Kiss My Sitsit.

johndbrey@gmail.com

Upon reciting the words “Me’arba Kanfot Ha’aretz” before Shema, one should take hold of his Sisit strings with his left hand and hold them near his heart until he recites the words, “Ve’nehemadim La’ad U’l’olmeh Olamim” after Shema. It is proper to look at the Sisit while reciting the third paragraph of Shema, and many have the custom to kiss the Sisit each time they recite the word “Sisit.” One should also look at the Sisit strings when he dons his Tallit, just before he recites the Beracha.

DailyHalacha.com.

This piece from DailyHalacha.com points out the importance of seeing the tzitzit. Seeing is believing, so to say. And to see the tzitzit is to love the tzitzit. So you place it near the heart, and kiss it, just like the rosary. Rabbi Hirsch says that seeing the external, tangible, tzitzit, is not fulfilling the mitzvah unless the one looking at it realizes what's being symbolized by looking at the tangible symbol of the tzitzit. As has been pointed out numerous times, concerning Rabbi Hirsch, he's so forthcoming, so unafraid of the truth of the symbolism, that he sometimes gets himself into a conundrum of his own making. He does so here when he tells us precisely what one is seeing when they see the tangible, symbolic, tzitzit:

During the time of the reading of the Shema, the tzitzith should be taken in the left hand and during the פרשת ציצית in the right hand. At וראיתם אותו one should look at the tzitzith. After having looked at them, some pass the tzitzith gently to their lips, as a sign of devotion and joy . . . Who, after having pondered the significance of tzitzith, cannot apprehend the meaning of the pronouncement of our Sages: "He who observes the duty of tzitzith well will reach to behold the face of the Omnipresent God"?

Horeb, Tzitzith, p. 186.

Rabbi Hirsch is clear that the person who ponders the symbolism of the tzitzit, as required to fulfill the mitzvah, " . . . beholds the face of the Omnipresent God." . . . But that can't be! A Jew can't behold the face of the Omnipresent one in a tangible image, can't kiss the face of God, can't place it in his bosom?

. . . God does not wish you to follow the course prompted by your heart or your eye, and so He has given you a means whereby in the present, visible world you will always have a visible reminder of God---Himself invisible . . . Him who is Invisible, and the word of the Invisible revealed in the past have imposed upon you a higher obligation----in short, a means which directs your attention from the visible to the invisible and brings the past palpably before you in the present. This means is the tzitzith (ציצית); indeed, it is called ציצית from the root meaning "to appear in visible form."

Ibid. p. 181.

Here, as elsewhere, Rabbi Hirsch gets all tangled up in his words because of the plain meaning of his words. The tzitzit is a tangible, visible, palpably before you, image (seen with the naked eyes) of the invisible God as he would, " . . . appear in visible form." "He who observes the duty of tzitzith well, will reach to behold the face of the Omnipresent God." ------The tzitzit is a visible symbol of the invisible God. But Rabbi Hirsch notes that this visible symbol of the invisible God is attached to the garment, the clothing, the cloth, that represents the covering up of man's beastial nature, his animal nature? And, guess what, the tzitzit is attached, as Rabbi Kaplan tells us, with a permanent knot? The visible symbol of God, the tzitzit, is permanently attached to the garment covering up man's animal nature:

Everything in the Torah has a reason, even it's order, so the fact that the commandment of Shaatnez is right next to that of Tzitzith comes to teach us something . According to Talmudic tradition, the laws of Shaatnez are set aside when one must place the blue woolen Tzitzith thread in a linen Tallith. The juxtaposition of the two commandments comes specifically to teach us this exception. This was, however, only true when the blue [techelet] thread was still in use. . . the prohibition of Shaatnez only applies when the linen and wool are permanently attached together. Thus, the very tradition that the commandment of Tzitzith can override that of Shaatnez, teaches us that the Tzitzith must be permanently attached to the garment.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Tzitzith: A Thread of Light, p. 16.

The visible image of the invisible God, the tzitzit, is permanently attached to the garment representing the covering up man's beastly nature. God and man are permanently united in a union that according to the law of shatnez, which Rabbi Hirsch claims is about not mixing different species, would make mixing God and man together the ultimate transgression of shatnez. But no, the techelet thread rescinds the law of shatnez, and the permanent knot used to attach the visible symbol of God to the garment of man makes the rescinding of the law against mixing species, God and man, beast and man, absolutely necessary.

God and man are mixed together in a theologically beastly fashion that would be utterly against the law, which law, Torah, Rabbi Hirsch claims is represented completely by shatnez. If not for the techelet thread that allows the law, the Torah, shatnez, the mixing of unlike things, God and man, male and female, Jew and Gentile, to be mixed, then attaching the woolen thread, tzitzit, on a linen tallith, would be a transgression of the law as great as placing God, or the visible symbol of God, on, or in, a man, say between his breast.

After his discussion of the nature of clothing, in his treatment of the tzitzit, Rabbi Hirsch (Collected Writing III, p. 118), quotes Psalm 132: 9 and 16. "He clothes priest with salvation [Yeshua] . . .." ------Rabbi Hirsch notes on page 128 of the same treatise that "A thread of תכלת color on our garments conferred upon all of us the insignia of our high-priestly calling . . .." ----- He thus, and unapologetically, equates the tzitzit (with its techelet-colored thread) with wearing yeshua, being clothed with yeshua (salvation), signifying the priestly calling.

In The Hirsch Tehillim, at 132:16-18, which he quotes in his treatment of the tzitzit, we read:

I will cloth its priests with salvation [yeshua], and its devoted ones shall ever shout for joy. There I shall cause David's horn [Messiah] to spring up; there I have set in order a lamp for My anointed. His enemies will I clothe with shame, but upon him his crown will blossom.

In his treatment of the tzitzit, Rabbi Hirsch quotes Psalm 132, to suggest that being clothed with the tzitzit is being clothed with yeshua (salvation). Then, at Psalm 132, he notes that this tzitzit-looking yeshua that we're clothed in for salvation is "David's horn" [Messiah] springing up, sprouting, from between the breast of Gentile kings and queens (Isa. 60:16), so that no serious reader of the foregoing could deny, with a straight face, that Rabbi Hirsch is comparing tzitzit wearing to wearing yeshua, salvation. And that this yeshua, salvation, is the horn of David, who will inherit the throne of David, i.e., Messiah.

From the very beginning God had declared that "His Blessing" [his salvation] would be the manifest demonstration through which His presence would be revealed at that place which He would deem worthy of being the Abode [shrine] where His Name would be mentioned בכל המקום אשר אזכיד את שמי אבוא אליך וברכתיך,

The Hirsch Tehillim, 132:15-18, referencing Shemos, 20:21.

Rabbi Hirsch, not connecting the dots on his own statements, implies that God would manifest his Name in the shrine, Abode, he would deem worthy of manifesting his Name. That Abode, that shine, is not only the horn of David, Messiah, but the shrine, the abode, that’s represented, in Rabbi Hirsch's own words, by the tzitzit, which earlier in the essay, he pointed out to be the "visible manifestation" of the Godhead.

If we examined every word in Psalm 132:16-18, we'd be left with no recourse but to realize the truth Rabbi Hirsch lays out without being able to look at it with his own eyes. The passage in Psalms say this messianic "sprout" tzitzit, will literally clothe his priests, while his enemies will be clothed in shame, and, ". . . upon him his crown will blossom." ----- He will wear a crown capable of blooming. The word in the verse claiming this messianic yeshua will wear a crown that can "blossom," uses a particular word for the "blossoming": tzitzit.

Rabbi Hirsch claims the word tzitzit means to spring forth, to blossom, even from a non-salubrious place. Which makes us think of Isaiah claiming Messiah will sprout from dry ground, non-fertile ground. And of course we're speaking of the horn of David, Messiah, when we speak of this blossoming from a dry place, perhaps even a crown of thorns.

The opening statement of the great compendium of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, begins by treating this great conundrum for the Jew, i.e., the fact of Messiah being the shrine, or Abode, where God's Name will be manifest:

Rabbi Hizkiyah opened, "Like a rose among thorns, so is my beloved among the maidens (Song of Songs 2:2). Who is a rose? . . . a rose among thorns is colored red and white . . . concerning this mystery it is written: I raise the cup of salvation [the cup of Yeshua] (Psalms 116:13). This is the cup of blessing that should rest on five fingers . . . This rose is the cup of blessing.

Rabbi Hizkiyah points out that this rose among a crown of thorns is colored red and white. As is the tzitzit. And the white is the wool of the lamb of God, and the red is the techelet, which is the blood of God, manufactured first by Moses, from the golden-god powdered and mixed in water to sprinkle the woolen garments of Israel in order to produce a thread of red mixed with the woolen white to represent being watered by the cup of blessing, the blood of yeshua, filling the cup of the blessing of salvation.

As regards the connection between מילה and טומאת לידה, this is the rule: כל שאמר טמאה לידה נימול לשמונה, וכל שאין אמו טמאה לידה אין נימול לשמונה (Shabbos 135a). In the above mentioned article (Collected Writings, vol. III, p. 96ff.) we discussed this rule as well. We noted there that seven days of טומאה conclude a period marked by a condition that must be overcome: A person ceases to be an unfree created being (symbolized by the number six) and becomes a human being endowed with freedom (symbolized by the number seven); and he attains this only through a covenant with God. On the eighth day he is reborn for the Jewish mission. This rebirth is on the basis of man's innate Godly freedom, for the sake of a higher level of freedom, a higher calling. The eighth day is a repetition of the first day, the day of physical birth, on a higher level----the beginning of a higher "octave," as it were. The compelling force of nature---which is manifest in the mother and her son at the physical birth----brings the mother the seven days of טומאת לידה, and, as regards the son, requires in ordinary cases the passing of seven days before fulfillment of מצות מילה [mitzvot milah, ritual circumcision).

By contrast, if the mother is not Jewish בשעת לידה and so does not contract טומאת לידה [tumat niddah, ritual impurity], it is the מילה [milah, ritual circumcision] ---and not the birth----that connects the son to Judaism. Accordingly, the מילה by itself constitutes a new beginning of life, unconnected with what came before; the connection with the physical birth is no longer pronounced. . . it dispels the notion that מילה is a procedure to prevent disease, or is a heathen cultic rite (see ibid.). . . Israel is the eighth work of creation, joining the seven works of creation of the world.

The Hirsch Chumash, Sefer Vayikra, 12:3.

In this one passage, from Leviticus chapter 12, Rabbi Hirsch confirms most of what's being implied throughout this essay. As a bonus, he states, as was stated in the essay concerning metzitzah b'peh, that, as was stated there, circumcision, against what Maimonides implies, has nothing to do with preventing disease, or lessening desire, as it has nothing to do with pagan cult rites, " . . . it dispels the notion that מילה is a procedure to prevent disease, or is a heathen cultic rite." -----Brit milah is about being born-again, plain and simple.

A person ceases to be an unfree created being (symbolized by the number six) and becomes a human being endowed with freedom (symbolized by the number seven); and he attains this only through the Noahide covenant with God. On the eighth day he’s reborn for the Jewish mission. This rebirth is on the basis of man's innate, Godly freedom, for the sake of this higher level of freedom, this higher calling. The eighth day is a repetition of the first day, the day of physical birth, on a higher level----the beginning of a higher "octave," as it were. . . Accordingly, the מילה, by itself, constitutes a new beginning of life, unconnected with what came before (i.e., the physical birth).

As he states it in his Collected Writing, III, Rabbi Hirsch states it again here: circumcision ritualizes being born-again, rebirth, such that the person born-again, on the eighth day, is a new man, and not just an addendum to the physical birth of the old man. This concept, as Rabbi Hirsch describes it, means the spiritual must be grafted onto the physical, since it’s not a product of the physical, that came first. The new man, the Jew, is a spiritual man, grafted onto the physical root (the old man, born physically) just as a master planter plants his prized branch on a bastard root knowing that the bastard nature of the hearty root will have no affect on the fruit produced by the prized branch.

In grafting, a prized branch can be grafted onto any (compatible) root, no matter how profane, and it will have no affect on the production of the fruit. The Gentile man, the physical man, born first, through the original sin, phallic sex, will have no part in the production of the Jewish fruit, come from the branch (ציצית) grafted onto the physical root (tallith), on the eighth day. Which is where Rabbi Hirsch backs himself into the corner his incomplete Judaism forces him to go. . . Even when Rabbi Hirsch feigns ignorance, or blindness, concerning his own statements, he shines a great light. ------In a statement that seems to be the source for Rabbi Hirsch's quotation from Leviticus 12:3, he says:

Therefore, the physical birth of the child is completed on the seventh day. The eighth day, the octave of birth, as it were, repeats the day of birth, but as a day of higher, spiritual birth for his Jewish mission.

Collected Writings III, p. 111.

Immediately after this statement, Rabbi Hirsch moves into his discussion of the tzitzit. In fact, the statement quoted above is the final remark before Rabbi Hirsch moves into his discussion of the tzitzit:

Of all the Divine commandments which we will attempt to examine in the present study, none has a more obviously symbolic character than does the commandment of tzitsith. The Divine Law itself has set down the meaning and content of this commandment in unambiguous terms. There can be no doubt about the message to be conveyed by the fringes we are to attach to our garments . . ..

As has been quoted throughout this essay, Rabbi Hirsch compares the tzitzit to a "sprout" a "blossom" even a branch. ------And he connects this branch, or blossom, to ritual circumcision by means of the eight strings of this branch, or blossom, or sprout (the tzitzit). So we're not surprised to read, in the Horeb, p. 535, Rabbi Hirsch saying, in a discussion of ritual circumcision, which he just said is rebirth, the day of being born-again, which, amazingly, he points out is not directly a part of the physical body born first from the mother:

The מילה [milah, ritual circumcision] proclaims the full significance of the sealing of the covenant . . . What is it [then] that blossoms forth from the sealing of this holy covenant? That the living God becomes our only God . . ..

Rabbi Hirsch is channeling, unconsciously perhaps, great Jewish truths not apparent to his conscious mind. He knows the ritual cutting removes the unworthy branch. He knows the tzitzit represents the worthy branch that "blossoms" when the ritual circumcision מילה takes place (taking away the unworthy branch). And he asks the pertinent question: What is it that blossoms forth after the removal of the unworthy branch? His answer is breathtaking in context: That the living God, versus some other god, i.e., the invisible god of monotheism . . . get this . . . becomes our "only God." -----Subconsciously Rabbi Hirsch, as will be shown more clearly, is channeling the Christian Gospels, by implying that when the old branch is removed, brit milah, a new branch will "blossom" (literally, the Heb. tzitzit) to replace the old branch.

But just here is where Rabbi Hirsch can no longer boldly go, precisely because it's where no Jew has gone before and not experienced a conversion event. Rabbi Hirsch's statement, as can be proven by other statements of the great Rabbi, implies that only at brit milah, does the monotheistic God of Jewish theology, become the Living God, who, and it's hard to believe Rabbi Hirsch says this, now, just here, in the Presence of this theophany, brit milah, becomes Echad, the God of the Shema, the One and only Living God.

Rabbi Hirsch's inability to swallow what metzitzah b'peh represents, ritually, symbolically, forces the great Rabbi to eat his words, rather the fruit from the blossom "grafted" (not grown) onto the original root, of the original body, born the first day, to the mother.

Frightened of where his study is taking him, Rabbi Hirsch slams on the brakes:

And now, examine these "sprouts" upon your garments. Although God's law bids you knot them, and knot them firmly to your garment, קשר עליון דאורייתא, they are, nevertheless, merely threads of the same kind of material as that from which your garment has been woven. . . The sole purpose of this commandment is to act as ציצת [tzitzit], to develop your human nature to the highest level of perfection.

He's lying to himself, and to his theology, and he knows it, and gives us a Freudian clue letting us know he knows it:

It does not seek to accomplish anything else than what is already part of your original vocation as a human being. Its observance does not make you into anything else but a human being, a human being at its best, achieving your highest potential as man.

This statement comes immediately after stating that the purpose of the tzitzit is to develop your human nature to the highest level of perfection. But who would think otherwise? Why the need to make the statement that follows? Why does the Rabbi think it’s necessary to note its observance doesn't make you into anything else but a human being? Why would Rabbi Hirsch finds it necessary to clarify something no Jew would think about anyway? I mean what on earth could a human being become, achieve, other than the highest potential of man?

Rabbi Hirsch makes his statement for many reasons. One is the fact that he has stated that circumcision is "rebirth," being "born-again," and that it’s something new, not a mere addendum to the physical human being born the first day. He claims circumcision is a "spiritual" rebirth, and not something born out of the physical birth. Well, naturally, the physical birth is the birth of the natural man, the normal human being. And Rabbi Hirsch is explicit, in his Collected Writings III, and his Chumash, at Leviticus 12:3, that what’s born-again on the eighth day, is not merely the highest attainment of the natural born man, but something spiritual, a higher octave than the physical.

It’s now clear why Rabbi Hirsch feels the necessity to clarify himself even though his clarification is a nullification of his own words? He says rebirth on the eighth day is a higher octave of existence than the normal human being born physically, and that the new birth is not a mere addendum to the first, natural birth. Then he says that the tzitzit, which spouts from the ritual cutting off of the natural branch (brit milah), the branch that gave birth to the normal human being, doesn't make you anything else but a natural born human being.

Rabbi Hirsch, writing in Christian Germany, realizes he's throwing around the word "rebirth" and "born-again" in a context where it means becoming not just the highest natural born man, but a new man, born-again, into a wholly new spectrum, octave, that Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:17, claims makes one not just the highest of the human species, but a "new spiritual species" completely other than the natural born man born into, and through, the sin of phallic-sex. Paul teaches of a new hupostasis. A new man. No longer merely the highest attainment of the old man. The new man does, by his new nature, more than the law prescribes as the completion or perfection of the old man.

But this, the Rabbi's conscious mind hollers, is unJewish! -----You can't graft a spiritual species onto a physical species without breaking the most comprehensive prohibition on mixing unlike things found in the Torah: shatnez.

Rabbi Hirsch is patently clear that shatnez represents the prohibition against unlawful mixing of species. He claims the mixing of plant (linen), and animal (wool), merely represents the mixing of unlike things which God separated into individual kingdoms and species. Shatnez forbids tampering with God's "natural" seemingly "original" order, as it's come down to us. And Rabbi Hirsch is explicit that the Jew, because of this forbidden tampering, is not to mix with the natural man, the Gentile.

Timber trees which do not bear fruit may be grafted onto one another, but not to fruit trees, or vice versa.

Horeb, p. 284.

The natural born man, who cannot produce spiritual fruit, cannot be grafted onto the spiritual man, nor can the spiritual man be grafted onto the natural born man. Not by natural law, as exemplified by shatnez, as exemplified by the written Torah (the Law) . . . Which is where, and why, Rabbi Hirsch tries desperately to overrule himself by claiming the tzitzit’s blossoming doesn't represent anything other than the natural vocation of the natural born man.

But Rabbi Hirsch is barking up the wrong tree when he speaks of the tzitzit as producing the same thing as the branch that must be removed before the tzitzit can be, get this, "grafted," and it is, with a permanent knot, to the old garment, the flesh of the old man, the latter representing the fleshly cover God gave to the sinful natural man. The new branch is grafted onto the old garment (represented by the tallit), against everything the written Torah says about unnatural mixing of different species, against the natural god's natural law, as exemplified by the order inherent to the natural world.

The מילה [milah, ritual circumcision] proclaims the full significance of the sealing of the covenant . . . What is it [then] that blossoms [tzitzit] forth from the sealing of this holy covenant [marked by the removal of the old branch]? That the living God becomes our only God . . ..

The natural god of monotheism, whom modern Judaism makes the creator of the natural world, and whose laws are seemingly beyond repute, natural to the natural mind, becomes, at circumcision, something horrifying, something new, something only revealed at the bloody sealing of the covenant; where the tzitzit is grafted onto to the old root thereafter blossoming in the place of the former flesh, with the result of making the Living God become our only God, Echad, the Shema. These are the Rabbi's words.

More than one God principle is being unified into one Living God, at the cutting off of the natural man's source, at the blossoming of the new man, the Jew, born unnaturally, supernaturally, from the blood of the natural man---hood, to become a new spiritual species. As below, so above, and as above, so below.

Which is where techelet comes in, and where Rabbi Hirsch tunes out, of his own study, for reasons that are patently clear.

. . . God does not wish you to follow the course prompted by your heart or your eye, and so He has given you a means whereby in the present, visible world you will always have a visible reminder of God---Himself invisible . . . Him who is Invisible, and the word of the Invisible revealed in the past have imposed upon you a higher obligation----in short, a means which directs your attention from the visible to the invisible and brings the past palpably before you in the present. This means is the tzitzith; indeed, it is called ציצית from the root meaning "to appear in visible form.". . He who observes the duty of tzitzith well will reach to behold the face of the Omnipresent God.

Collected Writings III.

The natural man can't see the face of the Omnipotent God without dyeing [sic]. And the old law, of the old god, the old name, is more than willing to see to the death of anyone trying to break his natural born laws in order to sneak a peak behind the veil that covers up a cover-up of biblical proportions. Sadly, Rabbi Hirsch is committed to serving the natural god, and the natural laws. So in a discussion of the tzitzit, this knowledgeable Rabbi, one of the best, says this, and he says it immediately prior to claiming the tzitzit doesn't call the natural born Jew to a new calling other than being a natural born human being:

And now, examine these "sprouts" upon your garment. Although God's Law bids you knot them, and knot them firmly [permanently] to your garment, they are, nevertheless, merely threads of the same kind of material as that from which your garment has been woven. The sole purpose of this commandment is to act as tzitzit, to develop [blossom] your human nature to the highest level of perfection [afforded a natural born man under the natural born law].

There's a white lie here. And it's a bloody white lie. Since the tzitzit, before Israel's condemnation from God, i.e., the destruction of the Temple, was not "the same material as that from which your garment [tallit] has been woven." -----It was a priestly material, made from the unlawful mixing of two kinds of material, wool (animal), and linen (plant). ------The tzitzit, the true tzitzit, transgressed the law that Rabbi Hirsch's theology refuses to transgress because Rabbi Hirsch's own tzitzit, god forbid, was made from the same material as the natural garment (tallit) he wore.

Like every other Jew, after God removed the Temple, Rabbi Hirsch's tzitzit is a profane, natural product, without the techelet, the blood of God, that allows the transgression of the natural born law which Rabbi Hirsch, and all modern Jew's, refuse to transgress, even to become the new man. They imply the sacred tzitzit has no meaning deeper than the wearing of the tallit. They come from the same material and are materially the same as the Genitile. The Jew allegedly comes from the same birth as the Gentile and is materially the same. But it ain’t true. It’s a white lie; and a bloody white lie at that.

Without the techelet, the true tzitzit can't be worn, such that we see that the natural born Jew can't decipher the deeper spiritual things without wearing the deep-red-strings: the techelet-doused-tzitzit, he falsely reads as blue. The Jew who doesn't wear techelet can't see past the natural born law that imprisons him to worship the god of the natural world, which he thinks of as the Living God, whom he relates to heaven, sky, blue, rather than red, blood, adamah, earth.

To see deeper into the sad state of those who've lost the recipe for techelet, and thus the cipher to seeing deeper than the natural born law, born of the nature god, it would be necessary to understand the nature of techelet, which is the most unnatural color, and product, in the natural world. The techelet doused/dyed tzitzit is the blossom, the Branch, grafted on, permanently (once saved always saved) when the natural flesh, of the natural birth, is ritually removed (brit milah).

To be born-again, reborn, in Hirschesque parlance, is to graft what's born of eight threads on the eighth day, of supernatural origin, spiritual origin, onto the damned root of the sinful old man, without that grafting affecting the fruit of the graft one iota (so to say).

Though in the natural world, species are not to be mixed ---shatnez---- once the supernatural has usurped the natural order, then and there the former testament to the nature of truth has been rescinded, and a new life, freer than Rabbi Hirsch could believe, free from the natural law, is available to all mankind.

The nature of this supernatural rescinding of the natural order, the natural world, the nature god, is directly, and unequivocally related to one supernatural element, in the natural order, techelet. ------Since techelet is the elixir that dyes the tzitzit in order to turn the natural born man, into the Jew, born of the eight threads of the tzitzit, which sprout from the old root, on the eighth day, knowing the essence, nature, and source of this dye, is quite literally of biblical import.

The recipe for this dye, died, precisely, when the Temple was taken from Israel, by God, for their great rejection of the source of techelet. God took techelet in the first century of the current era, and no Jew has found that recipe to the current day. Worse, when it's given to them, they reject it, laugh at it, since no non-Jew could possibly know the meaning and making of techelet, since it's required for the tzitzit that requires circumcision, which comes before the sprouting of the tzitzit.

If a non-Jew knew the recipe for techelet, currently unknown to the modern Jew, it might suggest that the very distinction between Jew and Gentile had been rescinded, and that's just too bitter a pill for any natural born Jew to swallow, since their chosenness is related to their natural birth, rather than their being born-again. They’re born from the natural laws, and the nature god (the serpent) whose blood is the most important ingredient in the making of techelet. ------If there’s to be techelet, there will be blood. And blood of an important kind. Supernatural blood. Not just blood from heaven, which would be blue-blood, the blood of divine royalty. But a mixture, rescinding shatnez. Purple blood, read as red and blue mixed. It comes not from just one organ but two.

Blue-blood is the blood of divine royalty. And the nature god of the natural order is the quintessential blue-blood. Divine royalty. And never, in his order of things, would his blue blood flow red. Never shall that blasphemy be read into the old testament from some newfangled order associated with a so-called world-to-come that already came. If the nature god of the natural world, closely associated with what the old testes--meant, ever bled, red, hell would pay.

We believe, therefore, that, as the number seven is a reference to the Invisible One, Who is linked to His visible creation as its Creator and Master, the number eight represents the visible upholder of this "seven," the perceptible herald of this reverent awareness of God.

Collected Writings III, p. 106.

. . . God does not wish you to follow the course prompted by your heart or your eye, and so He has given you a means whereby in the present, visible world you will always have a visible reminder of God---Himself invisible . . . Him who is Invisible, and the word of the Invisible revealed in the past have imposed upon you a higher obligation----in short, a means which directs your attention from the visible to the invisible and brings the past palpably before you in the present. This means is the tzitzith (ציצית); indeed, it is called ציצית from the root meaning "to appear in visible form.". . He who observes the duty of tzitzith well will reach to behold the face of the Omnipresent God.

Horeb, p. 181.

The מילה [milah, ritual circumcision] proclaims the full significance of the sealing of the covenant . . . What is it [then] that blossoms forth from the sealing of this holy covenant? That the living God becomes our only God . . ..

Horeb, p. 535.

One can parse this if they own a techelet -dyed tzitzit. -----If not, not so much. . .. Rav Hirsch says the natural man is related to the number six, while the man in God's Noahide covenant is related to seven. He isn't the mere animal related to six, but a man with insight and relationship to God, seven. But the Jew is different, and has a different God than the animal, six, or the Gentile, seven. The circumcised man, wearing a techelet-dyed tzitzit, sees that the two former gods, the six, and the seven, are One, in the Living God, who is associated with eight.

The tzitzit is the idolatrous-entanglement (so to say) of two things that shant be mixed in the mind of animals, who are beholden to the natural order apart from their will, or even the animal man, the Gentile, who must himself, of his God-given free-will (which distinguishes him from animals) abide by God's natural law.

The Jew, not so much.

When he's circumcised, the un-entangled nature god of modern Jewish monotheism, associated with heaven, not earth, blue-blood, not red and purple, divine law and judgment, rather than free grace and mercy, death, rather than everlasting life, is grasp between the fingers of the left hand, raised to the mouth to receive the kiss of death, moved in downward stroke signifying his genesis, and the place of his exodus (what the old--testes---meant), brought back to the heart, scorched as he is from the kiss of death, with leprosy, moved to the grasp of the right hand, where the old order, the leprous branch, the god of what the old testes-meant, has been transformed, through death, the dyeing, of techelet, into the symbol of death now become the symbol of life ---- תפארת. ------The symbol of the Living God, has now become the symbol of the new man; the symbol of the new man has now become the symbol of all redeemed men.

The techelet-imbued tzitzit displays a remarkable similarity to the Christian rosary. Both are visible manifestations of God held in the hand י, and associated with the heart, symbolically between the breast שד.-----The Shulhan Aruch (Orah Haim 24) writes that it’s a Misva to hold one’s Sisit with his left hand near his heart while reciting the Shema each morning. The fact that it's held between the "breast," Heb. shad, in the hand, Heb. yad, (the combination spelling "Shaddai"), and placed against the heart (between the breast, shad), during the pronouncing of the Shema, is of the utmost importance.

Professor Michael Fishbane (Nathan Cummings Professor of Jewish Studies and Chair of the Committee on Jewish studies at the University of Chicago), in his book, The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism, takes us to the bedrock foundation of the concepts that twist the Shema and the tzitzit together into a whole-thread:

This interpretation of the Shema recitation as a meditation on martyrological death recurs throughout the Middle Ages--and beyond [p.102]. . . the penitent physically expresses the intention to die at the hands of the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, who is symbolized by the Tree of Death [p. 107]. . . It is thus not just the mystery of death that stands at the heart of All-Being but the sacrificial death of humans that mysteriously redeems the Godhead. . . Death is the paradoxical agent of Life: a salvific-messianic-act with human love at the center [p. 116]. . . Not only can physical death help atone for sins committed on earth, but a perfect martyrdom has the singular power to repair spiritual realities in the divine realm. . . A darker mystery is unimaginable [p. 126].

This is a respected expert on things Jewish (who is himself a practicing Jew) discussing the Shema, such that immense weight is lent to the statement in the opening quotation of this essay, where the "left hand" (regardless of the orientation of the penitent) must grasp the tzitzit, and place it between the breast, i.e., at the heart (having kissed the tzitzit . . . perhaps goodbye) during the recitation of the Shema.

In mystical Jewish circles, the kabbalah in particular, the "left hand" represents the Judgment of God, Gevurah. So when Professor Fishbane speaks of the "feminine” aspect of God, symbolized by the Tree of Death, he's speaking of Gevurah, Judgment, Samael שמאל, placing, symbolically, the tzitzit, the manifestation of the right hand of God, grace (hesed) between the breast, on the Tree of Death, the dead branch, to "repair spiritual realities in the divine realm." ------ A darker, more opaque, mystery, within Judaism, is hardly imaginable.

In one passage the recitation of the Amidah brings about a conjunction of the masculine and feminine dimensions of God. "In shame" [repentance] before this cosmic coupling, the worshiper falls forward and covers his face while focusing his mind on the birth of souls resulting from this Holy Union (II. 128b-129a). The purpose of this physical and mental exercises is to undergo a cycle of death and rebirth, insofar as the worshiper "devotes his soul" to the feminine dimensions. By thus cleaving to Her when She is "taking" souls, the worshiper is born anew [born again] (II. 200b). . . it is precisely the readiness or resolve to die during the rite of nefilat `apayim that is decisive for the worshiper; that is, the penitent physically expresses the intention to die at the hands of the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God, who is symbolized by the Tree of Death.

Fishbane, Kiss of God, p. 107.

This is Christianity in a circumspect nut-shell; shame and repentance before being willing to "die with Christ," on the cross, which is the Tree of Death, when God's feminine aspect, i.e., his left שמאל (Samael) hand of Judgment, grasps the "perfect martyr" and hangs him on the Tree of Death, which, since this death destroys duality, is also the Tree of Life:

Functioning at several levels, this ritual process is at once an integration (within the worshipper) of the opposites of life and death, a unification (for God's sake) of the Trees of Life and Death, and a human attachment to the divine Tree of Death for the sake of renewed life (Ibid. p. 108).

Being "born-again," through this dying with Christ (attachment to the Tree of Death, the cross), is rephrased and rebranded as “renewed life," through the willingness to be hung on the Tree of Death, as it's being transformed into the Tree of Life, by the death of a perfect martyr, who can repair the brokenness of the godhead. And yet the Amidah prayer, and the Shema, and all the associated rituals and practices set around them would shun any similarity to Christianity such that a fair-minded exegete wouldn't necessarily attempt to imply that the righteous Jew partaking in this alleged rebranding and rewording is attempting to instantiate Christian doctrine as a source for the most fundamental Jewish practices.

Judaism doesn't so much steal Christian concepts as it finds these same concepts hidden deep inside the most formative symbols and practices found throughout the Torah and Tanakh. Only cutting deeper than the first veil, or even the second, which is to say, that only cutting through to the bone of truth, reveals these painful revelations, to the Jew who has as yet left a little something, in his foundational cutting, to the glory of the old man, the old god, and the old order. He been unwilling, to this point, to cover his face and allow himself to be nailed to the Branch where a perfect martyr is repairing all that was lost in Genesis 2:21 where the fundamental exodus occurs.

Rabbi Hirsch calls the tzitzit a "sprout," based on the etymology of the word. This "sprout" or Branch, was broken off from the original branch (prelapse Adam) and is grafted on to a new root (the offspring of post-lapsarian Adam) when the rosary, or tzitzit, is placed between the breasts, to represent the Tree of Life grafted onto the root of the sinner (the original fallen man) who is seriously in need of this everlasting life sprouting from this particular Tree, Branch, or rosary/tzitzit, once it’s been permanently grafted onto the old root.

Isaiah 60:16, says HaShem will "sprout" from the breasts of Gentile kings, and will dangle between the breasts of Gentile queens (on their wedding night), "suckling," like a sapling, from the breasts of Gentile kings and queens. ------Isaiah claims the very Branch he directly, implicitly, connects to Messiah, and Nehushtan (in early verses of Deutero-Isaiah) will be found "suckling" like a basal-shoot, a sprout, a tzitzit, grafted between the breasts, of Gentile kings and queens. He says HaShem will dangle between the breast of Gentile brides on their wedding night even as this same symbol (חשן) dangled between the breast of the high priest when he entered the nuptial chamber of the Temple on Yom Kippur (Rabbi Hirsch, Tehillim 132:16-18).

In the sense that the phallus, which is the branch grafted onto Adam in Genesis 2:21, reproduces by entering the soil of the woman, created simultaneous to the phallus, here, post circumcision, post ritual emasculation, Adam's first son, born apart from the reign of the phallus (ergo ritual emasculation initiating the covenant by means of the first virgin birth), becomes, in his whole body, what the phallus is in the reign of the phallus. Adam's first non-phallic son, born of a virgin, becomes Yesod, the Branch, whose whole body is phallic in nature since every limb of his body, every cell of his body, even his tongue, and his words, is, are, a genderless branch, capable of being grafted onto even a sinful root to produce perfect fruit, the fruit of everlasting life.

When the Jew, or the Christian, takes the "sprout," the tzitzit, the branch, that’s the cross, the final judgment for the sin of Genesis 2:21 (and all the sins in its aftermath . . . do the math), and places it between the ithyphallic breasts, they are, the Jew or Christian, symbolically grafting the only perfect branch, the only branch created before the Fall, before Cain, before phallic-sex, hidden until a conception freed from the reign of the phallus, onto their sinful body, so that the imperfect root (their physical body), might, by their faith, and their actions, become the sustenance, for a new branch, that will produce the perfect fruit of everlasting life.

In all mitzvoth (religious obligations) coming within the category of edoth, the underlying concern of the precept is that you should not regard as the end-purpose that which is ordained only as a symbol and achieves its end only by the significance it bears and by a comprehension of it; and furthermore, that you should not consider that you are fulfilling the mitzvoth merely by having the external representation or instrument before you.

Horeb, Tzitzith, p, 184.

The tzitzit is the external representative or instrument, before the Jew, at one of the most formative and important times in his life (the recitation of the Shema). As Rabbi Hirsch remarks, the underlying, or foundational concern, is not to have the tzitzit in one presence at this seminal moment, but to have an inkling, a comprehension, of what the symbol (the external, tangible, tzitzit) represents. To this end Rabbi Hirsch gives us all the pieces of the puzzle we should need to untangle the knotty threads of the tzitzit.

The essence of the injunction about tzizith is, in accordance with God's command, to make fringes on all four sides of a four-cornered garment in the corners thereof. On the garments---because the essential purpose of a garment is the covering up of the animal elements in man's body, leaving only those limbs bare which are primarily organs of human activity----namely, the face and the hands.

(Ibid. p. 182).

In a similar, and parallel vein, we have Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan justifying Rabbi Hirsch's statement about the tzitzit being placed on the garment:

Of all living creatures, man is unique in the fact that he covers his body with clothing. . . What was discovered was that people covered their sexual organs in virtually every human society. [And yet, before Adam sinned] . . . the Torah says of him, "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed" . . . It is a well known fact that in almost every culture the serpent represents some sort of phallic symbol.

Tzitzith: A Thread of Light, p. 43-44.

Prior to Genesis 2:21, if Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith, XVII, 6, can be believed, Adam may not have had the phallic organ that’s instinctively covered up by clothing after it’s risen to the occasion that occasions the conception of Cain. The sages of the midrash imply, with more support than the casual student might be aware, that Genesis 2:21, is the creation of both the phallus, the source of desire, and Satan, whom Rabbi Kaplan associates with the serpent and the serpentine flesh of the phallus:

R. Hanina, son of R. Adda, said: From the Beginning of the Book until here no samech is written, but as soon as she [Eve] was created, Satan was created with her. . .. AND HE CLOSED UP THE PLACE WITH FLESH INSTEAD THEREOF (TAHTENNAH). R. Hanina b. Isaac said: He provided him with a fitting outlet (naweh) for his nether functions, that his modesty might not be outraged like an animal.

Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith, XVII, 6. (See essay, Creating the Phallus: Satan Incarnate.)

The Talmud supports Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith XVII, 6, when, at Sanhedrin 38b, it claims that this closing up of flesh "covers" up the formerly original, and circumspect nature, of Adam's body, before Genesis 2:21. In other words, prior to Genesis 2:21 Adam is "circumcised," and only after the closure that covers the original flesh (Genesis 2:21) does Adam become, to the sages of the Talmud, a min, a Jewish heretic. Sanhedrin 38b goes so far as to call Genesis 2:21 "epispasm" (the covering up of a previously circumcised body). And as noted dozens of times, Rabbi Kaplan comments that something about circumcision makes the Jewish body like Adam's body prior to the fall.

With these fairly simple Jewish concepts in place, the standard treatment of the tzitzit becomes not only clear, but clearly a Jewish representation of the same concepts found in the Christian rosary.

Holding the crucifix of the Rosary with your right hand, make the Sign of the Cross [over heart] and then kiss the crucifix.

Mary Immaculate Queen.

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Thursday, August 9, 2018