A thought on Parshas Shlach

"... al kanfei big'dae'hem..." "...on the corners of their garments..." (15:38) The Torah commands us to place fringes on the corners of our garments, known as tzitzis. Some wear them beneath their clothing, some above, some dangling the fringes out and some tucking them in. But the mitzva is well known to us, and men go out of their way to wear a four-cornered garment in order to place the specially tied fringes on those corners. This is in addition to the tallis which men wear during morning prayers. In earlier times, men wore the cloak-like tallis throughout the day. In our times, it is generally thought of as a prayer shawl donned in the morning, or by a person leading group prayer services during the rest of the day. The smaller "tzitzis" garment is worn throughout the day to fulfill the mitzva. Rabbeinu Avigdor has a lot to say about the commandment of tzitzis. He surveys the halachic issues as well as some inferences and lessons we derive from studying other aspects of this mitzva. He also looks at the positioning of the saga of the Mekoshesh - the man who violated the Shabbos prohibition of gathering in the field - with the passage about tzitzis. What links these two disparate topics? Rabbeinu Avigdor suggests that the Torah is hinting that failing to recall that Shabbos is a day with special restrictions is linked to failing to preserve Shabbos through accenting its special opportunities. Something led the Mekoshesh to fail to observe Shabbos on that day in the desert. From the fact that the Torah immediately introduces the passage about Jews needing to dress distinctively, we can derive that a powerful way to remember to preserve the holiness of Shabbos is to dress specially. On the basis of this, Rabbeinu Avigdor the Posek rules that it is forbidden to walk out on Shabbos in a public place or street unless one is wearing his full attire.This helps remind us that Shabbos is sacred and special. Many authorities also bring this ruling, including the ReMa in Shulchan Aruch (301:16). Since the mitzva of tzitzis includes a theme of remembering (see verse 40), we can understand how another nuance of "remembering" associated with wearing special garments is that they will help us remember that the day of Shabbos is special. I can remember pointing this out to my sons when they were little that our best suit, shirt, tie, shoes and hat is set aside for Shabbos wear. Rabbeinu Avigdor adds that the term "corners" (kanfei big'dae'hem) is commemorative of the term "wings of eagles" (kanfei nesharim) which is used in Shmos 19:4. HaShem told Moshe that His bringing us out of Egypt was "on the wings of eagles." Wing and corner are the same word in Hebrew. Rabbeinu Avigdor observes that we show our indebtedness commemoratively to HaShem for bearing us on "eagles' wings" by bearing fringes on the winged corners of our garments. Moreover, he notes, the gematria of "tzitzis" equals the numerical value of "nesharim." They both add up to 600. Good Shabbos. D Fox