The tallith: a gift to the groom from the heart

In Made in Heaven: A Jewish Wedding Guide, (Moznaim Publishing, 1983 p. 55), Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan explains why the bride gives her groom a tallith on or close to the wedding day. “Just as the wedding rings symbolizes that she is bound to him to the exclusion of other men, the tallith symbolizes that he is bound to her to the exclusion of all other women.” According to the Ashkenazic custom (with the exception of Germanic Jews known as Yekkes), a man only starts wearing a tallith for morning services when he is married.

The tallith is essentially a fringed cape. It is made from a rectangular shaped wool cloth that is long enough to cover the body from head to hip. At each of the four corners, four strings are doubled over, wound and knotted, into a single fringe of eight strings. Thus there are thirty-two strings in all. That number can be represented in the Hebrew letters, lamed beth which correspond to the numerical value of thirty and two. Those two letters together form lev, the Hebrew word for heart. “In sending the groom the tallith the bride symbolizes that she is giving her whole heart over to him." 

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