[grey_whiskers]

BTW, you can read this little discovery as two things ~ 1) as a repair, and 2) something done by someone willing to ignore ancient Jewish prohibitions on mixing two types of cloth.

I was vaguely under the impression that this prohibition was against *wearing* of clothes of "mixed parentage" ;-)

Did the rabbinical authorities hold that the prohibition was against the *weaving* of such cloth, or just the wearing of it (dead bodies aren't sinning, I guess, since they don't have much say in the matter).

Cheers!

[muawiyah]

The prohibition is usually understood as being against the manufacture of "shamus"(sp?) ~ ordinarily a wool/cotton or wool/linen mixed weave.

According to a rabbi in our office this prohibition is commented on as a prohibition on fraud ~ the idea being that at different points of time one thread or the other is less costly yet a clever weaver can obscure the cheaper of the two and cheat the customer.

Our standards today are far different ~ we look for mixed weaves that combine the characteristic of different materials.

[Swordmaker]

I was vaguely under the impression that this prohibition was against *wearing* of clothes of "mixed parentage" ;-)

That is the prohibition. Just as there is a prohibition against cooking a calf in its mother's milk.

Did the rabbinical authorities hold that the prohibition was against the *weaving* of such cloth, or just the wearing of it (dead bodies aren't sinning, I guess, since they don't have much say in the matter).

The marginalia (Gemara) of the Torah (considered almost as holy as the Torah itself), concludes that just to be assured that one does not inadvertently eat meat that was cooked in its mother's milk—now extended to meat cooked in any milk—prohibits cooking meat in a pot that has also touched milk. Similarly, the Gemara prohibits weaving cloth from different sources on the same loom, thus, ensuring there is no possibility of inadvertently mixing threads or parts from different sources.