What Is a Tallit? The Jewish Prayer Shawl Explained

The tallit is the fringed shawl worn during Jewish prayer. It is white, usually striped in blue or black, and the important part is not the cloth at all. It is the four knotted fringes at the corners.

What Makes a Tallit a Tallit

A tallit is any four-cornered garment with tzitzit, ritual fringes, tied to each corner. The commandment comes from the Book of Numbers, where the Israelites are told to attach fringes to the corners of their garments and to look at them and remember the commandments.

The garment itself carries no sanctity. Remove the tzitzit and it is a piece of cloth. The fringes are the point, and the shawl exists to have four corners to attach them to.

Tallit Gadol and Tallit Katan

• Tallit gadol, the large tallit, is the prayer shawl worn over the shoulders during morning prayers. This is the one most people picture.
• Tallit katan, the small tallit, is a rectangular undergarment worn beneath clothing throughout the day by observant men, with the fringes often visible at the waist.

Seeing tzitzit hanging below a shirt hem is seeing a tallit katan. It is not decorative; it is the same commandment, worn continuously rather than only at prayer.

The Tzitzit

Each corner carries four long threads folded to make eight, then wound and knotted in a fixed pattern: five double knots separated by four groups of windings. The usual count is seven, eight, eleven and thirteen windings between the knots.

The numbers are read as a kind of arithmetic of meaning. The Hebrew letters of tzitzit have a numerical value of 600; adding the eight threads and five knots gives 613, the traditional number of commandments in the Torah. Whether the numerology came first or the practice did is an open question, and the tradition is comfortable either way.

The Blue Thread

The Torah specifies a thread of tekhelet, a particular blue. The source of the dye was lost in late antiquity, and for centuries all threads were white. Since the late twentieth century a dye derived from the Murex trunculus sea snail has been argued to be the original, and tekhelet threads are now used by a growing minority. Most tzitzit remain entirely white.

The blue stripes on a tallit are a memory of tekhelet, not the thing itself, and the blue stripes on the flag of Israel are in turn a memory of the tallit.

Who Wears One and When

• Worn during morning prayers, shacharit, on weekdays, Shabbat and festivals.
• Not worn at afternoon or evening prayers, because the commandment applies when the fringes can be seen in daylight. Yom Kippur is the exception, where the tallit is worn all day and through the evening.
• In most Ashkenazi communities the tallit gadol is worn only after marriage. In Sephardi communities boys often begin at bar mitzvah.
• In Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist communities many women wear a tallit. In Orthodox communities it remains a male obligation.

A tallit is often given at a bar or bat mitzvah, and it is the same garment a person may be buried in, with one fringe cut to show the commandments no longer apply.

How It Is Put On

A blessing is recited, the tallit is unfolded and swung over the shoulders, and many draw it briefly over the head before settling it. The gesture of covering the head at the start of prayer is about creating a small enclosed space rather than about display.

Under the chuppah at a wedding, a tallit is sometimes used as the canopy itself.

Common Questions

What is the difference between a tallit and tzitzit?

The tallit is the garment. The tzitzit are the fringes tied to its corners. In everyday speech tzitzit is often used for the tallit katan as a whole.

Can a non-Jew wear a tallit?

The commandment is directed at Jews, and wearing one outside that context is generally seen as inappropriate rather than offensive. In a synagogue, visitors are not offered a tallit in the way they are offered a kippah.

Why is the tallit striped?

Custom rather than law. The stripes recall the lost blue of tekhelet. Black stripes are common in Ashkenazi practice, blue in Sephardi and Israeli use.

What is an atarah?

The decorative band along the neck edge, often embroidered with the blessing. It marks the top of the garment so it is worn the right way round.

From the MoT Shop

We do not make tallitot. We print Jewish and pro-Israel designs onto apparel, made to order and shipped worldwide. Browse our Star of David and Jewish symbols collection, our Israel flag apparel, or read about the kippah and yarmulke.