A tallit is a fringed garment worn as a prayer shawl by religious Jews. The tallit has special twined and knotted fringes known as tzitzit attached to its four corners. The cloth part is known as the "beged" (lit. garment) and is usually made from wool or cotton, although silk is sometimes used for a tallit gadol.

The term is, to an extent, ambiguous. It can refer either to the "tallit katan" (small tallit) item that can be worn over or under clothing and commonly referred to as "tzitzit", or to the "tallit gadol" (big tallit) Jewish prayer shawl worn over the outer clothes during the morning prayers (Shacharit) and worn during all prayers on Yom Kippur. The term "tallit" alone, usually refers to the tallit gadol.

There are different traditions regarding the age from which a tallit gadol is used, even within Orthodox Judaism. In some communities, it is first worn from bar mitzvah (though the tallit katan is worn from pre-school age). In many Ashkenazi circles, a tallit gadol is worn only from marriage, and in some communities it may be customarily presented to a groom before marriage as a wedding present or even as part of a dowry.