Originally, fringes were worn on everyday outer garments, but eventually Jews wished to dress more like those around them. Over the millennia, the practice varied from community to community and from time period to time period. This reflected a constant tension between the desire to assimilate and the desire to affirm one's Judaism through the strict practice of the commandments.

The advent of the Reform Movement did away to a large extent with that tension by moving decisively to the side of assimilation. During the Enlightenment, Jews were offered full rights and duties of citizenship, but at the cost of their distinctiveness. Early Reformers, in order to pursue a universalist orientation which frowned on the separation of Jews from other peoples, embarked on a number of changes in practice, including forbidding the wearing of tzitzit, the tallit and the kippah and the elimination of most prayers in Hebrew.

They did not want to be different.

1/2/98

© Rosemarie E. Falanga, Cy H. Silver