If you’re seeing a hechsher on the label of your tallis katan, it might not be what you think it is.
In most cases, if you read the fine print you’ll find that the hechsher only covers the tzitzis strings. In other words, there’s no rabbinical supervision over the tallis katan garment or the tying of the tzitzis, but there is certification that they used kosher strings.
The main exception is a wool tallis katan, which usually does have a hechsher on the garment itself. Presumably they are certifying that it’s not shaatnez, that the tzitzis holes are properly positioned and that it meets the minimum size requirement.
In my humble opinion, in most cases rabbinical supervision for a tallis katan is not very useful.
If you want to know that it meets the minimum size requirement (שיעור בגד) that depends on which opinion you follow (Grach Na’eh, Rav Moshe Feinstein or Chazon Ish) and which opinion you follow regarding how to measure it (namely, do you count the slit in front if it has one and do you count the head opening). It gets awfully complicated and is really something you should pose as an individual question to your rabbi. Sizing is standardized, so once he explains which dimensions you need, you should be able to order that easily. These questions are less critical in the larger sizes.
And if you want to know that the tzitzis holes are positioned properly, that’s easy as pie: They should always be 5 cm from each edge. As long as it’s more than 4 cm from the edge and less than 6 cm, you’re fine.
What about the tzitzis tying? If you’re buying a traditional cotton tallis katan or a cotton undershirt style, with machine-spun tzitzis already tied on by the manufacturer, you do want to buy a product made by a reputable manufacturer that vets who ties their tzitzis.
When you place an order on our webstore and select any tzitzis option other than thin machine-spun, we invariably do the tying in-house.
Our senior in-house tzitzit tie-er has over 15 years of professional experience, his father is in the tzitzit business, he comes from a respected Bnei Brak family and he learns full-time in kollel. Our second tzitzit tie-er is also a kollel man.
I know for a fact that our standards are higher than places that do have a hechsher on the tying, which is fairly rare. For example, we are very careful not to use metal scissors to trim the tzitzit strings, and I have seen with my own two eyes that some tallit dealers are not, even though they have a few pairs of ceramic scissors lying around the shop. And just a few days ago I saw some tzitzit strings made by a highly reputable manufacturer, that somehow had single knots instead of double knots!
Where do you really need rabbinical supervision? With the large manufacturers, where they often tie tzitzit on batches of 10,000 or 20,000 (we do 5-15 per day). Some will send them to prisoners, who have time on their hands and are willing to work for very low pay. In such cases you need a rav to make sure only bona fide Jews are doing the job, etc.
The biggest tzitzit problems I have come across are among the non-frum tallit makers, which generally make very modern hand-made and hand-woven tallits that you might not have come across. Here the problems are fairly significant in my view. One of the major hand-made tallit makers apparently has non-religious people doing the tying. Another I know of apparently has Russian women immigrants doing the tying. Leaving aside the question of whether a woman should be tying tzitzit, you cannot trust a non-observant company to really make sure those women are actually Jewish, etc. Also, I discovered that the tallit they sell as “wool” is actually wool woof on a synthetic warp. That’s kosher, but buyers should definitely be made aware of something like that. Also, they do not always position the holes the right distance from the edges, which is critical from a halachic standpoint.
In my opinion, in the frum velt, the most common significant halachic problem is with undershirt tzitzis. I have often seen them stitched so that they are not more open than stitched. This renders them clearly non-kosher. I have seen this problem among the leading manufacturers, including some under very frum ownership. Even if a company does a good job most of the time, sometimes a certain product in certain sizes is not רוב פתוח. I’m not a manufacturer, so I don’t understand how the problem crops up. These undershirts are usually made in China and India. If you don’t do plenty of inspections in all stages of the process, and inspect every size, I suppose the contractors can easily botch this detail, especially since it might not make much sense to them.
And yes, on one of these undershirt tzitzit you may well see a hechsher on the final product, because, as noted above, the rav is vouching only for the tzitzit strings. How could frum tzitzit tie-ers tie tzitzit on 100 or 200 or 500 without noticing that they are not open enough along the sides? That has always been a mystery to me.
