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".
Kabbalah as the Vilna Gaon. The Vilna Gaon says, "There was never any ban or enactment restricting the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah. Any who says there is has never studied Kabbalah, has never seen PaRDeS, and speaks as an ignoramus." The Kabbalah of the Sefardi (Iberian Peninsula) and Mizrahi (Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus) Torah scholars has a long history. Kabbalah in various forms was widely studied, commented upon, and expanded by North African, Turkish, Yemenite, and Asian scholars from the 16th century onward. It flourished among Sefardic Jews in Tzfat (Safed), Israel even before the arrival