess up shatnez? The Rebbe Rashab's answer, same way i canceled shofar on Shabbos because a simpleton might mess up hatzah. That is, gezairas deRabbos is to be expanded that anytime something loses its Kabbalistic value, you can't bring it back in, uh, unless you're sure that nobody's gonna do an aveira with it. So this was the Rebbe Rashab's letter that we learned yesterday. Today, we are going to look at what the Rebbe says about this subject. We're

04:12 going to do so keeping in mind, very important, that the Rebbe's statements here are not necessarily relevant to modern Techeles because the modern Techeles we have nowadays is not the Radzina's cuttlefish. It's a different, uh, it's a different thing. It's a snail called the Murex trunculus. And, uh, we're going to discuss if we have time at the end. I think we're gonna have time at the end. We'll make time at the end. We're going to discuss how this might apply to modern Techeles that you can buy today. But do keep in mind that everything we're talking about here is strictly Radzina Techeles because the Techeles, the Techeles you can buy in stores nowadays didn't, uh, wasn't really discovered until late nineteen ninety-two. Uh, i don't think it was really making it into the market till 'ninety-three or 'ninety-four. The Rebbe, as far as we know, never saw it and was never asked about it, so we don't have the Rebbe's opinion on modern Techeles. What we do have is the Rebbe's opinion on the inyan of Techeles. So we have exactly one letter about this, uh, a conversation at a meal with the Rashag, and two sichas. So that's what we're gonna look at today. One Rebbe letter is our central letter. This is vav shin pei beis. It's from the year taf shin yud Ches, tes tamuz taf shin yud Ches, and the Rebbe writes, "Shalom u'bracha. Mash'kasav al derech ha-- al derech chilazon." You wrote to me about the chilazon v'techeles. Now remember,

05:11 the chilazon is the creature that is supposed to be producing the blue dye, and this is the Techeles. So what you wrote to me about the chilazon and the Techeles. "V'negeh l'poel ata b'tzitzit." You asked me halacha l'maaseh. Nowadays, can i put it on my tzitzit? "Haria dua." It is well known. "Ashere rishu al zeh v'esnagdu lezeh gam al-" What's can but no? Huh? First is it counts as no. I'm sorry? Oh, okay. It is well known that people complained about it and they protested it. also according to-- also using Nigla principles, that it wasn't just Kabbalistically people didn't like it. people don't like the Radziner Tzitzit. When the Radziner first put this out, the and he's right, of course. The, the Rebbe's saying that, uh, just about everybody rejected this. They did. And most of them were not Kabbalists who rejected this. The, uh, the Radziner Rebbe sent his Tzitzit and his books explaining why he was right to all of the of the era, and all of them had Halakhic issues with it. So more-- with, with very few exceptions. So the Rebbe says, "Before we even start with this, let's understand that the Tzitzit you're asking me about, the Radziner Tzitzit, there's too much weight in the other direction." But then in addition to that, also the Rebbe Rashab did not agree with it whatsoever. The Rebbe says, "At this moment, I don't have the Rebbe Rashab's letter." I guess it was published after Teshin-Yod-Ches 'cause we have it now. But the

06:34 Rebbe says at the moment he didn't have the letter, but he remembered seeing it. And the Rebbe's memory is of course excellent. My memory is that he brings the reason why you can only have Tzitzit when Mashiach, when Mashiach comes. And we have nothing but the words of the Rebbe Rashab. There is something kind of beautiful about this because if you remember, the Rebbe Rashab in his letter, he says, So the Rebbe Rashab is saying, "I can't agree with you because I have the Alter Rebbe." And the Rebbe says, "I can't agree with you because I have the Rebbe Rashab." So there's an incredible faithfulness to the tradition here where they're saying that whatever arguments you give me, at the end of the day, my Rebbe said, "No, it's not gonna happen." The Rebbe says take a look in Sukkah that Rebbe Akiva nothing Rebbe, uh, Rebbe Elazar, you know, it slips my mind what he was Mahadar in. It was something with lulav. I don't remember what exactly. He was Mahadar to make his lulav a certain way because Rav Chanin said to do it that way, and that demonstrates at least the pshat in this letter. Um, I'll tell you, Rabbi Weissberg has a, has a whole, uh, long discussion of Tzitzit nowadays where he doesn't read this line of the letter the way I'm about to read it. But the pshat in the letter as I read it is that he's saying here that the same way that Rebbe Elazar was, uh,

07:42 was Mahadar, he was always very careful to do exactly what Rav Chanin said, even if it didn't necessarily make perfect sense. The idea was, "I'm going to follow my Rebbe off a cliff." Uh, similarly, I don't really need to analyze the topic of Chilazon all that carefully. Once the, once the Rebbe Rashab said no, I'm saying no. And he didn't really need to analyze it all that carefully because once the Alter Rebbe said no, it's no for me too. I-- you're Mahadar to follow what your Rebbe says without, uh, without too much consideration for the practical, for the practical implications. That, that's how I read that quote from that Gemara. Okay. This is a letter from the Rebbe, and what we have here is, uh, is if I were to put this in a sentence, the Rebbe says, "If you read the letter from the Rebbe Rashab, I have nothing to add." That, that really is what it is in a sentence. The Rebbe first of all says that I'm rejecting this because everybody knows Radziner Tzitzit are no good. But in addition to that, you have him saying, "I have the Rebbe Rashab's letter, and I have nothing to add." So once you know the Rebbe Rashab's letter, you know the Rebbe's shitah. The Rebbe's saying my shitah is his shitah. Now, there was a meal. This is, um-- Let's see when this meal was. Melachama Mesiba is where it's published. Did I write down here what meal it was? It's Chag Pesach. It's

08:38 on Pesach of Teshin-Chaf-Zayin. The Rebbe and the Rashag have a conversation. And, uh, it's kind of a side point, the Tzitzit thing, but it certainly is an interesting one. So the Rashag says Is it true that the Kais Eliahu, that Eliahu's cup that we put by the Seder is supposed to be a cup that corresponds to Mashiach coming? And the Rebbe answered we must say that it also has a relevance nowadays. Because if it really was about Mashiach, we would pour it after the entire Seder. The Rebbe says, "If I wanna do something that's purely about Mashiach, I always save it for the end of the Seder." For example, right? You put it at the end. The fact that you pour Eliahu's cup in the middle of the Seder tells us that it's about the future, but it's also about the present. The Rashag then asks does anybody say that you're supposed to drink the cup of Eliahu? Now, you might remember, uh, in our Haggadah it's printed that, uh, the Rebbe would pour it back into the bottle while singing Keili Yafah. So our minhag is to pour it back into the bottle. Then anyway, i, I've never heard of anybody drinking Kais Eliahu. So the Rashag asks, "Does anybody drink this cup?" And the Rebbe says "As far as I know, it's not drank. It's not drunk. People don't drink it." Then the Rashag says, "You should know I do know one group of people drink it." The Radziner Hasidim, they drink the,

09:54 they drink the Kais Eliahu, the Radziner Hasidim only. And then the Rebbe says back This is just like what they do by Tzitzit, which is the Rebbe's way of saying they jumped the gun on everything, right? The, the whole shitah by Tzitzit is that the Radzin wanted to bring back Tzitzit before Mashiach came. Uh, and similarly, the Radziner seem to wanna drink the Kais Eliahu, which is a cup of Mashiach before Mashiach has come. That's definitely the implication here is that you have sort of a, uh, a recurring theme in Radzin where they're always kind of jumping the gun when it comes to Geulah. He says the son of the Ba'al Tzitzit, the Rebbe, uh, the Rav Gershon Henoch who was the Radziner Rebbe who banned the Tzitzit he sent a letter to the Rebbe Rashab as Sifrav. He sent his Sefarim to a Sefarim of his father So the son of the Radziner Rebbe sent his father's Sefarim, the Radziner Rebbe's Sefarim to the Rebbe Rashab about Tzitzit nowadays. And the Rebbe Rashab answered him in a letter that on the ending itself, I cannot agree with you. And he told-- he's just referring to reviewing what happened. The Rebbe Rashab wrote back, "Although I'm happy to see your books I can't agree with the Etzema opinion because the Alter Rebbe in Likutei Torah in his Maamar on quotes the Pri Haetz that nowadays we can't have Tzitzit." And the conversation continues, but we don't need any more for that right now. It's very

11:20 similar to what the Rebbe said in the letter, but also it's sort of a, a funny twist on what Radzin is in general. The Radziner Hasidus seems to be a Hasidus that is, uh, very, very Mashiach-centric, so much so that they might kind of jump the gun on certain things like drinking Kais Eliahu and bringing back Tzitzit prematurely. I wanted to show you- A little piece of a sicha. Uh, in these next two I'm showing you, a little, little piece of two sichas. And in both of these, what we're doing here is not so much saying the Rebbe Sheyt about techeles, but explaining why the Rebbe doesn't feel a need to have techeles nowadays, why he doesn't feel we're missing much by not having them. So this is a little piece of a sicha. Here, the Rebbe says, um, this requires only a little bit of background. You would have gotten this from the Rebbe Rashab's letter, um, if I'd read it in its entirety, but we kind of jumped around. One of the things that-- One of the things al pi Kabbalah that techeles and love and represent is that the white strings represent chasadim, they represent kindness, and the blue string represents gevuros, represents stringency. You probably know that gevura done right can be far more powerful and far more good than chesed. People think of kindness as being better than stringency, but the fact is that the longest blessings we have in the Torah are from Yitzchak, who was the baal hagevuros,

12:17 was the master of gevura. So gevura is actually an incredible kli for blessing, but only when channeled properly. Gevura channeled improperly is a destructive force, whereas chesed, even when channeled improperly, is not as bad as gevura channeled improperly. With that background, just take a look at this one paragraph here. The Rebbe says that, "Av al pi ken," which is referring to the earlier part of the sicha. This is in Likutey Sichos Parshat Shlach. It's the second sicha in Shlach. You'll find it in Chelek Ches, uh, in Bamidbar, page one twelve. Here the Rebbe says, "Uh, nowadays," this is-- "Therefore, nowadays, we don't have nitken techeles." We don't have techeles nowadays. Uh, and he's quoting there the Rebbe Rashab. We don't have techeles nowadays. And, uh, and, and we do have another, uh-- We-- And all four of our strings, all four of our strings are, uh, supposed to be made without techeles, and they are instead made of love, and they're made out of white. And this is a herah, says the Rebbe. This is a way of teaching, that the ikar avoda needs to be with ahavah, needs to be with chesed. We need to treat people with kindness and with love, and the main way of us treating Hashem and other people is in a way of love nowadays. And this is probably pnimiyus haTorah, especially when it comes to Kabbalah, where the Rashbi explains, "Anan v'chivusa talui milssa," that I base everything on love. So the way needs to be through love,

13:20 not through gevura and not through fear. That is that the Rebbe's explaining that one of the reasons why in zman haGolus we don't have techeles is because that's not the seder in zman haGolus. The seder in zman haGolus is that we mainly relate to Hashem through love, we mainly relate to Hashem through chesed, and we mainly relate to other people through ahavah and through chesed, and the ikar is not gevura. And bringing back techeles prematurely would, I'm adding words here, but bringing back techeles during zman haGolus would give you a mischanneled gevura. That's not unlike what the Rebbe Rashab says in his letter, that, uh, w- nowadays we're unable to channel the very highest levels of gevuros, and therefore whatever gevura you drag down in techeles would be gevuras kasha, said Rachmana liclan. It would be a negative kind of gevura. So, uh, given that we're in Golus right now, we need to be very careful to only deal with chesed and ahavah, 'cause if we try to deal with lofty gevuros, we could end up hurting ourselves. That's the implication here about techeles, that one of the reasons al pi chazal is why we don't want techeles before Mashiach comes is because the gevura you bring down with techeles prior to Mashiach coming is not the good gevura, it's the bad gevura. Whereas chesed and ahavah are always in play. One more thing I wanna show you. This is a sicha that is, uh, an unedited sicha. This is from Parshat Shlach of Chaf

14:20 Gim-- It was a Chaf Gimel Sivan of Mevarchin Chedish Tamuz of Taf Shin Chaf, and this is printed in Teres Menachem, Volume twenty-eight on page one ninety-one. And here the Rebbe says that, uh, "I don't want techeles." It's a very interesting sicha. He says, "I don't want techeles." I mean, he says it-- He doesn't say exactly that, but read it with me and you'll see. It says, "Yesh pisuka meabal Shem Tov min haTzitzis." There's a expression from the Baal Shem Tov regarding tzitzis. "Ki shemaniyach haTalis ro'as haTecheles," that when you put on the tallis, you'll see the techeles, "Perish tipol av yirah." That the Baal Shem Tov says you put on your tallis, you see techeles, and you feel yirah, because as we explained earlier, the white represents the feeling of ahavah, and the blue represents the feeling of yirah. So you'll feel f-- you'll feel-- you will feel fear of Hashem when you put on the techeles. Now, the Rebbe has a question. This is the Baal Shem Tov talking. "Eyn ha movan. V'dodi davar Baal Shem Tov isn't in a techeles in a matziv iz manaze." The Baal Shem Tov gives you a kavanah. He says, "Put on your tallis, look at your techeles, and think of yirah." What, what techeles? This is the Baal Shem Tov. He didn't have techeles. "V'rada pimash gazam kisve Ari Z"al," and the Ari Z"al brings, as the Rebbe Rashab says, "V'ir atama do i efshir sheye techeles bizman haze," that we cannot have techeles nowadays. We've

15:18 explained that already at length. So what are we-- what, what exactly is the Baal Shem Tov talking about? And the Rebbe now says, "Bir bazeh." Here's the explanation. "She'ez inyan shaya nimshach pa'am ayy dei techeles," that same exact inyan, not a version of it, the same inyan that was nimshach once upon a time by way of a blue thread. "Nimshach gam hayom," you can also get it nowadays. "Elash nimshach ayy dei chutey lavan," but you get it using the white strings. So what the Rebbe's saying here is that, uh, everything you used to get from the blue, you can now get from the white. So effectively, I'm adding, why would you, why would you want the blue? Why would be s-- why would you need the blue? Any kind of, uh, any kind of hamshacha you're looking for, you're getting through the white strings. "Vayim na techeles ukmam hazal," the entire inyan of techeles is like Chazal say, "Techeles is like the sea, and the sea is like the sky, and the sky is like the kisvei hakodesh." "V'lachen kasha is ben mazel," and therefore, when somebody thinks about that, thinks about the kisvei hakodesh, "Mispenim inyan Adam sh'ala kisve," and you think about Adam sh'ala kisvei v'chol olam, you think about Hashem himself. "Az ay tipol av yirah," you'll immediately come to fear. So what the Rebbe's saying here is that the techeles that you used to take a blue string in order to, uh-- You used to take a blue string in order

16:14 to convince you to have yirah. Nowadays, you can do hisbonenus to get yirah, and it's just as good. He says here it's eisa inyan, the exact same inyan that you would have gotten by the techeles you can get by the white strings. So why-- So what exactly do you hope to gain by having them? What exactly would you hope to gain by having them? Uh, what we have here, I think, across the board from the Rebbe is a fair dis- fair dismissal of the idea of techeles, at least the, the techeles that were available to him. The Rebbe in his first letter explains that, uh, that first of all, there's all sorts of halakhic problems with the radzin of techeles, and second of all, as, uh, the Rebbe Rashab says that there can't be techeles nowadays. We have a vayamil, the Rebbe repeating the same idea and saying Radzin is always kind of jumping the gun when it comes to Mashiach, which I can't imagine is a bad thing, but halakhically doesn't necessarily help us. We have a sicha from the Rebbe over here, an, an edited sicha, where the Rebbe says that what we're, uh-- that nowadays we need to be serving Hashem in a mode of love and in a mode of ahavah and chesed, and that serving Hashem in a mode of techeles would actually be counterproductive, which is why we don't have techeles nowadays. And a sicha over here that says actually you can serve Hashem in the way of techeles

17:11 nowadays using your white strings, that your white strings are your techeles. You're missing absolutely nothing. And furthermore, you can get the same yirah that you would have gotten through actual techeles by simply having hisbonenus. So between your white strings and your hisbonenus in Hashem, you get everything techeles would give you. So why exactly would you want the techeles in the first place? When you put that together with the Rebbe Rashab's letter, certainly the easiest way, and in, in my opinion, the most direct and correct way to understand the Torah that we have here is that we're not terribly interested in, uh, in any techeles prior to Mashiach coming. Certainly, we wouldn't have been interested in the Radzin of techeles. Now, with the time we have left- Um, as we talked about earlier, I said we wanted to talk about this a little bit. We do have a different techelet nowadays, and it is an open question. The Rebbe never said no to the current techelet. If somebody had handed the Rebbe a strand of the techelet that comes from the, uh, that comes from the, uh, the Murex trunculus, the one that they're making in Eretz Israel now, which by the way has excellent evidence backing it up. They found a giant dye factory exactly in the location where we know the dye factories were in the ancient world, uh, exactly where the tribe of Zevulun would have been, where we would have had that section where the techelet is supposed to be. There's a

18:10 giant pile of thousands and thousands of this exact kind of snail shell with a hole made in it exactly where the dye sac would have been pulled out by dye makers. We have a lot of evidence right now that this was the dye people were using back then, and as a matter of fact, there are only like three dye snails in that region that can produce color any way that would stick to wool, and only one of them is blue. There, there's a lot of reason to believe that they found the right snail. So the question is, had they shown this to the Rebbe, would he feel differently about the modern techelet that we have now? Would he not have said all the things-- Are all these things only about Radziner techelet, or do these things apply across the board? Now, given that the Rebbe Rashab says that techelet itself cannot exist in the time of Galus prior to Mashiach coming and gives all of his reasons based on that, it's hard to say that that's not a direct application. I will tell you what the other side says, though. Our own local rabbi, ri-rabbi, Rabbi Weissberg, he wrote a, uh, a long essay on this topic, and, uh, I read it, and I wanted to kind of capture for you. You probably know there are some Lubavitchers out there, not many, but there are some Lubavitcher Hasidim who are mekubal to the Rebbe, who are wearing techelet, and the question is, how do they

19:04 sleep at night, right? We have here the, uh, the Rebbe Rashab saying don't do it before Mashiach comes. You have the Rebbe saying he's not interested. What are they thinking? So I do wanna let you know what they're thinking, and I wanna tell you why I don't necessarily agree, and with that we'll conclude. So, as I understand it, the central argument for those who wear techelet in Chabad nowadays, it's a very small group, as we said already, is, uh, is twofold. One of them is that the Rebbe announced already in the nineties that we are now in the times of Mashiach. We're not in Galus anymore. So the central argument of the Rebbe Rashab and of the Rebbe in these earlier letters that you can't have techelet prior to Mashiach coming doesn't apply in the modern era where the era of Mashiach has started. Uh, similarly, the argument that Rebbe Rashab makes that we need to cancel mitzvahs that have lost their Kabbalistic value if there's even a distant risk of sin wouldn't apply because since the Galus in that stage anyway has ended, presumably techelet got its Kabbalistic value back, so we don't have to worry about the Gezeiras DeRabba on techelet anymore. There's another central argument, and, uh, this is one that Rabbi Weissberg seems to like even more than that one. That's the one that he really stresses in this pamphlet, is that he believes that if you analyze the Rebbe Rashab's letter very closely, you could come to the conclusion that

20:02 he's not really explaining why we can't have techelet nowadays. He's instead sort of pushing away the Radziner. He knew the Radziner was wrong, and he needed to come with a good reason to reject the Radziner. So he did so by demonstrating that we have no chiyuv nowadays to look for the chilazon or try to find techelet because we can't bring down anything with it Kabbalistically anyway. And now that we're in the time of the beginning times of Mashiach coming, this is not the case anymore. It now becomes a mitzvah to look for it, and if indeed you find it, as we have nowadays found with very good evidence the right snail, perhaps the Rebbe Rashab would be okay with it. The, the fact is, I don't find these arguments terribly compelling, although they're interesting, because, uh, mainly because I don't know how one decides exactly what stage of Geulah we're in. I'm not sure who exactly draws that marker. Uh, obviously, we haven't halakhically shifted into the Geulah, or we'd have many different dinam. So, uh, in whatever way we are now in the times of Mashiach, it doesn't seem to have any halakhic implications yet. And it seems to me a little bit arbitrary to decide that Mashiach came for techelet and nothing else. That-- I just don't necessarily get that. But even setting that aside, uh, my biggest complaint is that, uh, given that the Rebbe Rashab directly links techelet to shofar, it seems poshut to me that if you accept the position

21:02 that we're far enough into Geulah that techelet is back and the concern of shatnez is no longer valid, you'd also need to start blowing shofar on Shabbos Rosh Hashanah, right? If you're not willing to do that, that's the equivalent of saying that you don't think techelet has fully regained its Kabbalistic value. If you're gonna tell me that techelet has not fully regained its Kabbalistic value, let's revert to the Rebbe Rashab's shita that we'd need to cancel it anyway due to concerns of shatnez. Um, besides the fact that you'd also end up accepting the notion that we're still too much in Galus to have techelet in the first place. So I, I don't necessarily hear this argument. I think it's pretty clear that prior to Mashiach coming and bringing back the Kabbalah behind techelet, there are very strong reasons from the Rebbe Rashab and the Rebbe across the board for Chabad Hasidim not to wear techelet nowadays, even if we found the right one. What's so interesting about this argument is that we're not really discussing whether they found the right snail. They may well have found the right snail. They might have found the right techelet. The fact is that techelet, even if we found the right techelet right now and we're one hundred percent sure we had the right techelet, until Mashiach comes and brings back that Kabbalistic hamshacha, you have a real problem, first of all, with the fact that the Alter Rebbe of Farher says you're not gonna find it bizman hazeh,

22:00 and second of all, you're gonna have a real problem with the fact that, uh, that you have this concern of kilayim, of shatnez. And again, if you want to get rid of that concern of the kilayim with shatnez and tell me that doesn't matter anymore, I don't know why you're not blowing a shofar on Shabbos. I don't know who decided that techelet now has its Kabbalah back, but shofar doesn't. This seems a little arbitrary to me. Uh, I will go back to what the Rebbe himself says, that, uh, . We don't have anything besides the words of the Rebbe Rashab, and I don't have anything besides the words of the Rebbe, and I just don't see good evidence for techelet, uh, as a Lubavitcher practice. Okay, that's it.