Temple Sinai
  • Home
  • About
    • COVID-19 Updates
    • Past Event Videos
    • Our Clergy
    • Professional Staff
    • Lay Leadership
    • Calendar >
      • Monthly Calendar
    • Our History
    • Inclusion
    • Directions
    • Contact Us
  • Worship
    • Shabbat
    • Holidays
    • Life Cycle Events >
      • Visiting a Shiva House
    • Mi Shebeirach List
  • Learn
    • Religious School
    • B'nei Mitzvah
    • Confirmation
    • Adult Education >
      • Minyan Breakfast
    • Jewish Family Life
  • Gather
    • Sisterhood
    • Brotherhood
    • Kosher Senior Café
    • Shireinu (Adult Chorus)
    • Tikkun Olam (Social Action) >
      • Prayer is Not Enough
    • Biblical Garden >
      • Biblical Garden Blog
    • Kesher Social Worker >
      • Here's To Your Health!
    • Kashrut at Temple Sinai
    • Israel Trip 2023
  • Join
  • Give
    • Golf Classic

Biblical Garden
​Blog

The Colors of Joseph's Coat

8/1/2014

 
And every skillful woman spun with her hands, and they all brought what they had spun in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen.  all the women whose hearts stirred them to use their skill spun the goats' hair. 
 –Exodus 35:25-26


In the Biblical Garden this summer, an area has been set aside to grow and display some of the common plants that may have been used to make the dyes that adorned the Tabernacle and Joseph's magnificent coat. Their roots, leaves and blossoms would have made colorful indeed the skilled and willing hands of the women, who dipped and dyed and spun and wove their offerings of beautiful textiles for the sacred space where God met the Israelites in the desert.

Dyer's madder (scarlet), dyer's bugloss (red), henna (orange), tansy, inula and safflower (yellow): all may have been used by Israelite women to dye the linens and wool yarns needed for sacred garments and hangings in the Tabernacle.  Most dyestuffs were plant-based, although certain scale insects and sea snails were also used.  

Blue, from the indigo plant or from woad, was widely available, but not considered "kosher" for tzitzit, the fringes of a tallit, or for use in the Tabernacle. (Tekhelet, the blue color used in the clothing of the High Priest, the tapestries in the Tabernacle, and in tzitzit, was sourced from marine snails.) The technologies varied whether working with linen or wool, and usually involved the addition of mordants – metallic salts which fixed the color into the yarn and added richness to the result. Wool was commonly dyed "in the fleece," before being spun into yarn. Dyeing of linen fiber was more challenging, as Rashi commented "it is more difficult for linen to receive the color than for wool," thus very few ancient dyed linen textiles have been excavated in Israel.

    Authors

    Michael Schlesinger is Temple Sinai’s Biblical Gardener. Mike has been gardening since he was eight years old. He used to grow grape vines and make wine when he lived in California. He now tends to our garden, continuing the traditions started by Catherine Walters.

    Catherine Walters, who died in July 2017, was the founder of  our Biblical Garden and was our first Gardener. She shared her thoughts and wisdom about discovering the Bible in leaf, root and stem right here each month.

    Archives

    March 2020
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

Picture
Affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism
30 Hagen Avenue • Cranston, RI 02920 • 401-942-8350
Office: dottie@templesinairi.org
Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser: rabbi.j.goldwasser@gmail.com

Picture
​Want to sign up for the weekly Sinai Scroll email?
Click here to receive weekly updates on Temple services, events and a message from the Rabbi.
  • Home
  • About
    • COVID-19 Updates
    • Past Event Videos
    • Our Clergy
    • Professional Staff
    • Lay Leadership
    • Calendar >
      • Monthly Calendar
    • Our History
    • Inclusion
    • Directions
    • Contact Us
  • Worship
    • Shabbat
    • Holidays
    • Life Cycle Events >
      • Visiting a Shiva House
    • Mi Shebeirach List
  • Learn
    • Religious School
    • B'nei Mitzvah
    • Confirmation
    • Adult Education >
      • Minyan Breakfast
    • Jewish Family Life
  • Gather
    • Sisterhood
    • Brotherhood
    • Kosher Senior Café
    • Shireinu (Adult Chorus)
    • Tikkun Olam (Social Action) >
      • Prayer is Not Enough
    • Biblical Garden >
      • Biblical Garden Blog
    • Kesher Social Worker >
      • Here's To Your Health!
    • Kashrut at Temple Sinai
    • Israel Trip 2023
  • Join
  • Give
    • Golf Classic