Last Shabbat I actually went to the synagogue for morning prayers. I was up, and I couldn’t deny the need within me to connect with G-d in one of His dwellings here in the holy land. I had a dilemma in front of me however, and one that reached deeper than the simple color it embodied.
Some background explanation is needed. In Judaism, it is a positive mitzvah, a commandment, to wear tzitzit, ritual fringes on a piece of clothing. Many religious Jews accomplish this by wearing a four-cornered garment beneath their shirts with the tzitzit attached to them, either showing outside of their clothing or tucked into their pants, depending on their specific tradition.
In addition to tzitzit, there is a separate mitzvah mentioned in the same paragraph in the Torah, the mitzvah of tekhelet, a blue string amongst the other white strings. For centuries, the source of tekhelet was lost, with various scholars debating its source. In recent history, one organization rediscovered the source of tekhelet. Not everyone agrees on the subject, but this post is not the place to go into the debate on it. [Here is a great article on the debate if you’re interested]
I say this because for years following my “falling out” with Chabad, I started wearing tekhelet. I believed that it was real, and it also helped me identify more with the dati leumi/Modern Orthodox world that more readily accepts tekhelet as authentic. However, in the past few months, I reverted back to wearing Chabad tzitzit, without tekhelet. I did it out of a longing to be back in the Chabad velt, and my increasing desire to get back to my roots when I first became Jewish.
As I’ve written about, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about where I fall in the bigger Jewish world here in Israel. Tekhelet, that little bit of blue string, believe it or not, plays a big part of it. I came to Israel wearing tekhelet; it made me feel more connected here. I saw other guys in knit kippot wearing tekhelet and it reaffirmed to me that I was part of their world. I saw it on guys who looked like the me I wanted to be, settling the land and being the pioneers I dreamed about being. That’s the whole reason I’m really here, because I too want to be writing Jewish history instead of just experiencing it.
So, last Shabbat, I took out my old tzitzit and tallit with tekhelet and brought them with me to the synagogue. I didn’t know a single person there. I only understood a few words of the sermon in Hebrew. I had to move several times so that the regulars could have their seats, making me feel even more like an interloper. But, when I saw the blue fringes between my fingers before I recited the Shema, something just felt right. I felt like I had given up all of the battles I was waging within myself about who I was and was just doing what felt like it was right. It felt right to be there. It felt right to be there with my tekhelet (even if I was the only guy there with it). It felt right to feel like I was fulfilling a rediscovered mitzvah in a land renewed.
So, today I bought a new pair of tzitzit with tekhelet. My old pair is too small and worn, but I felt completely different this time buying them when I bought the Chabad pairs. When I was buying the Chabad pairs, I felt like I was buying them out of a sense of obligation, and I even felt a little bit silly since my halachic observance is no where to the level that the average Lubavitcher in Israel is up to. When I was in the checkout today, it just felt right, like I was going back to who I chose to be.
I came into the Chabad world because it’s all I ever really knew, I never really had much of a choice. I fell into it, and I’m grateful for everything it gave me. I still have so much love for the Rebbe and his teachings, I learn Tanya, and I still default in my mind to the chassidic teachings I’ve learned over the years. My view of Jewish life, of Yiddishkeit, is fundamentally Chabad; but I know what I am and where I want to be.
The Chabad life isn’t for me anymore. The people that I really look up to now that I live in Israel aren’t the rabbis who struggled in Russia to preserve Judaism. I still have immense for the Rebbe’s shluchim; but I know that deep down I would trade everything I have now to be one of those first dati leumi settlers setting up religious kibbutzim. I believe in the holiness of the State of Israel, and in the sanctity of building up this land. My heroes built the settlements on the borders, they taught the Torah of Eretz Yisrael, they set up yeshivot in Judea and Samaria after the Six Day War, they were the men and women who combined service to Hashem with labor on the land. That is who I want to be like, even if I live comfortably in a Netanya suburb.
To me tekhelet symbolizes all of this. It symbolizes the idea that something so immensely holy can be found again with hard work and science, and not abandoned to messianic times. It stands for the idea that we can change reality now, that we can change the future now. Tekhelet is a mitzvah that serves to remind Jews not only of the mitzvot, which all white tzitzit do as well, they also serve to remind us to perform those commandments. They remind us that we are a people of action, not simply of remembrance and observance. I want to be a Jewish man of action, I want to change the world for the better with my actions. If that string of blue does it for me, I’m going to cling to it, and everything it stands for.