Bottom-line, R’ Hershel Schachter says to wear them in.
To quote:
Chacham Ovadia [Yosef] writes that Hashem should forgive our brothers, the Ashkenazim, for wearing their tzitzis out because al pi Kabbalah, you’re not supposed to…
The Torah says “ur’isem oso,” so we assume you’re supposed to see the tzitzis. [But] Rav Gustman, who was a member of Rav Chaim Ozer’s beis din in Vilna, told his talmidim that he saw the Chofetz Chaim – who came to discuss political issues with Rav Chaim Ozer – without his tzitzis out. Rav Gustman said to him, “In the Mishnah Berurah, you wrote you have to have the tzitzis out.”
The Chofetz Chaim replied, “I beg your pardon, it doesn’t say that.” He said what he meant was that if you’re embarrassed because of non-Jews, you shouldn’t hide the tzitzis. But he said he doesn’t think there’s a din you have to have the tzitzis exposed.
In many yeshivos in Europe—Slabodka is a famous example—students apparently didn’t wear their tzitzis out.
That’s correct. Rabbi Mordechai Tendler writes that Rav Moshe in the early years used to wear his tzitzis tucked in. They asked him why. He had never learned in Slabodka, but he said, “In Slabodka, they were makpid to dress neatly; you shouldn’t dress like a slob.”
Rav Moshe used to wear woolen tzitzis, and the wool annoyed his skin, so in his later years he wore the arba kanfos on top of his shirt, so the tzitzis were exposed, but in his earlier years when he wore it under his shirt, they weren’t.
I remember Rabbi Soloveitchik once gave a yahrzeit drasha on tzitzis. Every year on his father’s yahrzeit, the 3rd of Shevat, he used to give a major shiur for four hours—two hours halacha and two hours agada. One year it was about tzitzis, and part of the drush was [explaining why] the Magen Avraham says you should wear the begged under your shirt but the tzitzis exposed.
[The Torah relates that] Cham told the two brothers that his father was lying naked in bed, so Shem and Yefes went and covered their father, walking backwards. The Torah says “vayikach Shem v’Yefes”; it doesn’t say “vayikchu,” so apparently it was the initiative of Shem, and Yefes went along. Rashi quotes a Midrash that because Shem did what was ethically correct, his descendants, the Jewish people, were zoche to the begged shel tzitzis.
Rav Soloveitchik distinguished between ethics and etiquette. Ethics means doing the right thing even if no one is watching. Etiquette is when people are watching you don’t eat with your fingers; you act neatly. So we wear the begged under our shirt where people don’t see it [to indicate that we should do the right thing even when nobody is watching].
The strings of tzitzis, though, we were zoche to b’zchus the Kiddush Hashem Avraham made after the milchama between the four kings and five kings when he said, “I’m not going to take m’schut v’ad sroch na’al.” Because he refused to take the chut, we were zoche to the chutei tzitzis, and the chutim should be exposed because it says “ur’isem oso.”
This was five minutes of Rav Soloveitchik’s four-hour shiur.
Rav Hershel Schachter is a widely respected posek and rosh yeshiva and rosh kollel at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. On an ordinary week, he gives a shiur Monday evening at the Young Israel of Midwood at 8:15 and Tuesday evening at the Yeshiva of Central Queens at 8:00.
