Last Shabbat, we read Parshat Kedoshim, which explained the mitzvah of Tzitzit. As an English-speaker, the common translation of Tzitzit into “fringes” leads me to explore their contemporary implications of both the word and idea. Traditionally, the knotted fringes remind us of the 613 mitzvot and the four corners of the tallit on which they’re placed can represent the lands from which our people will return from exile. I’ve come to think of tallit as a wearable reminder of the impefection of life and the world around us.
Each of its fringes is a mitzvah yet to be woven into it, thus completing it, and the gathering of those fringes together from the four corners of our Tallit symbolically express hope for the gathering of exiles and redemption. Its a nice additional layer of meaning.
But with a State and modern transportation and communication, the nature of our exile has changed. Our Diaspora is now by and large spiritual, and our exiles those mentally distanced from Jewish life, for whom Jewishness is not at the center of their lives, but appropriately, on the fringes. We see them on the streets, at coffee shops and a couple times a year and on High Holidays. But we wish they were walking into and playing an active role in our institutions, not avoiding them. Each Jew is like a thread; hundreds of them woven together by the warp and woof of our heritage create the strong fabric of our communities, like a Tallit.
Its fitting then that tzitzit are not the decorative, but the functional element, for it follows that on some level, our institutions exist to reach out to those on the fringes, a garment that is home for hundreds of loose threads! Let’s gather our fringes and make our communal garment whole again, starting with those whose connection to Judaism is so often “hanging by a thread.” We like to do that with music, especially a style of music that they’re already listening to. And since we’re on the topic of Tzitzit, its only appropriate that this week J-ARTS is featuring hot Jewish rock band Blue Fringe.
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