Who Should Wear the Tallit?
According to the Halakhah [Jewish law], women are exempt from the obligation to carry out those precepts that depend for their performance on a given time. Since the precept of tzitzit is binding only during the day and not during the night it follows that this is a precept from which they are exempt. Thus women have no obligation to wear the tallit, and until recent years it was extremely unusual for women to wear it for prayer. Nowadays, even among some Orthodox women there has been a strong desire to wear the tallit for prayer, and many women now do so, often having a special colored or decorated tallit in the latest fashion. Orthodox Rabbis generally disapprove of women wearing the tallit, chiefly because it is untraditional for women to do so, but others see no objection to it. In some Ashkenazic communities unmarried men do not wear the tallit. The reason given is that the Deuteronomic verse about the wearing of a garment with fringes is followed by the verse (Deuteronomy 22: 13)
