A God-Given Lifeline

A few minutes ago, during the service, we read a prayer about wearing tzitzit – the fringes on the corners of a tallit. Without these fringes, the tallit is just a piece of cloth. With the tzitzit, it becomes a holy garment.

It sounds like a dry commandment: wear these fringes and remember to observe the commandments … all 613 of them!

Yes, the strings are wrapped and knotted in a way that symbolizes the number 613 – the number of commandments in the Torah.

On surface, when we wear tallitot in the morning, it appears that we’ll look at our tzitzit and think: we must keep kosher, observe Shabbat, keep rituals down to their minutiae …

… And love our neighbors, love God, treat others with respect… but don’t worry! I’m not going to list all 613!

But my question really is: what WILL you think about in the morning when we wear tallitot and look at the fringes?

The sages had a lot to say about this paragraph and the meaning of tzitzit.
Rashi, a great rabbi of 11th century France, questioned even the definition of the Hebrew word, tzitzit. After all, this word appears very really in the entire Tanakh – Hebrew Bible.

Rashi found two Talmudic references defining our mystery word. Perhaps we can discern the true nature of the tzitzit.

We read in Ezekiel 8:3
3. And He put forth the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head; and a wind lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate.

In Ezekiel, the tzitzit are a lock of hair. In the prophetic vision, God took Ezekiel to Jerusalem by holding a lock of his hair! Further, in that manner, in this vision, the Kadosh Baruch Hu took Ezekiel from exile in Babylon to the inner gate of the Temple … to a place of great holiness…

Rashi explains that Ezekiel’s tzitzit – his lock of hair … are actually fringes – the fringes of his head. Thus, tzitzit can mean both hair and fringes.
Let’s think about this image. Hashem took Ezekiel by the hair. No hint of God’s pulling Ezekiel’s hair or hurting him in any way.

On the other hand, Hashem showed Ezekiel the First Temple as it lay in ruins and told the prophet about the abominations committed there – the abominations that led to its destruction.

Pulled by a lock … or fringe … of hair, Ezekiel saw the devastation that came from ignoring God’s word.

Hashem’s purpose was not to depress or frighten Ezekiel, but to help him understand how to restore Israel’s holiness … Israel’s glory.

This vision of the Holy One … through a lock of Ezekiel’s own hair … helped the prophet understand the nature of his own holy work.

Therefore, when we look at the tzitzit, we should not think about destruction but about the possibility of holiness in our own lives … and therefore, adding holiness to the world.

Rashi’s next definition comes from the Song of Songs. Rabbi Akiva considered this the holiest book of the Bible – at least, outside the Torah itself.

Why? It reads like a love poem. It IS a love poem! But … it is the love of God and Israel. It pictures the Kadosh Baruch Hu and Israel in a constant state of yearning for … of loving … each other.

Here, we go even further than the concept of holiness and enter the realm of pure love.

In the Song of Songs, 2:9, we read: “My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart; Behold, he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.”

The word for gazing is from the root of tzitzit.Here in Scripture, the woman knows that her lover is looking for her, gazing at her through a lattice. Because of the lattice, he cannot see her clearly. But their love and mutual yearning is clear.
And so it is with God. We yearn for Him … we love Him … but we are finite mortal beings and He is infinite, therefore we can never see Him clearly.

That does not … should not … keep us from seeking Him.

Nor does Hashem ever stop looking for … wanting … us.

So far, the tzitzit are a sign pointing to holiness and a reminder of our mutual love affair with Hashem.

We have one more aspect to examine: the tzitzit are a lifeline!

In Midrash Rabbah, we learn: “The strings of the tzitzit are comparable to the case of one who has been thrown into the water, and the captain stretches out a rope and says to him: ‘Take hold of this rope with your hand and do not let go; for if you let go, you have not life!’"

Tomorrow morning, when we wear our tallitot … and see our tzitzit, we can make this much more than a routine ritual.

When we read the “tzitzit” paragraph during the morning prayers … and when we hear it read in the Torah… we can hold them lovingly in our hands and see…

• A path to holiness … which is as close to us as a lock of our own hair … or more accurately, this path is as close to us as our own heads. However, to do this, we use our heads to recognize and refuse to do evil, but to see and act on the very real possibility of goodness and holiness.
• We look at the tzitzit and see a reminder of the overwhelming love … the constant yearning … that we have for the Kadosh Baruch Hu … and that He has for us.
If we see the tzitzit in this light, we will naturally try to please our Creator and do as He asks. Isn’t this how we’re always supposed to treat our loved ones?
• And finally, we should look at the tzitzit and literally see a life-line. We must realize that real life is not just biological! Real life is tied to our souls and our values.

We can use the tzitzit as a lifeline. As we gaze upon the holy fringes, we can and should understand that the Kadosh Baruch Hu wants to bring us to a live of goodness, mitzvoth … and love.

But there is a disclaimer – not looking at your tzitzit doesn’t condemn you to a life of misery, nor is gazing upon them a guarantee that you’ll do the right things in life.

The ultimate purpose of tzitzit is to inoculate us with a strong desire for God’s love … His holiness … and the understanding that real life is eternal, not simply biological.

Hopefully, this inoculation will inspire us to act on these precepts.
I hope we’ll gaze at the tzitzit tomorrow with a new understanding and a fresh resolve that our relationship with God should be one of mutual love and yearning as described in the Song of Songs: “Behold, He stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.”