Tallit & Tzitzit Buyers in Los Angeles

Posted by Ben G. on 18th Feb 2016

I was just searching our orders file for a customer from LA and got a long list of tallit and tzitzit orders from Los Angeles over the past year.

Since I grew up in LA (the West San Fernando Valley) I took a quick look around to see what part of the city they hail from and what types of talleisim and tzitzis they're buying.

A lot of our buyers live in West Hollywood, Pico-Robertson and Beverly Hills, as I would expect, but some come from "over the hill," from Valley Village, Encino, Tarzana and even way out in Woodland Hills, Calabasas and Agoura. (Back when I was growing up, I don't think you could find any Jews in Calabasas who wore tzitzit.)

Several of our tallit customers have Persian-Jewish names, which does not come as a surprise. On a few occasions I have exchanged emails with Rabbi Yosef Zargary regarding Persian-Jewish tzitzit customs.

What are Los Angelenos buying? A lot of cotton undershirt tzitzit, a fair number of wool tallit katan and traditional wool tallits. Mostly lightweight tallits, but two super heavy Echt Turkish Tallits as well. At first this might not make sense, but in my experience, in very hot places there's no problem wearing a heavy tallit since the air conditioner in shul is always on full blast. I also noticed a remarkably large number of Bareket Tallit orders. I haven't been able to come up with any conjecture to explain the trend.