Tallit with Heavy Fabric

I receive about a dozen tallit inquiries per week. Yesterday I got an email from someone by the name of Daniel who had a very reasonable request: He wanted a heavyweight tallit with a nice black striping pattern, but he wanted regular fringes, not the fancy double-knotted fringes that come standard on the Echt Turkish and Kmo Turkish tallits.

I didn't have a good solution for him. I even consulted with a seasoned tallit seller with 20 years' experience under his belt, but he wasn't able to come up with anything. 

Kmo Turkish tallit. Note the thicker black bands.

I even looked into the Turkish tallits made by Talitania, which we occasionally sell, but their Kmo Turkish has long fringes too.



After giving the matter some thought, I told Daniel he might want to buy a regular high-end tallit, like the Chatanim Tallit, and then have a lining and sidebands added. (Some people have a cotton lining sewn onto the underside of the tallit and sidebands. This serves various functions, including adding weight to the tallit.) I explained to Daniel that the Chatanim is a bit heavier than a standard wool tallit.

I myself once added an atara from a Beit Yosef tallit to my own Shabbat tallit. I like it because it's wool instead of synthetic, but I noticed that one of the side benefits was that it adds weight on the back of the neck, which keeps the tallit in place. Of course a fancy atara does the same, if you want to add that.

Also, I told Daniel that if he likes the new type of nonslip fabric, I could procure a Chatanim with a nonslip fabric, sidebands and a lining. This is quite a rarity, and is only available in sizes 60 and 70.