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Home > Magazines > BAR > May/June 1983

Of Hems and Tassels

Rank, authority and holiness were expressed in antiquity by fringes on garments

By Jacob Milgrom

In the book of Numbers, the Lord speaks to the Israelites through his servant Moses and commands them to wear tassels (or tsitsit) on the corners of their garments. The tassels must include a blue thread. The Biblical passage reads as follows: “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves tassels (tsitsit) on the corners of their garments throughout the generations; let them attach a cord of blue to the tassel at each corner. That shall be your tassel; look at it [the blue cord] and recall all the […]

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Footnotes

1.

At one point in history, this was no longer the case, so the rabbis dropped the requirement that the tassels contain a blue thread. Following the two Jewish revolts against Rome (66 A.D.–70 A.D. and 132 A.D.–135 A.D.), each of which ended in devastating defeats for the Jews, the Jewish community was so impoverished that the requirement of a blue thread was abandoned. In addition, a counterfeit blue dye had been developed which was disqualified by the rabbis for use in tassels or tsitsit (Bava Metsia 61b; Menahot 42–43a; Sifre Num. 115). Apparently the desire to prevent the use of this counterfeit blue also led to dropping the requirement of a blue thread. Since the second century, the tassels have been pure white. Tassels are still attached to the four corners of Jewish prayer shawls (tallit) worn in the synagogue and on the corners of the so-called small tallit or tallit katan worn at all times by strictly observant Jews.

Endnotes

1.

Erich Ebeling, Tod und Leben (Berlin, 1931) and Gerhard Meier, Die assyrische Beschworungssamlung Maglu, Archiv fur Orientforschung, Beiheft 2 (Graz, 1937).

2.

Wolfram von Soden, Akkadisches Handworterbuch (Wiesbaden, 1965–81), S.V. sissiktu 4a, p. 1051.

3.

Archives Royales de Mari 45:15’–17’ (VI, 1954); 112:12’–13’ (XIII, 1964); 8:25 (X, 1978).

4.

Ferris J. Stephens, “The Ancient Significance of sisith,” Journal of Biblical Literature 50 (1931), 63–4.

5.

Ehud Spanier, Elisha Linder, Nira Karmon, Purple Dye—Biology, Archaeology and History (University of Haifa, Center for Maritime Studies, 1980), see also Sifre, Deuteronomy 354; Shabbat 26a; Menahot 42b; Isaac Herzog, “The Dying of Purple in Ancient Israel” (University of London dissertation, 1919).

6.

Joseph Doumet, A Study on the Ancient Purple Color, translated by Robert Cook (Beirut, 1980).

7.

Moshe Eilat, “Blue and Purple,” Encyclopaedia Biblica, Vol. 8, pp. 376–8 (Hebrew, forthcoming).

8.

Lloyd B. Jensen, “Royal Purple of Tyre,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 22 (1963), pp. 104–18.

9.

Doumet, 1980.

10.

Spanier, 1980.

11.

N. Jidijian, Tyre Through the Ages (Beirut, 1969), Fig. 4, 142; Fig. 5, 138.

12.

Yale Oriental Series (New Haven, 1915).

13.

Jensen (1963), p. 115. Jensen computed the dollar values for dye and silk based on the dollar’s value in 1963. The figures in the text were calculated by multiplying Jensen’s figures by 2.82, the percentage by which the dollar declined in value between 1963 and 1983.

14.

Winifred Needler, “Three Pieces of Unpatterned Linen from Ancient Egypt in the Royal Ontario Museum,” Textile Manufacture in Northern Roman Provinces (Cambridge, 1970); Alisa Baginski and Amalia Tidhar, Textiles from Egypt (L. A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art, 1980).

15.

Louisa Bellinger, “Cloth,” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, I (Nashville, 1962).

16.

Yigael Yadin, The Finds from the Bar Kokhba Period in “The Cave of the Letters” (Jerusalem, 1963) (Hebrew); Yigael Yadin, Bar Kokhba (London, 1971). Aaron Kirschenbaum, “Concerning the Requirement of White in sisith,” Studies in Judaism, David Kotler Jubilee Volume (Tel Aviv, 1976), pp. 246–52.