June 12, 2026 – Sh’lach

Tallis Tales: A Request for Prayer Shawl Stories

GOD said to Moses as follows: Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner. That shall be your fringe; look at it and recall all GOD’s commandments and observe them, so that you do not follow your heart and eyes in your urge to stray. Thus you shall be reminded to observe all My commandments and to be holy to your God. — Numbers 15:37-41

This week’s Torah portion, Sh’lach L’cha, is best known for the passage about how the opposing reports of the optimistic and pessimistic scouts led to 40 years of wandering in the desert. As a bar-mitzvah boy 43 years ago (but who’s counting?), that was the focus of my speech. How a January birthday got a June portion is a story for another day.

As evidenced by the verses above, there is another important passage. This section provides the biblical proof text for why we wear a prayer shawl/tallit (or, in Ashkenazic pronunciation, tallis.) In morning services for Orthodox and Conservative congregations this passage comes immediately after the V’ahavata (You shall Love Eternal your God” paragraph from Deuteronomy following the Shema. Our latest prayerbook, Mishkan Tefilah, put this paragraph back into Saturday and weekday morning services. If you were raised in or have visited Orthodox and Conservative congregations, you have noticed those wearing a tallit kissing the knots/fringes each time the word tzizit is chanted.

In our congregation, like many others, it is customary to make bar/bat mitzvah the day when a student receives a prayer shawl from their parents, recites the blessing, and puts it on for the first time in a context of public prayer. Like a set of Shabat candles or a kiddush cup, every prayer shawl has a story to go with it. Please send me a tallit/prayer shawl story that I can share tonight on your behalf or, better yet, come to services with your prayer shawl and be ready to tell a story about it.

May the ties that bind remind us that these knots, representing the 613 mitzvot (commandments), connect one generation to the next and secure us to one another as a holy community.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi David Wirtschafter