Laws of Tzitzit
- Since there are many varieties of tzitzis on the
market, and questions have been raised about the kashrus of some of them, a
person should buy tzitzis that have a reliable hechsher, or purchase
them from a reliable dealer.
- The halachah allows a woman to place the tzitzis
on the garment, but a person should be stringent and wear tzitzis that have
been placed on the garment by a man. Bedi-avad, if she has already
placed the tzitzis on the garment, she is believed to say that she did it
for the sake of the mitzvah of tzitzis even if no one was supervising her.
- Lechatchilah, a
child who is less than 13 years old should not attach tzitzis to the garment
of an adult. However he may attach his own tzitzis if he has arrived at the
age at which he is required to fulfill mitzvos for the sake of learning
them. For then, because Chazal have obligated him to wear them, he is
considered a person who is supposed to wear tzitzis and may, therefore,
fulfill the mitzvos by attaching them himself. When he becomes an adult, he
is not required to untie the tzitzis he attached to his garment when he was
a child if he placed the threads into the garment (they may be placed one at
a time) and tied them for the sake of the mitzvah and was supervised by an
adult. Since they were already tied, the law which applies to all tzitzis
that are tied by a child applies, which is that, although a child should not
tie the tzitzis of an adult, once he has done it, they are considered
kosher. Once a child reaches the age of 13, we are not stringent even
lechatchilah.
- If the tzitzis become posul, the garment
should be removed immediately. It is not sufficient to simply avoid walking
in it, for the law forbids walking four amos when a person isn’t wearing
tzitzis, not when he’s wearing tzitzis that are posul. A four cornered
garment with posul tzitzis may not be worn at all. For this reason, a
person should not fix tzitzis which have become posul while he is
still wearing the garment.
- It is permitted to tie tzitzis at night.
- One of the threads of the tzitzis should be longer
than the others so that it can be used to wrap around the others. If it is
not long enough to do all the wrapping, some of the wrapping may be done
with another thread, for when techeles was used, some of the wrapping was
done with the techeles and the rest was done with another thread.
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