Laws of Tzitzis
- 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.
