Tallit, Tefillin, and the Shape of the Obligation

Shacharit is the service at which the distinctive garments and objects of Jewish prayer are worn. The tallit, the fringed prayer shawl, is donned for the morning service, and on weekday mornings the tefillin, small leather boxes containing scriptural passages, bound by straps to the arm and forehead in fulfilment of the command to bind God's words as a sign upon the hand and between the eyes, are worn, a practice reserved to Shacharit and not the later services. These observances give the morning prayer its characteristic form and mark it as the principal daily encounter with the commandments of prayer.

Like the other services, Shacharit is ideally recited with a minyan, the quorum of ten adults required for communal prayer and for the recitation of certain sanctified passages, though an individual may pray much of it alone. Its length and structure reflect the rabbinic sense that the day should open with an extended turning to God, praise, the affirmation of the divine unity, petition, and the reading of the sacred text, before the day's work begins. The differing customs of the Ashkenazi, Sephardi and other Jewish communities produce variations in its exact wording and melodies while preserving its common framework.