Friday, March 21, 2014

Chabad Tzitzit on a Cotton or Undershirt-Style Tallit Katan?

We once had a customer who wanted to order our Cotton Comfort and Wool Comfort tallit katan items and asked me if they were available with two holes, but the truth is that none of the tallit katan manufacturers make an undershirt-type tallit katan with Chabad holes (or Chassidic holes). 

There are various levels of adherence to Chabad customs. Strictly speaking, there is only one type of tallit katan for Lubavitch chassidim: wool, round neck, straight bottom hem, silk corners and diagonally aligned holes. Apparently because some people really find it hard to wear wool, there is also a cotton version, but again, people who adhere closely to Chabad customs will stick with wool. 

Also note that we describe the tzitzit tying as "Arizal/Chabad." Chabad holds that there should be two holes in the corner, the Arizal does not. Chabad adopted the Arizal's method of tying tzitzit with chulyot. The holes on the beged and the way the tzitzis are tied are really two separate issues. The concept of two holes is similar to the two horizontally aligned holes you find by other Chassidim, who do not tie in accordance with the Arizal.

We aim to provide talleisim and tzitzis to Jews of every description, therefore we get all sorts of orders: a Yemenite tallit with Ashkenazi tzitzit, a modern tallit with Yemenite tying, etc. We have had at least two customers who repeatedly ordered the Cotton Comfort with Yemenite tzitzit. The Rambam writes that you need a wool garment for tzitzit, so it doesn't make sense for customers to order this, but they do. 

Recently I had a customer who ordered this tallit katan and asked us to make it super long, because he wanted to follow the tradition of the Vilna Gaon to have a tallit katan down to the knees. He ordered niputz lishmah tzitzit on it. And he lives in Singapore. Putting these elements together is very incongruous, but I don't impose my opinion on my customers.

To help make matters clear to Chabad customers, we organized strictly Chabad products in a separate category called "Chabad."

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