28 Rev. Isaac Herzog on 



This is really the opinion of Maimonides, the greatest codifier 

 of Jewish law and ritual. In reproducing the Talmudic account 

 of the dyeing of tekelet, he states : " The wool is soaked in chalk 

 and Avashed until it is clean, and then boiled with ahla and the 

 like, as is the practice of the dyers, in order to prepare the wool 

 for absorbing the colour. The blood of the hilazon is then put 

 into the vat (kettle) together with drugs such as kimonia 

 (cimolia),* as is usual in dyeing ; the liquid having been raised to 

 a boiling heat, the wool is immersed therein, remaining in that 

 condition until it has the colour of the sky, and this is the tekelet 

 used for the fringes." 



Tests for Detecting Fraudulent Imitations of Tekelet. 



Imitations of purple with vegetable dye-stuff are referred to 

 in Pliny, Vitruvius and other non-Jewish sources. I cannot, 

 however, recall any reference to tests in Greek and Latin authors. 



For tekelet the Talmud records two testing processes : one 

 due to R. Isaac V. R. Jehudah, the other to R. Avira in whose 

 name it was reported by R. A.da. In the first case a sample of 

 the wool in question was allowed to soak overnight in a mixture 

 of alumine, fenugrec juice and urine forty days old (or 

 according to a variant reading urine of a forty days' old child). 

 If the colour remained unimpaired, the tekelet was proved 

 genuine. The other test consisted in putting some of the wool 

 into an overfermented dough made of barley flour, and baking the 

 dough. If after the baking operation was over, the sample on 

 being taken out showed a change for the better in the quality of 

 the colour, the wool would be pronounced genuine tekelet ; if 

 for the worse, it would be rejected. 



The tekelet imitations were usually made with ir.digo, 

 which being fast to light and washing, could not be easily detected 

 as a fraud. 



In test (l) we miss an indication of the proportions in 



*Ciinolia is a cleaning substance, a reference to which is often made 

 in Pliny (XX., 81, etc). 



