Author: BenG

If you’ve come to this page to read conclusive, actionable info on tallit bags — you’ve come to the wrong place. This particular post is really just me thinking aloud…

Have you ever wondered why so many tallit bags have the word טלית embroidered on them, and how come so many tefillin bags have the word תפילין embroidered on them? Well, I have. After all, isn’t it obvious?

It certainly is obvious with the age-old standard velvet tallit bags. There’s not much ambiguity or guesswork involved. The only time you might need help would be if you have two sets of tefillin, Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam.

I have a hunch that outside of Israel, many people just like seeing Hebrew letters on their bag.

In a similar vein, what about name embroidery? Do you really need it? There is something nice about getting a personalized gift, so when given to a groom, name embroidery is almost a given. But let’s say you’ve been married for ten years, and need a new set of tallit and tefillin bags. Do you need name embroidery?

There are a few fringe benefits. I have a horrible memory for names, so sometimes I take advantage of the name embroidery: if I want to speak with someone in shul whose name I really should remember, but can’t, sometimes I’ll sidle up close to surreptitiously steal a glance at the name embroidery on the tallit bag.

If your gabbai has a bad memory, you’d be doing him a service by having your aliyah name (e.g. Eliezer Tzvi ben Nachum David HaLevy) on your bag, in case he needs a reminder.

Despite my faulty memory, I know exactly where my tallis and tefillin bags are at almost all times, day and night. For teenagers the situation might be quite different. I have printed stickers with my name, phone number and address on the plastic covers of my tefillin, just in case, but since teenagers are more prone to misplace their tallit/tefillin, it’s advisable to have their name printed on the tefillin bag as well.

Here’s a small irony: We get a lot of orders to have the full name printed on the tallit bag and just the initials on the tefillin bag, though the tefillin could easily cost ten times more than the tallit.

All of the above applies largely to traditional velvet tallit/tefillin bags. But the times they are a-changin. Nowadays many people (including me) are switching to genuine leather or faux leather tallit/tefillin bags. Personally, I’m a big fan of stiffer bags that don’t require a nylon cover.

The design, especially from the outside, is often quite similar to laptop bags. In fact, you’ll now find various tallit stores and Judaica stores that sell tallit/tefillin sets that are actually just laptop bags which they purchased from a standard manufacturer and embossed the word Tallit on it to make it recognizable as a tallit carrier. In fact, sometimes they don’t even bother. And this week I found myself in a Shacharit minyan not my own, and noticed that a lot of the congregants bring their tallit, tefillin, siddur, etc. in regular canvas briefcases.

Let’s say you want a larger case of that sort, but want a visible indication that it’s for your tallit and tefillin. How about this idea: embroider the word שחרית on the bag? I’ve never come across that.

At this point, I’m still undecided, so I’m not quite ready for my next tallit and tefillin bag purchase.

If you read the comments below various articles on Jewish news websites, you might have noticed that sometimes the same names appear repeatedly, comments left by readers who like to toss in their two cents on all sorts of issues. On one such news site, there’s a certain commenter who regularly advises Jews to keep a low profile.

This past Friday, Erev Shabbos Shira, when the ICJ issued its ruling on the “genocide” libel filed by South Africa, this prolific pundit, who goes by the pen name of Wooley Mammoth, wrote:

The media is attempting to make it appear as if Israel was found guilty of “genocide,” which is utterly false, but ambiguous enough to convince millions of people to randomly attack Jewish people anywhere anytime. Be safe this Shabbat, do not be a victim. Switch out ALL the traditional garb for blue jeans and a baseball cap…oh, and alter the walking formation on the way to shul, it is visibly recognizable and obvious.

This is the sort of admonition which I imagine was common in 15th century Spain as the Inquisition started. So it sort of rubs me wrong to be advised to look in the mirror before I step out and make sure I don’t look too Jewish.

Have you ever come across a halacha that you thought was applicable long ago, and would never be applicable again – then one day you realized there are present-day applications after all? Well, there’s a halacha brought down in the Shulchan Aruch which says you can tuck your tzitzit out of sight in certain circumstances. Every time I came across this halacha, I imagined a shtetl Jew walking through a sketchy neighborhood late at night or in the wee hours of the morning when the drunks still lurk in dark alleys, sometimes pouncing on Jews either verbally or physically. But it seems tucking in tzitzit for safety reasons may be a topical issue in our day and age.

About five years ago much ink was spilled discussing the viability of wearing a kippah in European cities, and following the extraordinary spike in antisemitism worldwide during the past three months, the issue is now back on the table. 

To see this halacha in black and white, open up the Shulchan Aruch, Orech Chaim to 8, 11 (here and here). Here the Shulchan Aruch discusses whether you should wear a tallit katan on top of your shirt, and the Mishnah Berurah cites an opinion that it should be under your shirt, adding in the name of the Magen Avraham that the tzitzit strings should definitely be showing. He then adds that those who mingle among non-Jews still fulfill the mitzvah if the tzitzit are tucked into the corners of tallit katan (as opposed to the pants).

It’s a bit unclear to me what is meant here by tucking the strings into the corners (unless they used to make a tallit katan like the undershirt type today, which have little pockets used to tuck the strings in while laundering). Here’s how that’s explained in the Dirshu edition of the Mishnah Berurah:

So if you think this applies to you, when you consult your rabbi, I’d say there are several questions to clarify, namely:

1) What does the Magen Avraham mean when he refers to tucking the strings into the כנף?

2) In your particular set up circumstances, which hashkafah issues apply?

3) In your particular set of circumstances, could this be a case of pikuach nefesh (or ספק פיקוח נפש)? 

Surprisingly, it seems that in pre-Holocaust Europe, it was common to wear tzitzit tucked in, and I know of an Ashkenazi yeshiva in Kiryat Sefer where the rosh yeshiva instructs the students to keep their tzitzit tucked in. From a halachic standpoint, this has never made sense to me. How can you argue against the Shulchan Aruch and the Mishnah Berurah? And how do you understand the verses we say at the end of Krias Shema, namely Bamidbar 15:37-40, if you cannot see the tzitzit?

Likewise, I find it hard to understand the argument that showing your tzitzit is an act of ostentatious piety.  

The Tfidanit was originally invented a company called Beit-El (which makes some other nifty tefillin accessories as well), before the imitations came along. To this day they maintain very high standards of product quality — and have nice colors, too. But there’s one little thing that’s always bothered me: you have to put the Shel Yad on top of the Shel Rosh.

So what’s wrong with that? Well, the Shel Rosh has greater sanctity, therefore you shouldn’t place the Shel Yad on top of it.

When I was in the IDF two decades ago I used a very sturdy tupperware container, which was not so pretty and didn’t have pockets, straps, etc. It did the job, but I was always wondering about that issue regarding the Tfidanit design.

A few weeks ago I came across that question online, answered by Rabbi Yerucham Erlenger. He brings opinions that permit it and opinions that don’t, concluding that if it’s needed to protect your tefillin, you can follow the lenient opinions, and under those circumstances all would agree that there’s no lack of respect accorded to the Shel Rosh.

In a follow-up comment a reader notes that sometimes, depending on the size of your tefillin, you can lay the Tfidanit on its side, and then the issue apparently is resolved.

Tfidanit product page>>

For any Jew, when you stop your day’s work and errands and sundry affairs for tefilah, it affords you a fabulous opportunity for “quality time” with the Creator of the Universe. When I was in the IDF decades ago, that time was cherished. Instead of getting up in the cold and going straight to the routine grunge work of army life, the observant soldiers had the priviledge of 45 minutes or so to slip away from their unit and head to the shul on the base.

During field exercises, the commanding officers were often a bit less accommodating, at least in my unit. I recall once camping out in a huge military base in the South during training exercises. We were not given any schedule for the next day, so just went to sleep not knowing when we’d have to get up. At 6:00 the call went around to roll up the sleeping bags and jump into the tanks and armored personnel carriers to complete the drill. I had a total of under 30 minutes to get up, get ready and daven Shacharis. There are kosher ways to curtail Shacharis in such circumstances, but you have to be well-prepared.

The photos of the Iron Swords War which I’m now seeing online, featuring soldiers wearing tallit and tzitzit and tefillin, make me hearken back to those days. Below are links to various photos of religious soldiers engaged in essential preparation for battle: prayer.

Unfortunately we don’t have permission to post these photos (most of which belong to Flash 90), so you’ll have to click on the links one-by-one.

Tallis on a tank and more

Shacharit during training exercise in the Golan Heights

IDF soldier wearing tallit and tefillin

Nine years ago, during Operation Protective Edge, we enabled our customers to donate olive drab Dryfit tzitzit to IDF soldiers. On Monday (24 Tishrei), it occurred to us that we should try that again.

Within the space of two days, we got a flurry of requests to help provide them.

We know of three suppliers that import them. We’ve contacted all three. One of them ran out a few weeks before the war. We called a second supplier, and were told that someone came in on Sunday and bought up their entire inventory on the spot. At this point, I’d be very surprised if the third supplier has any and I cannot imagine any supplier producing more, getting it shipped and getting the tzitzit tied within less than a month or two. Therefore at this point, I don’t see any means for us to provide tzitzit. 

However, I called up a contact at the IDF, and learned that he has avenues to provide them.

Lt. Col. Rabbi Yedidya Atlas has been supplying olive drab Dryfit tzitzit to IDF soldiers for over a decade; in fact, he invented them! Since then, he’s been distributing approximately 50,000 per year, funded through donations. He told me that six months ago he filled up an army warehouse with 30,000 for emergency use. He had a hunch the day would come when we would need them, but like most people, he never imagined a call-up of 360,000 reserve soldiers.

Rabbi Atlas told me that the IDF Rabbinate warehouse was almost entirely depleted of these tzitzit within 72 hours, and even with an additional 10,000 delivered to the IDF Rabbinate, and their distributing over 40,000 tzitzit the first week, it barely made a dent in the demand coming from our combat soldiers – both religious and non-religious alike.

An additional 30,000 tzitzit shirts are currently having the tzitzit tied by on by volunteers at over two dozen locations across Israel — alongside a staff of paid professionals who regularly work on the tzitzit tying. There’s a pending order for 50,000 more being manufactured in India. Funds donated will be used to expedite the production, the tzitzit tying here in Israel and shipping.

If you’re able to make a donation to help pay for 1 or 10 or 50 (or 500 or 5,000), please get in touch with Rabbi Atlas at yaidfr@gmail.com. He’s in the field much of the day, so you might not receive a reply immediately.

Another option is to make a donation via this link, or sending a check to the American Friends of the IDF Rabbinate.

American Friends of the IDF Rabbinate
c/o David Schwartz, CPA
5 Sutton Road
Monsey, NY 10952 

We can vouch for the organization. Feel free to contact us if you would like information regarding it’s 501(c)(3) status.

For those who cannot afford to make a donation, if you are in Israel and happen to have experience tying tzitzit and have speedy hands, you can contact Rabbi Atlas to see if he needs volunteers at one of the seven tzitzit tying teams he set up in various locations.

Years ago, Rabbi Atlas told me that in times like these, soldiers who don’t normally wear tzitzit and even some non-religious soldiers often reach out to request them.

Related posts and links:

Olive green tzitzit in the IDF

IDF Lieut. Col. saved by his tzitzit

Family stranded in Israel ties tzitzit for IDF

Often we get inquiries from the family of an Ashkenazi bride who wants to know what tallit to buy for the Sephardic groom, or the family of a Sephardic bride asking which tallit to buy for the Ashkenazi groom.

This week we received an inquiry of that sort which went a step further.

Our only daughter is getting married on August 13^th this year to a lovely young man who was born in Toronto but whose family is originally from Quba in Azerbaijan.We thought it would be a wonderful way to welcome him into our family by purchasing a tallit that reflects his Kavkazi Juhuro heritage.Ideally, we would like this tallit to also be used under the Chuppah to wrap the Chatan and Kallah during their wedding ceremony.

I must confess that I am completely ignorant about what a typical Jewish Azerbaijani design looks like, so I’m hoping that you may be able to give my some guidance, so we can purchase a tallit that would be most meaningful to him and his family.

I did a bit of research and found out that there are 3 “strains” of Jews in Azerbaijan.One is Ashenazi, one is Sephardic and one is of Persian origin!!! And of course, my future son-in-law falls into the Persian bucket. I don’t know much about Persian artistry.

Regards,

Lauren

I found it odd that Lauren wanted to know about artistry from many years ago. I would have liked to send a more delicate reply, but I couldn’t find the words, so I just spit out a blunt answer, writing to her (I suppose Lauren could be a him) as follows:

Let’s turn the tables. Let’s say you’re marrying off your only son to a lovely young lady from Azerbaijan of Persian origin. She grew up in Azerbaijan and never met an American until a few weeks ago. And she sends me the following inquiry:
I thought it would be a wonderful way to welcome him into our family by purchasing a tallit that reflects his Byelorussian [or Russian or Polish or Hungarian etc] heritage.