Any size 36. You might want to refer to this newer post on an S&P talet we recently started offering our customers.

You make some excellent points, which I’d like to address one-by-one. The tallit prices most people are used to, say $100-$200, are for mass production tallits, whereas prices for hand-woven tallits are always significantly more, because you have a professional weaver sitting at a loom all day. Also, netted fringes always add $40-$50 to the price, because they are done by hand. (A few factory-made wool tallits are also available with netted fringes.) This tallit has superb European craftsmanship, so it’s not priced like bottom-end hand-woven tallits. There is a US manufacturer that announced plans some two years ago to create an affordable S&P tallit, but so far those plans have not come to fruition.

It sounds to me like you may be confusing two issues: ‘ituf’ relates to how a tallit should be worn, whereas your contention about wool vs. silk relates to what material a tallit should be made of. So let’s take a look at these issues one at a time.

The proper way to do ituf is not cut-and-dry. The arguments in favor of wrapping it around with all four corners hanging in front are quite strong, in my opinion, and we find an age-old custom, followed to the present day, to wear a tallit in that manner not just among Western Sephardic Jews, but also among German Jews and Yemenite Jews.

The size of the S&P tallit is definitely not an issue, since it’s not at all narrow like a scarf. The leading halachic authorities rule that the minimum size is 20 inches (Grach Na’eh), 22 inches (Rabbi Moshe Feinstein) or 24 inches (Chazon Ish). This tallit is 36 inches.

You write that we should be wearing wool. There are a whole lot of upstanding Jews who wear a cotton tallit katan. Both the Vilna Gaon and the Chazon Ish wore a cotton tallit katan. Had they been offered a high-quality cotton or silk tallit gadol, would they have chosen to wear it? I cannot say.

Do the netted fringes detract from the tzitzit? Perhaps some people would say they embellish the tzitzit. Note that Yemenite Jews have worn a tallit with netted fringes for centuries.

Yes, especially considering that the Gemara and Shulchan Aruch specifically discuss the problem of selling a tallis to a gentile, but make no mention of selling to a woman. The only question regarding women discussed in the Shulchan Aruch (actually in the Rema) is whether the practice should be discouraged.

A very interesting area as (excluding the issues of the girdle of the Kohanim and especially Kohen HaGadol,) the other area I know of that discusses a possible permissive use of wool/linen mix is of course tzitzit.

And many people mix up shatnez (wool and linen specifically according to what I was taught,) and kilayim (eg. the mixing of different animals, seeds and fabric types like wool and cotton!)

I’m not discounting traditions here, but the more things we can do to make chidush ha’mitzva in my opinion the better!

Amir
Paimio, Finland