Tallit – Page 3 – Ben's Tallit Shop

Introducing the Meron: Blue-Striped Nonslip Tallit

On several occasions customers have asked me about a blue-striped tallit with a non-slip fabric. When I show them the Tashbetz, typically they reply, "Not light blue striping, dark blue striping. Isn't there a textured tallit with blue stripes?" Nowadays a whole lot of tallit buyers are only interested in non-slip fabrics. Well, I've found...

Tallis & Tzitzis Buyers in Chicago

I've hardly stepped foot in Chicago over the past 40 years, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the city, because I lived there for two years as a child. Not in Evanston, Skokie, Buffalo Grove or Lincolnwood, where most of my Chicago-bound tallis, tzitzis and tefillin orders seem to come...

Kohen Conundrum

My cousin in the U.S. is planning a bar mitzvah. He wants to keep the bar mitzvah very low-key, with an aliyah during the Torah reading on Thursday morning, rather than Shabbos. Sounds simple, right? But he has twin boys, and they are kohanim, so when he started laying out plans with the gabbai...

Lettering on tallit and tallit bags

Although we often add custom letter embroidery to tallit bags, we rarely put letters directly on a tallit. One of the reasons is that there simply is no obvious place where lettering looks right. For those who really want letter embroidery on the tallit itself, we normally put initials or a short name on one...

A genuine Chabad tallis – or something close?

We get a lot of customers who are regulars at their local Chabad shul, but are not necessary Lubavitch themselves. They often follow Chabad customs, but not always down to the fine details. This week we received an inquiry from a prospective ger who seems to be debating whether to go with a bona...

On Rav Hershel Schachter’s method of tying with techelet

The majority of our techelet customers opt to have us tie the techelet strings according to the Arizal, Rambam, Sefer HaChinuch, Vilna Gaon or the Raavad. We also get plenty of orders for techelet tied like all-white tzitzit, according to the Ashkenazi or Sephardic customs. We discourage the latter, because those customs were developed...

Tallit Shops in Tel Aviv

We frequently receive inquiries from people who are impressed with our web store and want to drop by when they come for a visit to Israel, thinking we have a brick-and-mortar shop somewhere in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. But the truth is we are located off the beaten path in Modi'in Illit, which is a 45-minute drive from Tel Aviv, and we are...

Do you need a second tallis for Shabbos?

You have a decent tallis you wear seven days a week. It's not old or schmutzy. Should you still try to buy a tallis just for Shabbos? In a word, yes. Let's start with the verse in Yeshayahu (58:13): אם תשיב משבת רגלך עשות חפצך ביום קדשי וקראת לשבת ענג לקדוש ה' מכבד וכבדתו מעשות דרכיך...

Tallit & tefillin bags: Can you manage without the vinyl covers?

If you are shopping for tallis and tefillin bags, take a look here. This post is not about the bags themselves, but how to use them. Personally, I prefer keeping my tallit and tefillin bags sans plastic. To explain why, first I have to take you back nearly 40 years to my aunt's living room...

Which is more important: tallis or tefillin?

Toward the very beginning of the Gemara is a well-known breisa: אמר רבי יוחנן הרוצה לקבל עליו עול מלכות שמים שלימה יפנה ויטול ידיו ויניח תפילין ויתפלל Translation: "R' Yochanan said one who seeks to accept upon himself the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven in a complete manner should empty his bowels, do the...