Thursday, May 5, 2011

Tallit or Tallis?

Yes, I get to hear this question quite much. Well, ITS THE SAME! Tallit and Tallis means the same but pronounced and written a bit differently.
  • Tallit (you can also find it as taLit, with one L) is the Hebrew word for the Prayer Shawl, and it is the most common among this word variations.
  • Tallis - with the S in the end, is popular among the English speaking and Ashkenazim in general.
According to the above, there is also different plural words for the Jewish prayer shawl:
  • The plural for Tallit could be: Tallits or Tallitot.
  • The plural for Tallis could be: Talliss or Tallisim
There are different traditions of how to put on the tallit but I will right about it in the following posts. Although its mostly common that the prayer shawl is used for the Jewish men, there is also jewish reform and conservative Jewish tradition, whereby the women and girls also ware the tallit, even for the Bat Mitzvah.

I  found this nice Tallit video, which the Bat Miztvha girl received her Tallit gift from her grandmother. This is not a good example of how to where it, as this nice girl did not say the prayer, but i will try to to enlighten you in my future posts.

Mazal Tov Alexandra