What to Wear Over Hair

One of the aspects of Jewish religious observance that is not often a part of public discourse is women’s headcovering.  Sure, it’s a very personal thing.  That is why I hesitated to write about this.

My concern is that the rabbis feel the same way.

I don’t take this issue lightly and when I hear married women tell me how grateful they are for this “mitzvah” because they don’t have to spend time doing their hair in the morning I laugh.  That’s not the way I like to make decisions about my Jewish observance.  And see that photo on the right?  Hashem gave me a rosh paruah that looks like that in less than 2 minutes.

When I meet someone for the first time, I say “I’m tall with dark curly hair”.  Online, the thought that by wearing a hat or banadana I’ll look significantly different than my avatar photo is a lot more threatening to me than the thought that my legal name will no longer match @ilenerosenblum.

At various points over the last three years I’ve examined the sources in Jewish text used to substantiate the requirement that married women cover their hair.  The arguments, as I understand them, are as follows:

1. A woman’s hair is ervah and so it should be covered.  There is a secular, rational basis for this – women’s hair is sexual, and if a woman is saving her sexual energy exclusively for her husband, it makes sense to keep it hidden from everyone else.

In Berakhot 24a:
R. Yitshak said: “An [uncovered] tefah(handbreadth) in a woman is
erva.” Regarding what [did R. Yitshak say this]? If in regard to looking [at women], did not R. Sheshet say: “. . . Anyone who gazes even at a woman’s little finger, is as if he gazes at her private parts”? Rather, regarding his wife and reading the Shema.

2. It shows that a woman is married and ergo unavailable to other men (having sex with a married woman carries a harsher punishment than if she is unmarried).
3. The sotah, a woman who is accused of adultery, is brought before the Kohen and her head is uncovered as a source of embarassment and from this we learn that married women covered their hair and that removing it is embarassing.

And the Kohen shall set the woman before God, and loosen the hair of the woman’s head, and put the offering of memorial in her hands, which is the meal offering of jealousy; and the Kohen shall have in his hand the bitter water that causes the curse. (Bamidbar/Numbers 5:18)

4. Kabbalistic teachings that I have not studied explain that there is a certain powerful energy exuded by a woman’s hair, and that energy can become destructive it if it is not contained.  Therefore, it therefore must be covered. This energy is activated when a woman consummates marriage, so it doesn’t apply to unmarried women and it continues to apply to divorced or widowed women.
5. Dat Yehudit – It’s how Jewish women dress.

My thoughts on these matters, respectively:

1. If a woman’s hair is really ervah, then why shouldn’t unmarried women cover their hair?  If gazing at women at all is inappropriate, even a woman’s little finger, then why don’t we wear burkas?
2. This argument really only works in Israel and in observant Jewish communities of the Diaspora.  Otherwise, if a woman is covering all of her hair with a bandana, to the public, including most Jews, it would signify one or more of the following.  That she is: a) hiking b) undergoing chemotherapy c) a hippie d) having a really bad hair day.  It would likely NOT indicate that she is married. Rather, a wedding ring seems to serve this purpose in modern Western culture.  Additionally, I don’t feel that wardrobe choices must be made by what will or will not suggest to a man the degree of punishment that illicit sexual relations would incur. Many women choose to cover their hair with a sheitel, a wig.  Some of them are pretty convincingly natural looking.  They are sometimes made with the wearer’s own hair and often look nicer than the original hair style.  The only difference is that it’s not actually attached to her head.  The justifications for this I’ve heard follow these 3 lines of argument:  a) What man wants to run his fingers through a wig?  b) A wig covers all of a woman’s hair and is therefore superior to a hat or wrap and a woman is less likely to remove it in public because of how odd that would look. c) The point is not to look unattractive and so it doesn’t matter if the woman looks more attractive wearing the sheitel.  The point is that it’s not actually attached to her head.   In some communities the sheitel is covered by a hat so that no one is mistaken.  That sounds delightfully sweltering in the Israeli summer, but the point is neither comfort nor fashion.

   I feel that a) I’m not sure this is a valid line of halachic reasoning and again, not something I’m going to base my wardrobe choices on. b) Most sources and contemporary practice indicate that it is not critical to cover all the hair. c) Um, I thought the point if anything was to send a message to guys to get the message that a woman is off limits? 

   I will take the time also here to mention that it is a practice in some ultra-Orthodox hasidic circles for women to shave off their real hair.  This stemmed from a fear that when she would immerse in the mikvah that some hair, if it was long, might accidentally float to the top or fall out and land on her body and thereby invalidate the dunk.  To this I will point out that halacha states that a woman should not make herself unattractive to her husband.  She shouldn’t even make herself deliberately unattractive to everyone else.  The line I hear about tzniut in general is “attractive, but not attracting”.  To this I will refer to point a – what man wants to run his fingers over his wife’s bald head?

3. The sotah procedure isn’t in place anymore and I don’t feel so great about basing how I look on an observance stemming from the practice of handling women suspected of adultery.
4. I don’t know.  I haven’t gotten into Kabbalah.  I have noticed however that Jewish law seems to completely omit the possibility that a woman might not be a virgin when she gets married for the first time.
5. Rambam explains that Dat Yehudit varies from place to place.
   

   Hilkhot Ishut 24:12: What is Dat Yehudit? It is the modest behavior practiced by daughters of Israel. These are the things, that if she does [any] one of them, she has violated Dat Yehudit: She goes out to the market place or in an open passageway and her head is uncovered and she is not wearing a redid[shawl or chador] like all the women, even though her hair is covered with a kerchief.

   I see plenty of observant women who don’t cover their hair, particularly outside of Israel. I think there is a much stronger case to be made along this line of reasoning if one lives in a community in which this is the norm.

I’ve searched and searched, for textual sources, books, and blog entries.  And I’ve not come across anything that satisfies me completely in determining why a married woman should cover her hair.  And don’t even get me started on the debate over how much!

The best textual sources that I’ve found are books by Rabbi Yehuda Herzl Henkin, Understanding Tzniut: Modern Controversies in the Jewish Community and Responsa on Contemporary Jewish Women’s Issues. Several people have recommended Hide and Seek: Jewish Women and Headcovering by Lynne Schreiber. I enjoyed reading the stories, but ultimately I closed the book with no answers and the introduction provided nothing new to me.

Most rabbis, it seems, want to stay far, far away from this topic.  That indicates something to me.  It’s not merely that it’s a personal issue.  By most standards, I believe, hilchot niddah are far more personal, and rabbis are more willing to make rulings in this area.  But kisui rosh, headcovering,  appears to have a lot more wiggle room and I’m led to believe less halachic substantiation.

Here is what Willow Smith has to say about the issue:

Where does this all leave me?  I don’t want to do it just because everyone else is doing it, but yet… it seems that group think is part of being a member of the tribe, or any tribe.

When making a decision about my Jewish observance, I usually go to one or more of the following places:

1. The sources.  I find no clear answer here.
2. My ancestors.  What would bubbe do?  My parents have a photo of my late great-great-grandparents back in the shtetl.  In it, my great-great-grandmother is wearing a shawl that exposes the front part of her head.  Was that the norm before married women started shucking the headcovering in droves?
3. Community.  What do others do in my community today?  This is dicey because sometimes people are misled and don’t actually do the right thing.  Group think takes over.  I don’t believe in just following the group and also, the observant Jewish community in Jerusalem is so large that I don’t feel like I’m particularly a member of any group.  I haven’t found my niche.
4. Ask a rabbi.  I haven’t asked a rabbi directly for a psak on what to do, but I don’t think I’d get one.  Previous conversations with rabbis on the subject have led me to believe that it’s one of the last things that they’d want to do.

I’ve taken the chance that some of what I’ve written above may be inaccurate or misunderstood.  I did my best to report accurately.  In the even that I’ve been mistaken, please leave a comment.

If you disagree, leave a comment.  If you agree, leave a comment.

I hope that this can be the start of an ongoing process and exploration and conversation.  If I offended anyone with my opinions, I would like to apologize.  I took that possibility into consideration but on the whole I thought that it was more important to lay thoughts and feelings out there than to be diplomatic and not dive into the heart of the matter or to shirk away from something difficult.  Sometimes it’s only when you remove diplomacy that the true discussion can begin.