Religious clothing some communities by all married men) on Rosh Hashanah, Hoshanah Rabbah, Tefilas Tal, and Tefilas Geshem. A groom will generally wear a kittel during the wedding ceremony as well. In some Sefardic communities, a Rabbi or a Hazzan may wear a similar white robe at weddings and at prayer services. In Jewish Mysticism, wearing a thin red string (as a type of talisman) is a custom, popularly thought to be associated with Judaism's Kabbalah, in order to ward off misfortune brought about by an "evil eye" ("עין הרע" in Hebrew). In Yiddish the red string is called a "roite bindele".
Yiddish Language Association agrees with fewer than 200,000 in the United States. Western Yiddish is reported by "Ethnologue" to have had an ethnic population of 50,000 in 2000, and an undated speaking population of 5,000, mostly in Germany. A 1996 report by the Council of Europe estimates a worldwide Yiddish-speaking population of about two million. Further demographic information about the recent status of what is treated as an Eastern–Western dialect continuum is provided in the YIVO "Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry" (Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry). There has been frequent debate about the extent of the linguistic