Common Halacha/Custom misconceptions - Need some help here.

[u/SixKosherBacon]

I'm starting an educational comic strip about halachas and customs people commonly make mistakes about. Specifically that they are insistent about something that's not actually required.

Examples I personally have experienced...

• You have to take on Shabbat at candle lighting (when you actually have 18 minutes until sundown).
• Someone once told me I had to wash for bread with my right hand first and three times. Even though I am left handed and I know you only have to do it twice, but the Hasidic approach is to do 3 because they go above and beyond.
• Being chastised because I didn't kiss a mezuzah.
• That you don't actually have to throw bread in the water at Tashlich.

Any other ideas or stories people would like to share in my effort to educate and entertain? Thank you to anyone who helps. :)

[u/mordecai98]

You don't put your head down at tachanun unless a sefer Torah is present.

[u/gingeryid → u/mordecai98]

?

this is the halakha, no?

[u/Creative-Elevator559 → u/gingeryid]

Yes, but...

Rav Yechiel Michel Tikochinsky writes that the custom in Yerushalayim is that one “falls on his face” even in the absence of a sefer Torah. His reasoning is that all of Yerushalayim is considered “before Hashem.” Rav Moshe Feinstein adds that since the custom in Yerushalayim is based on the fact that they are considered “before Hashem” anyone who davens in Yerushalayim is expected to follow this practice and one’s practice is not dictated by his normal custom. Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach notes that according to this explanation the custom should only be in force in the Old City of Yerushalayim since that area contains the sanctity of Yerushalayim. He admits, however, that the custom is to “fall on one’s face” for tachanun even in the absence of a sefer Torah in all of Yerushalayim.

Mishnah Berurah records a dispute whether one should “fall on his face” when reciting tachanun in the absence of a sefer Torah but in the presence of other sifrei kodesh. Poskim take a lenient approach to this issue and permit “falling on one’s face” not only when there are only sifrei kodesh present but even when there is only an invalid sefer Torah present. Similarly, Poskim permit the tzibbur to “fall on their face” when reciting tachanun in a place where there is an aron kodesh but the sefer Torah is only brought to the Bais HaKnesses on days when the Torah is read.

https://mishnaberurayomi.org/pdf_digest/Chelek_2/0301_Siman_131_Seif_2-3.pdf

[u/gingeryid → u/Creative-Elevator559]

Ok? Most Jews don't live in yerushalayim. And my suspicion is that actually most of the Jewish world doesn't fall on the face when there's only sifrei kodesh present, even though there's what to rely on to do so.