Tallit

A tallit, taleth, or tallis is a fringed garment worn as a prayer shawl by religious Jews. The tallit has special twined and knotted fringes known as tzitzit attached to its four corners. The cloth part is known as the beged ("garment") and is usually made from wool or cotton, although silk is sometimes used for a tallit gadol.

The term is, to an extent, ambiguous. It can refer either to the tallit katan ("small tallit") item worn over or under clothing (commonly referred to as "tzitzit"), or to the tallit gadol ("big tallit") worn over the outer clothes during Shacharit—the morning Jewish prayer service—and all of the Yom Kippur prayer services. The term "tallit" alone typically refers to the tallit gadol.

There are diverse traditions regarding the age at which a tallit gadol is first used, including within Orthodox Judaism. In some Sephardic Orthodox communities, young boys wear a tallit even before becoming b'nei mitzvah. In some communities, it is worn beginning with a boy's bar mitzvah—though the tallit katan is often worn from preschool age. In many Orthodox Ashkenazi Jewish communities, a tallit gadol is worn only after marriage and may be given to a groom as a wedding present or, in the most conservative communities, as part of a dowry.