Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz

So recently I got the same question in different forms a number of times, and that is about a person who is not yet married wearing a talus for davening.

It came up in the following three instances.

In one case it was a bacher in Eretz Yisrael who happens to be a Kohen, so he got himself his own talus for duchne, because he's going to need to duchne every day.

He said, once I have a talus, I'm putting it on every day.

Should I just put it on for the whole davening?

Another case was Balchuvah, who grew up in a conservative shul.

And in the conservative shul, everybody wore a talus, the whole davening.

Men, women, children, everybody wore a talus, the entire davening.

Now he's davening in an Orthodox shul.

Now he's wrong.

So should he stop wearing a talus now that he became Orthodox?

And in the third case, it was an assistant rabbi at a shul who just feels uncomfortable that he's the rabbi of a shul and he's not wearing a talus.

for a davening.

So the shayla is, is there any reason not to?

Is there anything, what's the basis of this practice that people only put on a talus gadol once they get married?

So to answer that question, we have to back up a little bit.

Why do we only wear a talus during davening?

Why don't we wear a talus gadol all day long?

that even if you're not going to wear tzitzis all day long, at the very least, you should wear tzitzis, you should wear a beggar of Dalet Kanfos to make yourself obligated in tzitzis during davening.

The Dark Emotion, Simen Ches, Sivkat and Gimel, says that many pairs of talus katan are not really large enough and are otherwise not necessarily kasher.