a ritual note

[cellio]

I learned something interesting one morning last week. During the service my group led, we introduced the part where you gather the tzitzit of your tallit together. I was helping to lead the service and wearing a small tallit, so this was nothing special for me. But I also own a larger tallit, and during the morning service a couple days later another group did this and I got to experience it as a congregant.

The usual way of wearing a larger tallit results in two of the fringes hanging in front and two in back. In order to gather all four you have to drop the back ones down and then reach around and gather them. In other words, you end up really being wrapped tightly in the tallit in a way that doesn't work with the small ones. I found the close physical quarters to be evocative of the closeness we can have with God. I want to keep that.

This only works if (1) you're standing and (2) you aren't fussing with a siddur in your hands. So in congregations where you sit for the v'ahavta (like mine) it's not going to work. And while they surely didn't anticipate it, this group encumbered the process by choosing to read the English instead of the Hebrew for that part. I know the Hebrew by heart and wouldn't have needed to keep a book open and handy for that.

Comments

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

As I've seen it, it can work sitting with either a small siddur that can be held in one hand (and possibly passed from one hand to the other as the fringes are gathered) or by putting the siddur down in one's lap. Of course, it probably helps if you've got N years of practicing the physical moves (for all I know there's a bit of extra maneuvering in the act of sitting down so that the fringes are easy to grab) and know that section by heart so you don't really need to look at the page right then while you concentrate on words+meaning+moves.