Today we received an inquiry from a tallit buyer in Portugal, who ran into some complications trying to place an order. Then at the end of his inquiry he wrote:

P.S. When we are asked to chose our country on a list on your website, it shows a “country” named “Palestine (Occupied Territory)”. That country does not exist, and Judea and Samaria are part of Israel.

There’s not much we can do about the “Palestine” option listed. Our store is built on a software platform called BigCommerce. I have a feeling many of their staff are left-leaning and would be unlikely to take seriously a request to change that.

And I doubt they even created that option to begin with. I have a feeling software companies don’t sit down and enter 200+ countries manually, but use lists already generated by who-knows-who. 

It could be worse. If certain UN organizations had their way, the Old City of Jerusalem would be considered “occupied,” and next would be all of Jerusalem, including Har Nof, Bayit Vegan, etc.

Our offices are located in Modi’in Illit, which some people would call the “Occupied West Bank,” not Israel. In fact, I wrote an article on a related subject a few months ago.

We fairly often get inquiries from people with good intentions who want to know about pre-tied tzitzit. This week we received an inquiry from a lady making a tallit for her grandson’s bar mitzvah. 

Shalom. I have created a tallit of silk for my grandon’s bar mitzvah. I am looking for kosher pre-tied tallit strings for the corners. I would prefer the ones with the blue strings in them. Do you carry this or know where I can get them? Thank you, Judy

I explained to Judy that “kosher” and “pre-tied” is a contradiction in terms. If it’s pre-tied, it’s not kosher.

The Torah says tzitzit must be tied on the garment. As the Talmudic Sages explain, they cannot be tied and then attached. If you come across such pre-tied strings they are not kosher by any stretch of the imagination and in all likelihood are sold and used by certain Jewish Messianic (i.e. today’s Jews for J) groups that latch onto various mitzvahs.

Kosher tzitzit strings must be spun with the intent to fulfill the mitzvah (see “Kosher Tzitzit Strings: A Matter of Intent“).

You can buy kosher tzitzit strings, including techelet, here and you can find tying instructions here. In most congregations there is someone who can help bar mitzvah boys tie on tzitzit.

This week we sent two orders to Asheville, NC. That seems like a relatively large number, considering Asheville is a southern town of just 90,000 souls. It made me a bit curious about orders we’ve sent to Asheville over the years, so I did a quick search of our order files.

Avid map readers sometimes scrutinize the topography of a town and start to speculation about its residents. I scrutinize the type of tallit they choose and start to speculate about the residents. 

I noticed several orders for the very colorful Bnei Ohr. It’s a popular tallit, so that does not come as much of a surprise. What did seem surprising to me was that two Asheville customers ordered an Echt Turkish tallit. The Echt Turkish is a fabulous tallit, but it’s expensive and is very thick and heavy, making it a choice for a select few.

When I was in high school and college one of my favorite authors was Thomas Wolfe. To this day, I recall his description of his father’s suit of heavy material, which he wore even at work. The Echt Turkish fabric sort of reminds my of W.O. Wolfe, who probably would have chosen the Echt Turkish if he wore a tallit. 

Usually the questions that come my way are fairly commonplace: tallit sizing, atara questions, tzitzit options, shipping time, etc. But today I got a question that really caught me off guard.

Do you know what tallit the Rambam would have worn? 

The truth is I don’t, but I can venture a guess. I’m pretty sure it would have been all white, because as I understand it black-striped tallits were a later development.

I say “pretty sure” because you need to keep in mind that today, a tallit is sort of a codified type of garment specifically designed for synagogue use, whereas in earlier times various cloak type garments were more commonly worn. In other words, I suspect they often resembled the clothing trends of their time period, and could easily have had some coloring.

Certainly in halacha there is room for a colored tallit:

When a garment is entirely red, green, or any other color [besides white], its white strands should be made from the same color as the garment itself. If it is green, they should be green. If it is red, they should be red.

Should the garment itself be techelet, its white strands should be made from any color other than black, for it resembles techelet. He should wind one strand of techelet around all the strands, as one does with other tzitzit that are not colored.

– Rambam, Yad, Halacha of Tzitzit, Chap. 2, Hal. 8

To get an idea of what I mean, take a look at this blog post and the link to see tallitot worn in Yemen as recently as under a century ago.

Our customers often spend a lot of time looking through our selection of hand-woven tallit designs. Here’s a question we got this week:

Hi there,

I’m looking at getting a tallit and I want your advice. I’m debating between the Shilo classic and one of the Gabrieli handwoven wool ones. What would you recommend? I can’t seem to make up my mind.

It’s hard for me to advise customers on a matter of taste. But here are a few fine points to keep in mind:

Shilo tallits are cotton, Gabrieli are wool or cotton.

Shilo tallits have a small, narrow atara.

The Shilo Classic base color is not white, but vanilla white. And the striping colors are sort of faded pastels, whereas Gabrieli uses mostly strong colors.

The looms at the weaving studio at Shilo are not big enough to make full-size tallits (i.e. the type worn traditional-style, draping down the back). To make them, they weave two pieces of fabric and sew them together. The sewing is very clean, but if you look up close you can see the stitches. Gabrieli can make full-size tallits (50×80 inches or 60×80 inches).

We can generally have a Gabrieli tallit off the loom and ready to ship in 3-5 weeks. Shilo weaving is unpredictable, so it can take as long as 3-4 months.