When a Jewish boy becomes a Bar Mitzvah, he usually wears a yarmulke and a tallit during the service. A yarmulke is a skullcap worn mostly by Jewish men, although some women do choose to wear them.
The Pope wears one too, but I'm fairly certain he's not Jewish.
There's no specific law or commandment requiring Jews to cover their heads; rather, Jews who choose to wear yarmulkes wear them as a continuous reminder to respect G-d. As Jews we're all about respecting G-d. Respecting G-d is the basis for everything we do. That, and food. We Jews are also all about food.
A tallit (or tallis) is a four-cornered garment with precisely knotted fringes attached to each corner. Jewish men (and some women) wear tallit in fulfillment of the commandment to wear fringes at the edges of garments as a reminder of the 613 mitzvot (laws or commandments) Jews are required to follow throughout each day and year. You might ask yourself, Why are there 613 mitzvot?
Look! A squirrel!!!
Generally the mitzvot make a lot of sense. There are commandments to love other Jews and not to hate them (two separate commandments; guess this concept is important), not to be superstitious (yeah, tell that to my grandma), and not to muzzle an ox while plowing.
I have to wonder why the prohibition against murder doesn't appear until #482. I thought this one would be important enough to show up in the Top Ten.
What? Shut up.
In the olden days, when my mother was attending high school with Julius Caesar (thank G-d my mother doesn't read this blog), most garments consisted of large squares roughly the size and shape of bed sheets, so it wasn't difficult to attach fringes to the corners. These days finding an appropriate way to place fringes on men's clothing is a bit more challenging, unless you had this in mind:
I love this coat. I might even dream about this coat.
In cases where it might not be suitable to wear the knee-length indigo denim masterpiece, men can wear tallit.
So why am I bothering telling you this?
Because I made this for Robespierre:
This was supposed to be the back but Robey likes it as the front. His tallit, his choice.
I knitted it. Each row contains 300 stitches, so if you multiply that by the number of rows you come up with somewhere in the neighborhood of eleventy-billion stitches. In fact, I enjoyed making it so much that I made it twice. From start to finish. Because the first time the edges came out curly and it looked girly* so I tore it apart and started allllll over. I had a rabbi tie the fringes but I didn't want to put it on the floor with the fringes to take pictures of it, so these are the BEFORE shots.
I'm pretty proud of it, and of Robespierre. It looks great on him and I know he'll do it justice when he reads from the Torah in June.
Soon I have to start knitting one for Cupcake. Hers will have pink.
*Why isn't girly in my dictionary? Spellcheck wanted girdle or Giraldo.
