Custom Tallit

We often get requests for a custom tallit. Often the customer just has various option requests and letter embroidery. Here’s a typical request of this sort.

Shalom! I am getting married soon. My kallah wants to buy me a new tallit. I was looking over your website and wondering if you could put it together. Here’s what I’m thinking:
1) the Chatanim White tallit, size 60
2) with Ptil Tchelet tzitzit (thin, tied according to nusach Ashkenaz)
3) an Atara embroidered with my Hebrew name
4) the Jerusalem in Color tallit bag also embroidered with my name. Is that possible? Thank you!

Except for the atara request, this is not really a custom tallit per se, because all of these options are readily available right on our webstore.

Typically a customer asks us to customize a tallit by creating the striping in colors that are next to impossible to find in a ready-made tallit. This is definitely doable, but can take six weeks to prepare.

Sometimes we get ideas for a custom tallit that sound a bit extreme to me:

  • I would like to have a tallit made for my son’s Bar Mitzvah using the State of Maryland flag
  • We are huge Gators fans. Could you put together a talit with the University of Florida colors, orange and blue?

For bar mitzvah boys, sometimes parents get very creative. We’ve actually received three requests from mothers who want a music theme incorporated into the tallit somehow.

  • He is very passionate about playing classical guitar and music. Is there something that can be done to put a bit of his personality in to the tallit? Also, would like stars with his name in Hebrew.
  • We went his Hebrew name, “Gidon,” as well as musical notes or notes on a staff with G cleff. Can this be done?
  • We’re looking for a tallis that would include some sort of music motif. Possibly some musical notes and a pasuk involving music.

One customer wanted to have some of his family heritage imbued in the tallit: “I would also like my family crest on the two front corners.”

One customer was looking for a tallit that featured an image of a man blowing a shofar. Another wanted to customize the tallit by embroidering letters on the neckband.

I would like on the atarah: ‘קודש לה

Four sons contacted me two months before their father’s 80th birthday, asking if we could create a tallit with their names embroidered on each corner. There is very limited space for name embroidery on the corners, but luckily all of the names were quite short in Hebrew, so we were able to make it happen.

This idea struck me as quite distinctive:

I’m interested in buying a special tallit for the shalosh regalim, whose traditional color (at least among German-Jewish communities) is green. I would like a tallit to be very traditional Ashkenazic, but instead of black stripes, it would have deep green stripes. Also, I would like it to have the following words (also in green), somewhere on the tallit, either on the atara or elsewhere: והשיאנו את ברכת מועדיך לשמחה ולששון

I am fairly familiar with German-Jewish customs, but this was new to me.

Sometimes we are contacted about a custom tallit that involves unusual striping colors. A few examples:

  • Light gray body, blue and gold stripes
  • I am thinking about doing a white Tallit, with black and orange stripes
  • Red, Gold, White, Purple
  • I’d like it to be sparkly
  • Black with bright stripes
  • Green and gold stripes
Kohen Tallit
A mock-up of an atara for a kohen

Sometimes we get a request from a kohen who wants a tallit that expresses kohen themes, such as an image of hands positioned for Birkas Kohanim.

And on several occasions we have received requests for a white-and-blue tallit that resembles the Israeli flag. In fact, we’re working on one this week.