Look closely at a Jewish prayer shawl and you will find the most important part is not the cloth. It is the fringes at its corners: twisted threads tied into a pattern that the Torah calls, simply, a reminder.

Two closely related things

Tzitzit are the fringes themselves. Tallit is the garment that holds them — a four-cornered cloak. Some wear a small tallit all day beneath their shirt, called a tallit katan; the larger prayer shawl, the tallit gadol, is worn for the morning service.

What the fringes mean

The Torah says to look at the tzitzit and remember all the commandments. The sages read something more specific into them: the numerical value of the word tzitzit is 600, and each corner’s threads and knots total 613 — the number of mitzvot in the Torah. The fringes are, in a sense, the whole law tied into a knot and hung where the eye will fall.

Each of the eight threads on a corner is folded so that four appear. They are wound and knotted into five double knots. Look at the fringes and the reminder is physical, not abstract.

Who wears what, and when

Traditionally, men and boys wear tzitzit, and married men — or, in many communities, all men — wear the tallit gadol. Women of some communities wear them as well. The tallit gadol is worn during the weekday and Shabbat morning prayers and on festivals; not at night, and not on Yom Kippur’s final service.

Putting on a tallit

Hold it open, say the blessing — Baruch Atah Adonai … v’tzivanu l’hitatef ba’tzitzit — then drape it over the shoulders and gather the corners in front. Some cover the head with it for a moment during the Shema, wrapping themselves in prayer.

The fringes are a companion to attention, a way of keeping prayer from floating off. You wear the reminder, quite literally, and it wears you back.