Illustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio

This week, Korah challenges Moshe’s leadership. One midrash imagines that the challenge comes from a detail in last week’s parashah, about the mitzvah of tzitzit. God tells Moshe to tell the people to put a string of תְּכֵלֶת (tekhelet, a sky-blue color) on the corners of their clothing.

In the midrash, Korah asks: “What about a טַלִּית (tallit, garment) that is entirely tekhelet? Does that need tekhelet strings on its corners?” When Moshe answers that such a tallit still needs tekhelet fringes, Korah starts making fun of Moshe, picks a fight, and we all know how that ends. Not well!

But Korah might get us thinking about the rules for a colorful tallit.

Whoa! Have you ever seen a colored tallit with colored tzitzit? That’s what the Rambam thinks you should have, and this is the position of the Shulhan Arukh (Orah Hayyim 9:5).

But not everyone agrees. Here’s the other view:

According to this, you don’t have to make the strings colored, and you shouldn’t. Just keep your tzitzit strings white no matter what! It’s ok for the threads to be different from the clothing itself in this way.

Later rabbis strongly recommended that everyone just wear tallitot that are mainly white to avoid taking sides in this debate (Taz OH 9:8). And that’s why most tallitot you will see are mainly white, even if they have some stripes of other colors. But the next time you see someone with a colored tallit, check their tzitzit. What color are they?

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