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Jewish prayer shawl carries historical, family associationsCulture: Shawl an ancient part of Jewish ritualBY JIM REMSENKNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERSPHILADELPHIA — “As we wrap up in our tallitot (prayer shawls), we visualize the “tallit as pure light. Hold it over your head, and feel the light pour down through your body.”t That is from a meditation in “For All Who Call, a new sprayer manual from the Melton Research Center for Jewish Education. The book -devotes several meditations to this common ritual item, :the fringed “tallit that adult Jews wear on their shoulders at synagogue services.' Another meditation urges people to think of the shawl ‘“as a kind of blankie for adults. It reminds us of the • aspects of the natural world that protect and nourish us.”Observant Jews might blush at the blankie image, but it is not far off the mark.Many people, it seems, embrace their tallitot as virtual love objects. Many people may don the “tallit as a dry obligation, their only mindfulness about it being to remember not to wear it into the restroom. For a large group of others, though, the “tallit is a virtual love object. Few ritual items have proven as symbolicallyexpansive and as threaded with historical, theological and family associations.“When God entered the world, He put on a “tallit of light. That is the first act of creation,” said Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, a renowned scholar of Talmud and Jewish mysticism. “So the “tallit is the symbolic garment of light.”As a broad range of people have taken on the “tallitot (the plural form in Hebrew) in recent years, the look has gone rainbow. Artists have developed custom designs in every hue and fabric to supplement the traditional white with blue or black stripes. And the modest silk-scarf style is giving way to broad-shouldered, flowing robes that make the wearers look like desert royalty.The four-cornered “tallitot have been worn for thousands of years in adherence to the biblical commandment to wear the fringes known as “tzitzit. Their prime function is to bear, at each corner, the elaborately knotted fringes that worshipers customarily gather together and kiss during certain verses.The tassels are laden with meaning. In Jewish mysticism, explained Rabbi Gedalia Liebes of ProjectGesher, an Orthodox outreach group, the word “tzitzit has the numerical equivalent of 613, which is the total number of Jewish “mitzvot, or laws.“The letters of the word total 600, and then there are eight strings at each corner, held by five knots, for 613,” he said. “So on one level, one is wearing them to be reminded of the “mitzvot.”The “tallit developed 2,000 years ago as “the everyday Jewish national dress” akin to the Roman toga, and was “pushed into the synagogue and ritual use” over time, Steinsaltz said. Its “nonhis-torical and nonfunctional side” deepened over the centuries.It came to be an essential at all of the major occasions of a Jew’s life: circumcision, bar (or bat) mitzvah, wedding and burial. It is the fabric of the “chupah, the ceremonial wedding canopy. Stories are told of couples draping their beds with their” tallitot as they try to conceive. Its design was the model for the Israeli flag.Prayerbooks and religious items are enshrouded in “tallitot for burial. As, traditionally, are Jews themselves, “as a kind of divine protection for the unsafe journeythey face,” Steinsaltz said.The “tallit might as well be made of elastic for all the meanings individual Jews have given it. Here are some:Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, scholar: The acclaimedTalmudist received his “tallit from his father-in-law, according to his Orthodox tradition. During a recent interview, Rabbi Steinsaltz described the opening act of kissing it and drawing it over one’s head:“When we go in under the “tallit in that gesture, we go in under ‘the wings of the Presence.’ You put in on, and over you, and you are all immersed in it. Then you somehow emerge out of it. In a certain way, it is a birth ritual. It is highly poetical.”Rabbi Steven Brown, educator: Upon his graduation from Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1996, his wife got him a plush new “tallit “that gives me a sense of splendor, of being in the Sovereign’s court.”When one puts on the “tallit, Rabbi Brown said, “the material becomes the divine dew that surrounds you. The dew is a blessing to the land, a covering. When God gave them manna in the desert, ithad the appearance of a dew covering everything. So there’s a sense of a warm, enveloping presence.“When you wear the “tallit over your head, it just totally surrounds your being. In a way, you enter your own temple, your own holy of holies. That’s as close as you get in this day to that kind of sacred space.”Sara Horowitz, professor: Horowitz, outgoing director of the Jewish studies program at the University of Delaware, said she and her second husband were recently married and wrapped themselves and his young daughter in a “tallit “to symbolize becoming a family together and making a new shelter.”She recalled memories of going to synagogue with her father and “hovering under his “tallit,” playing with the fringes. For years as an adult, she was reluctant to have her own “tallit and “let go of him and that association of a masculine protective presence.” But he is now bound up in the experience, and she is busy making an artistic “tallit for herself for the High Holidays.“There is something about walking into a synagogueand folding yourself in that cloth,” Horowitz said. “You are shedding your outdoor, quotidian self and letting your prayer self emerge. The more habitual it is, the more effective it becomes.”Eli Gabay, arson victim: Gabay is president of Beit Harambam, the Northeast Philadelphia synagogue hit by a Sabbath arson in May. More than 50 “tallitot were destroyed, including one from Jerusalem that Gabay’s parents gave him when his first child, a daughter, was born in 1985: “It was a loss that can’t be replaced, period.” He plans to take his daughter to Jerusalem to buy a new one “and try to have closure.”“There are different symbols in Judaism,” Gabay said. “Some you eat. Some you read from. This one you are enclosed in. It is especially monumental to us because persecuted people wrapped themselves in “tallit. It is told that one of the last fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising jumped to his death from a building while covered with a “tallit.... The “tallit becomes a shroud in its eventuality, so it’s a measure of where you are.”
Newspaper Details
Brownsville Herald
Brownsville, Texas, US
Sun, Sep 17, 2000
Page 23
Full Page
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USA 30 Sep 2019
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