In general, the tallit prayer shawl is worn only during the morning shacharit services. This practice derives from the Torah’s command (Numbers 15:39) that you shall “look at” the tzitzit fringes that hang from the four corners of the tallit. This has long been understood to mean that one should wear the tallit only during daytime hours. The one exception to this rule is on the evening of Yom Kippur during the Kol Nidre service, though technically the tallit is donned during the day since Kol Nidre actually begins before the onset of Yom Kippur itself.
In his 1997 book 1,001 Questions and Answers on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Rabbi Jeffrey M. Cohen traces this custom of wearing at tallit on Yom Kippur night to Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, a 13th-century German rabbi who was one of the authors of the Tosafot commentary. Rabbi Meir’s practice was rooted in a claim in the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 17b) that when God showed Moses how to achieve forgiveness for the Israelites following the sin of the golden calf, God was wrapped in a tallit. Since we are performing this service on Yom Kippur night, the practice was to likewise wrap in a tallit.
The service God revealed to Moses is related in the 34th chapter of Exodus. It includes the recitation of the 13 Divine Attributes of Mercy, which are often invoked in Jewish tradition to obtain God’s forgiveness. They are a mainstay of the Selichot penitential prayers that are recited in the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah and which are said repeatedly over the course of Yom Kippur.
An alternative understanding of the practice relates it to the custom of wearing white on Yom Kippur, both as a symbol of purity and because it evokes the white shroud in which Jews are traditionally buried. Purity from sin and confronting mortality are both dominant themes of Yom Kippur. And because prayer shawls are often white, they are worn throughout the day, even during the evening services.
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