#tekhelet

Why do some tallitot have black stripes, some have blue, and some none at all?

The stripes are often symbolic — many believe they echo the ancient tekhelet (blue thread) once commanded in the Torah. Blue-striped tallitot recall this lost tradition, while black stripes (especially among Ashkenazi Jews) often represent mourning, humility, and memory.

At the center of it all are the tzitzit — ritual fringes tied with deep intention. Their knots and windings symbolize God’s oneness, the 613 mitzvot, and our eternal bond with the Divine.

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. Basically, I'd already moved on to human history, but I'd periodically get a pre-homin suggestion, hence the occasional random item waaay out of it's time period, rather than reopen the category.

In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

This humble sea snail, Hexaplex trunculus, has played an oversized role in Jewish history.  After literally centuries of searching, it is believed to be the source of the “biblical blue” dye, or tekhelet, that the Jews were commanded to use on their ritual garments, most conspicuously the tallit; in turn, those blue stripes of dye influenced the tallit-based design of the flag of Israel. 

Despite the importance of using tekhelet dye, the precise identity of the species from which it is extracted had been lost in antiquity.  You can get purple or violet dyes from several local marine snails, but the scribes insisted that the dye had to be blue, not purple, and all known candidate species either produced the wrong shade or made a blue that was only short-lived, fading into uselessness that disqualified them.  Only three ancient artifacts using tekhelet dye are known to still exist, which didn’t make things easier.

I encourage you to read the full story of how the right snail species and method for creating “biblical blue” was at last recovered. 

And yes, of COURSE various Jewish scholars were arguing for different candidates! 

Mishneh Torah > Sefer Ahavah > Tzitzit -Halacha 8 When should the blessing over tzitzit be recited in the morning? When [the sun has risen so] that one can differentiate between the strands of techelet and those which are white.