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Very informative.  All new Chossonim (i.e. Yechiel Pesach Shmuel and Chester) should read this to avoid foolshiness on the first day.  Although the custom of the Miamonideans is to wear a Tallis even as a bachur.

The morning after my wedding (in Torah Ore) I put on my Talis and smacked Rabbi Moshe Tendler who was visiting accross the face. I received a lecture that I never forgot.

Why bother to check the strings when the tallis was kosher the day before?

What is there to check when you only need one or maybe two knots?

Why do people bother to check on shabbos when, if on the off chance something came loose, there’s nothing they can do to remedy it anyway?

Gavriel,
The problem over here is making a bracha levatala on a non kosher Tallis, and is only a recommended stringency. So we don’t trust the chazaka of the day before, we want to make sure its kosher lechatchila with all the knots, and on Shabbos we would not use it if its pasul and thus avoid a wrong bracha.
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Rabbi Haber,
I loved your anecdote - but one question, I thought you’re not supposed to go to shule during the sheva brachos days?

I would love to see a follow up of this post: Why, where, and when did this seemingly independant mitzva - within the umbrella of tzitzis - of “atifa” come about?

It appears that the wearing of a tallis/atifa is not a mitzvah as those who are not married dont do it (in most Ashkenazi circles). In fact, in theory a person may never come to do this mtizva in an entire lifetime if he never married.

Ari Enkin

p.s. I heard in the name of Rav Gifter that the only Kavana one should have when putting on a Tallis is not to hit the guy behind you with the tzitzit.

Rabbi Haber
I was wondering why yu call it the Rav Moshe way when the Aruch Hashulchan says it?
It would seem to me that this or the Gaon way would be the Litvishe way? I guess i should be happy that in this the so called Litvaks dont do like the chassidim as is theusual lakewood way.

Last Litvak,
You accuse Lakewood of bucking to the Chassidishe system, but what has the Litveshe system produced?  The only truly Litveshe yeshiva today is YU.  Would you rather us be like YU, or Lakewood and Chassidishe?

Gentlemen, gentlemen, if one must be careful not to lash his fellowman in the face with his tzitzis I don’t think that the tone of this conversation is correct either. And by the way, Rabbi Mendel Poliakoff has already cornered the market on being the ‘last of the Litvaks’. He’s over 90 and I wouldn’t want to contest him for the title!
B’Shalom,
The Haber Mother

what does “cover the whole body” mean?

Lakewood Litvak
There is another way. The Tiferes Yerushalyim way. Located in Lower Manhattan, it is the true Jerusalem of Manhattan.

What about the chabad way
and what do most other chassidim do??

and also
the arzial did have an atarah and was very machmir in this as chabad is
but the arizal ( and chabad) is against having an expensive(ie. silver)atarah because that would be more expensive than the tallis itslef