Av 2, 5785 – July 27th, 2025
Written and illustrated by: Yaakov Rosenfeld, Ganzach Kiddush Hashem
On the week that the collection of Rabbi Yitzchak Frankfurt, born in Tarnow, Poland, was received by Ganzach Kiddush Hashem, we read in the Torah about the commandment of tzitzit (religious fringes worn by men). When I looked at the small, old item at the center of the collection, I was very moved. It is a “tallit katan” (literally “a small prayer shawl” but refers to tzitzit) that Rabbi Yitzchak sewed for himself with his own hands during his exile in Russia.
I stood and looked at the colourful and strange tzitzit, a tallit for which a tortured and pained Jew gave his life, and I pondered in my heart: What does this tallit resemble? And if Chazal (the sages) said about the commandment of techelet (blue strings) in the tzitzit that “the blue sky resembles the sea, and the sea resembles the firmament, and the firmament resembles the Throne of Glory”… then these colourful tzitzit, which resemble the sunset, and also the sunrise, and also the sea whose waves are quiet with the sun of the twilight sinking into it, perhaps these were the colours of the sea, the firmament, and the Throne of Glory during the years of the terrible destruction that befell all of the Jewish People, then in the days when we saw evil.
The tzitzit is made of different coloured fabrics; bright and striking colors that the techelet colour is absent from, and also what resembles the techelet colour, but since it does resemble the sea, not a calm techelet-coloured sea but an orange sea of sunset, or perhaps the edge of sunrise, it is clear that it also resembles the Throne of Glory, for during the Jewish People’s time of trouble, G-d sits on the Throne of Glory and weeps and sighs over the Jewish People’s sorrow, and over them giving their lives in sanctification of His Name, who at every wave shake their heads to Him and say, “Yitgadal V’Yitkadash Shemay Raba” (May His great Name be exalted and sanctified). On the verse “and they perceived the G-d of Israel, and beneath His feet was like the forming of a sapphire brick and like the appearance of the Heavens for clarity” (Exodus 24:10), the commentator Rashi brought a point from the Gemara (Sota 12): “As it were the brickword of a sapphire” – “This had been before Him during the period of Egyptian slavery as a symbol of Israel’s woes, for they were subjected to do brick-work“…
“And as it were as the body of Heaven for purity” — “This implies that as soon as they (the Israelites) were delivered there was radiance and rejoicing before Him”…
We are allowed to think, and imagine. If during the Egyptian slavery there was a brick before the Throne of Glory in memory of the hardship of the Israelites, in which the Egyptians enslaved them with brick-making, and only after they were redeemed was there light and joy in its place, what was the colour of the sea that resembled the Throne of Glory during the years of the Holocaust, when the world was red from the blood of the Jewish People that was spilled like water?… And perhaps this tzitzit was then “under His feet” (i.e. being crushed; Lamentations 3:34) in its many red shades, and perhaps it was the one that then resembled the Throne of Glory?
Rabbi Yitzchak Frankfurt’s tzitzit
