I did something in synagogue on Saturday that I have never done before in all my years of attending services. I put on a tallit. My tallit.
A tallit is a rectangular prayer shawl with fringes, called tzitzit, at each corner. It stems from God’s injunction to the Israelites “to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages,” that they might “look at it and recall all the commandments of the Lord and observe them…”
When I was growing up, my father’s tallit was my antidote to synagogue boredom. I spent hours playing with its fringes—-braiding and rebraiding, running my fingers through them, using them to make designs on the top of my prayerbook.
I never imagined that I would have a tallit of my own.
The tallit is—at least, it has been—a male garment. Jewish boys get their first tallit when they become bar mitzvah, at age 13. Women have traditionally been excused from the obligation to wear tallit for prayer because it is among the commandments that can only be performed at specific times. Women, who might be distracted by child-bearing or child-rearing responsibilities, were deemed exempt.
The medieval rabbis, apparently, didn’t understand that we are the ultimate multitaskers.
Times have changed, in synagogues as elsewhere. In many synagogues, women are given the honor of an aliyah, being called up to say the blessings before the Torah reading. Women are permitted to chant from the Torah itself. Women are counted in a minyan, the ten worshippers required for a service. And it has become more common that girls who become bat mitzvah receive a tallit, just like boys.
Which is how, in a roundabout way, I got mine. My parents’ synagogue has a tallit-making class, and my mother decided she would be making tallitot (this is the plural, which makes it, interestingly, a feminine noun) for each of her five grandchildren (four girls and a boy.)
These are not your father’s tallit. They are decorated with multicolored silk stripes sewn in an intricate patchwork. My daughter Emma’s tallit, which she will receive at her Bat Mitzvah in May, shimmers with vibrant jewel tones, violet and green and blue. Her sister Julia’s Bat Mitzvah will not take place until March 2010, but hers, a Lily Pulitzer tallit of interwoven pinks and greens, is already finished. No one has ever accused my mother of procrastinating.
At some point in this burst of maternal productivity, I allowed as how I might like my own tallit. I was more than a little conflicted about this. When my daughters receive their tallitot, they will be doing what come naturally. When a woman my age puts on a tallit, it is a statement, tinged with ostentation: “I am Woman, Watch me Pray.”
But my mother makes a tallit too beautiful to refuse. It’s been finished for more than a year now, except for tying the tzitzit, the corner fringes, which was a two-person job that required my involvement. Much to my mother’s annoyance, I had a hard time carving out an hour for this—which had, I think, more to do with my ambivalence about actually wearing the tallit than with my overpacked schedule.
Finally, with Emma’s Bat Mitzvah looming, we tied the tzitzit during the Super Bowl. This ritual turns out to be Jewish macrame. Each fringe contains eight strands, which must be tied with five knots, and between each know one long strand is wrapped around the others, first seven times, then eight, then 11, then 13. There is a convoluted interpretation in which this all adds up to 613, the number of commandments in the Torah. (If you thought there were just 10, you’ve underestimated us Jews.)
The timing turned out to be perfect. On Saturday, Leni, Emma’s close friend since kindergarten, became Bat Mitzvah; Leni’s family attends my parents’ synagogue, and my mother helped Leni make her tallit. So there was Leni up on the bimah, wearing her tallit for the first time; there I was, sitting with my parents, wearing mine for the first time as well.
It felt strange to recite the unfamiliar blessing before putting on the tallit, a prayer I only learned with Emma, as she prepares for her Bat Mitzvah: Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hitatef batzitzit. Blessed Art Thou, Lord Our God Ruler of the Universe, Who Has Sanctified Us with Thy Commandments, and Commanded Us to Wrap Ourselves in Fringes.” Because you hold the tallit in front of you to say the blessing and then swing it around your shoulders, I didn’t quite get it on right on the first try. I looked like a preschooler struggling to put on her coat.
I felt self-conscious, but also unusually spiritual, with the tallit wrapped around me. When the Torah scroll was carried through the congregation, instead of reaching out with my prayerbook to touch the scroll, as the women do, I could use my tzitzit. At the conclusion of the service, members of the congregation, men and women, made a canopy with their tallitot for Leni and her family to walk under.
In a few months, at Emma’s Bat Mitzvah, my husband and I will stand in front of our daughter, wrapping her in her tallit for the first time. I will be wearing my tallit. And my mother, who is getting around, uncharacteristically, to making one for herself, will be wearing hers.
And I will be praying for a generation to come, imagining a day when my daughter’s child amuses herself by running her fingers through the fringes on Mommy’s tallit, the one her great-grandma made.
