453. How to Make Tzitzis

Tzitzis 1:6

Here’s how tzitzis are made: One starts from the corner of the garment and moves up no more than three finger-widths from the edge, but not less than the distance from the knuckle of one’s thumb to the end of it. Four strings are inserted through a hole there, which necessarily folds them in half, creating eight strings hanging from the corner. These strings must each be at least four finger-widths long. Longer is acceptable - even if they would be a cubit or two long! “Finger-widths” here means thumb-widths. One of these eight hanging strings should be techeiles, while the rest should be white.

Tzitzis 1:7

Next, one takes one of the white strings and winds it once around the other strings near to the edge of the garment and releases it. He then takes the string of techeiles and winds it around twice, next to the white string he already wound around. He ties the strings in a knot. The three strings wrapped around are called a chulya (literally a vertebra; we’ll call it a division). He leaves a small space, then makes another division using just the string of techeiles. He leaves another small space, then makes a third division (with the techeiles again). One keeps going in this fashion until the last division, which is made by winding techeiles twice and one last time with a white string. Since we began with a white string, we also end with it, because we can go up in degrees of sanctity but not down. The reason we start with a white string is so that the strings wound around next to the corner of the garment should be like the garment itself. This procedure is followed on all four corners.