Illustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
What's going on here? מַה זֶה?
The Gemara (Menahot 44a) says that tekhelet is a special blue dye that comes from the blood of a creature called a חִלָּזוֹן (hilazon). The Gemara goes on to say that this blueish dye was expensive and very rare because the hilazon only surfaced once every 70 years!
After the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, the hilazon’s identity was forgotten, and the secret of how to make tekhelet was lost. It became common for people to only have white strings on their tzitzit (Bemidbar Rabbah 17:5). Throughout history, some people have tried to rediscover the hilazon. Around when many of your parents were kids, scientists were able to use DNA evidence to match the shells of ancient hilazon to an existing species. Based on that, the hilazon seems to be a snail called murex trunculus, and it lives in the Mediterranean Sea, right off the coast of Israel. Now, many Jews have started to wear tekhelet in their tzitzit again with a dye made from that snail.
In modern Hebrew, “tekhelet” means a turquoise shade of blue.
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