There’s plenty of hesitation today when it comes to wearing techeiles. For some, it’s treated like a lost cause: a mitzvah removed from our day-to-day lives, with the assumption that only Moshiach can bring it back into practice. But that assumption overlooks a powerful precedent. Techeiles isn’t the only mitzvah that went missing for a time. Believe it or not, even tefillin was also once on the brink of vanishing.
Rabbi Ephraim Kanarfogel, a leading scholar of medieval Jewish history and Rabbinic literature at Yeshiva University, laid this out clearly in his 1976 essay Not Just Another Contemporary Jewish Problem. Long before techeiles re-entered the conversation, he was sounding the alarm on how fragile tefillin observance had once been.
Already in the Talmudic period, tefillin was flagged as a mitzvah that didn’t inspire mesiras nefesh. The Gemara in Shabbos (130a) says it outright:
It was taught in a Baraita that Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar says in praise of the observance of the mitzvah of circumcision: Any mitzvah for which the Jews sacrificed their lives at the time of the decrees of the wicked empire, such as the prohibition of idolatry and the mitzvah of circumcision, is still steadfastly observed. And any mitzvah for which the Jews did not sacrifice their lives at the time of the decrees of the wicked empire, such as tefillin, is still casually observed, meaning that they are not as careful in its fulfillment as they should be.
The parallels to techeiles are striking. Legal bans, political suppression, gaps in transmission, and a lack of initial public acceptance all contributed to the fading of this mitzvah. The pushback to reintroducing it today – questions about mesorah, halachic uncertainty, the “vast majority of Rabbanim are not doing it” argument – feels all too familiar if you know the history of tefillin.
What’s even more striking is that Rabbi Kanarfogel wrote this piece well before techeiles became available to the public. He wasn’t trying to make a case for techeiles, but unintentionally, he did. The very arguments he brought forth out about why tefillin fell out of use, and very slowly regained acceptance, can and should inform how we think about techeiles today.
Political Suppression and Legal Restrictions
Tefillin: Jewish communities throughout history endured persecution that led to bans on religious practices, including tefillin. These prohibitions, enforced during the rule of oppressive regimes, made it dangerous for Jews to openly observe this mitzvah. As a result, many were forced to hide or abandon the practice entirely during those times.
Techeiles: The production of techeiles, sourced from the Murex snail, was curtailed by Roman and Byzantine laws. Emperors like Nero and Justinian imposed strict monopolies and bans on purple and blue dyes, reserving them for royalty. This made it illegal for Jews to produce or wear techeiles, accelerating its disappearance from use. While a few, such as certain Amoraim and Natronoi Gaon, retained access, it became almost exclusive to non-Jewish royalty. The last known Jewish mention came from the Ramban in the 13th century, who noted that the Melech Goyim – possibly James I of Aragon – still wore it in his day.
Loss of Knowledge and Mesorah
Tefillin: Tefillin are defined by halachic precision: the order of the parshiyos, squareness of the batim, specific knots, and black straps. Yet during times of upheaval, the transmission of these details faltered. The debate between Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam over the order of the parshiyos is well-known, but even the shape of the shel yad varied historically, namely due to lack of clarity in our mesorah. In Yemen and Amsterdam, some tefillin had conical tops, aligning with Tosafos in Menachos 35a, which suggests only the base must be square.
Pre-war European tefillin were often made from dakkos, thin leather requiring annual reshaping. Today’s gassos tefillin are thicker, sturdier, and produced with modern tools. Likewise, straps and batim are now dyed with industrial consistency, and klaf – whitish parchment from the outer layer of animal skin – has largely replaced gvil parchment, which is found in the inner part of the skin and is therefore much redder.
Even the ancient tefillin found at Qumran, while intriguing, differ in size and form from modern examples and do not resolve halachic questions on their own. Ultimately, rabbinic authorities accepted many technological improvements, not as innovations, but as halachically guided refinements to safeguard and improve observance of this mitzvah.
Techeiles: Techeiles once relied on a known marine source – the chilazon – and a dyeing process known in ancient Jewish communities. But persecution, Roman restrictions on colored dyes, and centuries of exile led to the complete loss of that tradition. Over time, communities defaulted to plain white tzitzis, with techeiles deferred indefinitely.
In recent decades, compelling evidence has identified the Murex trunculus snail as the probable chilazon. Dye tests, archaeological textiles, and even some ancient manuscripts confirm that the ancients produced blue from Murex. Still, some authorities hesitate to reintroduce techeiles without a continuous mesorah.
Concerns have also been raised about modern production methods. Today, Ptil Techelet uses sodium dithionite – a 20th-century chemical – to extract the blue dye. Yet research by Prof. Zvi Koren shows that ancient makers used methods to debrominate from violet-purple to blue, and due to the organic nature of the snail, each blue comes out differently. Three textile fragments confirm that this Murex-derived blue was known and used in the ancient world.
Deception and Counterfeit Practices
Tefillin: There have been instances where imposters wore tefillin as an overt show of false piety, discouraging some from the practice of wearing tefillin all day and risking being associated with such gangsters. To quote Yerushalmi Brachos (2:3):
Why does one not hold on to them? Because of the impostors [Hence, wearing tefillin outside of times of prayer may make a person suspect of being a gangster impersonating a pious person]. It happened that a man deposited something with another, and the latter then reneged on it. He said to him: It wasn’t you that I thought was trustworthy, but I trusted what you were wearing on your head.
Techeiles: The high value of techeiles led to the emergence of counterfeit plant-based versions, known as Kala Ilan, often using cheaper indigo dyes. These fakes were sometimes indistinguishable from the genuine article. In some instances, people would purchase Kala Ilan instead in order to appear overtly pious, though in many cases others would swap techeiles with Kala Ilan, whether it was to buy from someone, or to hand a beged with techeiles to the local laundromat where there was the added risk of the person switching techeiles strings with Kala Ilan strings.
With the Rambam later on being explicit that blue produced by a plant is not kosher for techeiles, this led to further skepticism and eventual abandonment of the practice to avoid unintentional transgression.
Being on a Lower Spiritual Level Than Before
Tefillin: On a personal level, according to Rebbi Yannai, one needed to have a clean body to wear tefillin all day. That meant no flatulating (Abaye) or sleeping (Rava).
Today, to address this concern, most Jews today wear tefillin during Shacharis prayer services only, making it easier to control oneself over a shorter period of time.
Anecdotally, in Jerusalem there is a kollel founded by R’ Yitzchak Shlomo Zilberman, based on the path of the Vilna Gaon, whose members wear tefillin (as well as techeiles) all day and keep a clean body based on their understanding of the guidelines.
Techeiles: Kabbalistic teachings associate techeiles with profound spiritual meaning, which is then weaponized against wearing techeiles today. Some authorities interpret the Sifre, the Arizal, and the Ben Ish Hai to suggest that without the proper spiritual conditions, techeiles will not be found until Moshiach comes. Furthermore, the Zohar writes that wearing Kala Ilan instead of techeiles invokes the power of the Sitra Achara (the “Other Side”) to take over the person.
These concerns have been addressed at length but are beyond the scope of this article.
Yuhara (Haughtiness)
Tefillin: During the Gaonic period, this was a pushback concern voiced by some Rabbis. R’ Yosef Gaon for one wrote that “A merchant involved in business, should he put on tefillin during prayer (Shemoneh Esrei) and Shema, or perhaps only a great person puts them on, while one who is not such an important person doesn’t so as not to appear haughty, since the entire congregation does not put them on?”
The short answer as to why the entire congregation wasn’t able to wear tefillin was because in Bavel, it was relatively easy to obtain while in Israel it wasn’t due to persecutions happening there. As Jews moved around, tefillin became much less accessible.
Techeiles: With techeiles today, a number of people say that the overwhelming majority of Gedolim don’t wear techeiles, and if a regular person wears techeiles, he may come across as appearing that he knows better than the rabbis of higher stature, as well as most of those around him.
Similar to the history of tefillin above, the reason why earlier Gedolim didn’t wear techeiles was simply because they couldn’t. It’s interesting to note that some Gedolim today do wear or have worn techeiles, including R’ Herschel Schachter, R’ Yisroel Belsky, R’ Moshe Mordechai Karp, R’ Zalman Nechemia Goldberg; there are reports also about R’ Moshe Sternbuch. Some Gedolim choose to wear techeiles on their tallis kattan only to address the yuhara matter, while still fulfilling the mitzvah. Others wear techeiles throughout, seeing the fulfillment of a mitzvah as not violating yuhara at all.
Conclusion
So what does this all tell us? That losing a mitzvah isn’t new, and neither is bringing one back. Tefillin was once on shaky ground, but over time, we revived the mitzvah. Techeiles has followed a similar arc, except that the restoration of the mitzvah is happening now, in real time.
We’ve heard similar hesitations before. The doubts, the delays, the “maybe it’s not for us” line. To quote Shlomo HaMelech, there’s nothing new under the sun. But neither is the pattern: Something gets lost, it stirs debate, then slowly, people step up. And the mitzvah returns. And if we already wear the black boxes that once almost disappeared, maybe it’s time to tie techeiles back into tzitzis.
