Probably the majority of classic wool tallits sold today fall under the rubric of “nonslip.” But there’s a pseudo-science behind the concept of nonslip, that doesn’t begin and end with the tallit fabric alone.
We received the following question from a prospective customer this week:
Dear Sir,
I need a new tallit. Mine has begun tearing at the “first” fold. I would like a non-slip tallit. When I tried on the one my friends have, the heavily-advertised one available in most American Judaica stores slips off about as much as my old one. The friends who are satisfied with their non-slip one have a more pronounced weave on them.
Few of them know where it was purchased. Most shrug and say, “Israel”. One said Ben’s Tallit. One showed me the label Talitnia or Talitania, written in Hebrew letters. With Covid, no one will dare let me touch their tallit or try it on.
Have you ever done studies or measurements on the non-slip tallit
Which ones slip less?
Your Tashbetz is a possibility. Hamefoar looks like the overhyped ones that don’t work all that well for me.
I would be grateful for any advice you can provide.
Thank you,
A.Z.
Baltimore, Maryland
I sent A.Z. a quintessential Jewish reply that had more questions than answers:
To really figure out what’s best for you, you’d need to hire a tallit fitting consultant, because there are a lot of factors that play a part. For example, the slope of your shoulders, the fabric of your clothing that the tallit rests on, how far you pull it down in front, how you bunch it on the shoulders, the weight of the tallit, whether it has a lining, the type of atara and last-but-not-least, the properties of the tallit fabric.
Obviously I can’t go into detail regarding all of the above.
My father-in-law gave me his disused wedding suit. It was hand-made by a tailor in Jerusalem or Hevron over 50 years ago. The shoulders were super stiff and the fabric was quite coarse. I only wore it a few times, but I recall that when I did my tallit felt glued in place.
Based on my observations, lightweight tallits tend to do a slightly better job of staying in place, probably just because thinner fabric contours more when it drapes.
It also seems to me that a slightly heavier atara (not the clunky ones) help anchor the tallit on your neck and shoulders.
I’m undecided regarding the lining. On one hand, a bit of extra weight where is rests on your neck and shoulders should help; on the other hand, the smooth cotton might hamper the nonslip properties of the tallit fabric.
Also, there are really two types of slipping: sliding back off the shoulders, and dropped off to the sides.
So far it looks like I’m offering more questions than answers!
A tallit like the Tashbetz is designed as a nonslip. If you zoom in (especially the photos on the black-striped Tashbetz product page) you’ll see the box weave is more pronounced than the less textured weave of Hamefoar. So that’s your best bet, but do take the above factors into account as well.
Note that both Mishkan Hatchelet and Talitania (aka Talitnia), the two leading tallit manufacturers and long-time rivals, make many different nonslip models. The most popular ones are the Tashbetz (Mishkan Hatchelet) and David (Talitania), while the bestselling tallits with less pronounced texture are Hamefoar (Mishkan Hatchelet) and Malchut (Talitania).
BTW, Rabbi Berel Wein has also commented on nonslip tallits. He writes that he tried some out and was quite pleased with the results, and then he goes off on a fascinating tangent that presents tallit slippage as an allegory for various problems Orthodox Jewry has had to confront in recent decades.
“A tallit that constantly slips off of one’s shoulders during prayer is at first an annoyance but it gradually grows into a distraction and a disturbance,” Rabbi Wein reveals. “When one is addressing the congregation publicly, teaching and sermonizing, it is very counter-productive to holding the attention of one’s listeners when the speaker constantly has to readjust his tallit. It seems the audience is more fascinated by the slipping and often begins to ignore what the speaker has to say. So the non-slip tallit is a blessing in both respects.
“All of this has set me thinking, in a symbolic way, about the story of the Jewish people over the past few centuries. There is no question that the talit has slipped off of the shoulders of millions of Jews during this latter period of time. The reasons and causes for this are varied. But, the main background for all of these reasons is the confrontation with the ideas and social mores of modernity, democracy, technology, social mobility and educational and professional opportunity that the modern world brought and continues to bring with it.”
“There are a lot of talitot that have slipped off of Jewish shoulders because of our inability to develop a reasonable, practical strategy regarding the challenges of modernity that face us,” Rabbi Wein adds. “So, again, symbolically, we should try and develop for our society a non-slip talit. No matter what we devise, it, not unlike the physical non-slip talit itself, will only be ninety percent effective.”
You can read the full blog post here>>
