My tallit

I got my tallit in Jerusalem, in Mea Shearim. Mea Shearim is the neighborhood where I first set foot in Jerusalem, and those of you who know Jerusalem can give a small shudder here. For those of you who don’t know the city: Mea Shearim is the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, just outside the old city. They have signs up in many places and languages telling outsiders not to come in there if they aren’t dressed properly. I’m in jeans and t-shirt. They didn’t chuck me out, so I guess I was okay. Besides, Chaya was with me. She was dressed more like a proper rebbetzin. Well, more so than I was. You kind of have to visualize Chaya as well as me to get the whole picture. I’m quite certain there’s never been a rebbetzin quite like Chaya. 🙂

The shops here are, almost literally, holes in the wall. We found a tallit shop, and proceeded to choose. Since the nice young shopkeeper was, of course, orthodox, we gave him to understand (without actually saying so) that the tallits were for some young men who had just become bar mitzvahs. (Orthodox women, at least in that neighborhood, don’t get to wear tallits.) Chaya bargained him down decently. Bargaining is a talent I’ve never developed, since in America, or the parts of it that I inhabit, it’s regarded as rather rude. I gawp at her ability.

Finely woven wool it is, bone white. Blue and purple stripes, with thin silver bands. And tassels! which I must learn to refer to as tzitzis. My tzitzis fascinate my cats, and get dragged through most everything, and are absolutely wonderful.

We left the little shop with bags in hand and wandered our way back to the car. Passing by a book store, I wanted to look in and browse, as I always do when I’m within a quarter mile radius of a book store.

“You can’t go in there,” Chaya told me.

“Why not?”

“Well, you don’t know Hebrew — you can’t read any of the books they have.”

“(look of utter sadness)”

And so was my welcome to Jerusalem.