Orthodox Jewish Women and Wigs

Factual Questions
1

I know we have a few Orthodox Dopers, so perhaps they can explain (but not after sundown tonight!) The Wig Rule. I’d never understood it—or really thought about it—till I read an article in today’s Times, saying that Israeli rabbis had ruled against wearing wigs made from Indian human hair, throwing much of Brooklyn into a frenzy of snood-buying.

Mrs. Klein seems sensible: “One of the goals of modesty is to blend.” That I can understand, and I agree with her that a headscarf does not make you “blend.” But how does a bad wig (which makes you an object of derision) or a really good wig (which makes you look like Jennifer Anniston)? Wouldn’t “modesty” best be served by wearing your own hair, tied back in a bun or a ponytail?

Wha-huh? The ban is because no one knows what the Indian wigmakers were thinking while they made the wigs?! How do they know what European wigmakers were thinking, or the people who manufacture fake-hair wigs—or scarves, for that matter? This makes no sense to me at all.

Anyone?

2

Now that I think of it, this should probably go in “Great debates”—sorry, Mods, can you flick your Mod Switch and move this?

3

Zev Steinhardt hasn’t posted for a few days, and it is sabbath, so I’ll take a crack at it with what I have gleaned from his posts.

just my WAGG (wild ass gentile guess) but there are two possibilities. One is that something may be unclean if it was used in conjuction with a different religion’s ritual. As an example the unopened bottle of Welch’s juice in the fridge in my Lutheran church is kosher. Once we use some of it for communion it is no longer clean for an observant jew.

The other is that rulings are made to avoid even the appearance of something forbidden. The milk and meat law is a good example. The bible forbids only the specific act of serving a kid with its mother’s milk. Johnny Cochrain might argue that an angus burger with cheese from a jersey cow is okay but the the ruling was made much broader so there would be no appearance of a jew eating someting unclean to an outside observer.

4

I’m confused by the use of “snood” here. My orthodox friend wears her hair in what I’ve always considered a snood, but in her case it’s like a decorative hairnet something that drapes down the back and covers the ends. It doesn’t hide all of her hair like a headscarf would.

5

Yes, snoods are the “hair-bags” popular in the 1860s and again in the 1940s. As Mrs. Klein points out in the article, they don’t so much make you look “modest” as like an Andrews Sister.

6

From this article:

I suppose the rabbi is saying that using hair offered in a Hindu ceremony is equivalent to eating meat from “pagan” sacrifices, which I think is a big no-no.

7

Eve:

While it may be true that one’s natural hair would be the best for “blending in,” that’s not the only aspect there is to modesty. Equally, if not more, important, is the concept that one’s natural beauty is reserved for one’s own spouse. (Single girls, on the other hand, do wear their hair uncovered.)

As in the article DeVena linked to: there’s no known idolatrous “haircutting ritual” amongst Europeans, so it can be assumed that the hair was not, prior to being used in the wig, the object of an idolatrous religious ceremony. Hindus, apparently, do. And this would apply equally to fake wigs and head-scarves. If there were suddenly discovered an idolatrous ritual in which such things are manufactured to be used, a similar outcry would arise inthe Jewish community.

Padeye, it’s not Shabbat just yet. ;j

8

I don’t know if there are any married (and thus hair-covering) Orthodox women who post here, but I’ll take a crack at it. (FWIW, I’m a single Orthodox woman. Are there any married frum female posters out there? Other than Zahava424, who’s also single, the other Orthodox posters I’ve met are all guys.)

Orthodox Jews don’t want to use anything that would have been used in a non-Jewish religious ceremony, as using it might be construed as participating in/condoning such a ceremony. I don’t know exactly under what situation Indian people would be cutting off their hair in a religious ceremony (the article in the New York Times doesn’t go into it), but if they’re cutting it off as part of a religious service, that hair wouldn’t be usable for Orthodox Jews. Intention is key - if (let’s say) they’re cutting it off because the ceremony requires them to have very short hair, but the cutting itself isn’t intended as part of the worship, the hair is probably kosher, although I’m definitely not an expert in these laws. If the part of the actual ceremony involves hair-cutting, then it’s probably not kosher.

Cranky, that sounds like a snood. Different women feel comfortable exposing more or less hair, and some certainly leave several inches worth of hair uncovered in front of the snood (ie they have the hair down their back inside the bag, with the elastic rim sitting several inches back from the top of their forheads.) It’s a personal call, and there’s no one standardized answer as to exactly how much hair one must cover (within a certain range.) Most women I know don’t wear them in public, exactly, they’re more for casual wear among other Orthodox Jews. (Coworkers have asked me why a fellow Orthodox female grad student is wearing a giant sock on her head, which I think explains pretty well why I wouldn’t want to wear one to work when I get married, no matter how comfortable they’re supposed to be.)

In general, modesty is defined in different ways by different cultures, and I think it’s hard for people of one group to understand the rules of another; think of African tribal groups in which the women used to walk around bare-breasted, but would always wear long wrap skirts - showing any leg beyond the ankle was considered scandalous. From what I’ve seen, Indian women have very strong standards of modesty but see nothing racy about baring their midriffs. Women wore incredibly low-cut gowns to Victorian balls, but one couldn’t acknowledge that they even had legs, let alone see them. Among Orthodox Jews, married women walking around with their heads uncovered is considered immodest; covering is correspondingly modest behavior, irrespective of what you’re covering it with. Having grown up watching women-with-wigs all the time, trust me, you learn to tell the difference, even with the really, really expensive ones - people within the Orthodox community can tell without thinking about it. Conversely, most (non-Jewish) people seem not to notice pretty bad wigs, probably because they’re not looking for them.

9

Thank you, cm and Gila—I knew I’d get good answers here!

Being in publishing, I know full well that the Times article as seen in print is one-tenth the length of the article that the writer turned in, so a lot of explanation was left out.

10

Want the straight dope on sheitel’s

I’m no longer religious but I was raised orthodox and my father’s family is Hassidic, peyos, black hats, the works.

** GilaB**’s got the official details, but here’s what you wont hear from most Jews.

Modern sheitel’s are a religious loophole, a cop out. Wealthy Jewish women spends hundreds, even thousands of dollars on realistic looking wigs. The new trend is for sheitel’s with imitation scalps. Unless you’re looking very closely its almost impossible to tell it’s a wig. The bottom line though is they want to look good and still be righteous in the eyes of God. Personally I think it’s a load of crap. If the point of the tradition is to promote modesty, how is wearing a wig that is probally nicer than your natural, frizzy, jew-fro hair keeping with the spirit of the law?

There are tons of these loopholes in Jewish law. The funniest one I know of takes place in the city of Deal, NJ every year. There is some holiday (counting the omer or one of the little ones like that… excuse me for forgetting, but there are about 500 Jewish holidays) where you are not permitted to carry money except within the temple walls. So this tiny town in NJ which is populated almost exclusively by Sephardic Jews had small metal poles planted around the perimeter of the entire town with string hung from them that starts and ends at the synagogue. The rabbis claim this means the whole town is within the temple walls.

People are nuts man.

11

To clarify a step further:

Actually, the snoods in question here are solid fabric, not net, so the hair is not seen at all, unless there’s a small bit of the front hairline visible (which is permissible in some communities and not in others, as GilaB mentioned). Some are actually quite elaborate with braided bands around the front, or other accessories down their length, especially the ones designed for women with really long hair. You can see some examples of some really nice and fancy velvet ones here.

My best friend is a married Orthodox woman, and wore a lot of snoods in the early part of her marriage. One problem with them is that they put a lot of pressure, if you have a lot of hair, on the front hairline, because they are held in place with a comb or a clip of some sort. Because of a lot of breakage and some thinning of her hair, my friend now wears hats 95% of the time. She has a stunning collection. :slight_smile:

12

A related question:

Why are ultra-Orthodox women allowed to wear makeup, sometimes quite a bit? Isn’t that immodest? Or is it only the unmarried who wear it?

13

panache45 - Orthodox women wear makeup because they want to look pretty, like most other women do, and it’s not against the rules. (Except for complicated rules about what can and can’t be worn on the Sabbath, having nothing to do with makeup per se, but with regulations on dying (coloring) and such.) Remember - your standards of ‘modest’ behavior aren’t what apply here. In fact, one of the great rabbis very, very back in the day mandated that peddlers should carry more cosmetics, so that the Jewish women would have a greater array of weapons to fight intermarriage.

Because cainxinth used the word, I thought I’d mention that ‘sheitel’ is the Yiddish word for wig, and is how the Orthodox community refers to them, even non-Yiddish speakers like yours truly.

cainxinth, it’s hard to say definitively what ‘the point’ of most of the laws is. In this case, the law is that married women should cover their hair. There are laws about conducting oneself modestly. You can infer, if you like, that hair-covering exists to make one modest by replacing something more attractive with something less attractive. That’s your prerogative. But don’t assume that you know THE reason. It’s not like God sat down and gave seminars on ‘The Reason I’ve Commanded X’ - there are very few commandments whose reasons are fully spelled out. As Chaim pointed out below, some opinions hold that the law exists so that you should be saving something that would otherwise be public for your husband. I personally doubt that it exists for the reason you seem to be positing, given that unmarried Orthodox women can and do walk around with their hair uncovered - if the rules existed to cover up something so attractive that it would be immodest to display it, unmarried women would have to cover their hair as well.
BTW, The structure you mention, an eruv, is a ‘virtual wall’ that makes the enclosed area (which is limited in terms of size and population) into a single domain for the purpose of carrying stuff around within it on the Sabbath, when we don’t carry from domain to domain. There are different opinions about how large such a structure can be and what it can enclose, some more lenient than others. It has nothing to do with money (which can’t be touched/carried on the Sabbath, since it has no use because commercial activities aren’t done on the Sabbath), and not on holidays, when this stricture on carrying doesn’t apply. This is GQ, land of the factual answer - if you’re going to mock my faith and beliefs, please do it accurately, OK?

14

Umm, As Chaim said above, not below, unless he decides to repeat himself.

And I previewed four times, too.

15

Um, I have never heard of any of this. Orthodox women have to cover their hair??? Why? What does hair have to do with modesty? Is this similar to Muslim women who wear headscarves? Does anyone truly believe that god really cares if a woman shows her hair? And why don’t men have to cover their hair? This all seems so ridiculous to me.

16

[QUOTE=GilaB]
It has nothing to do with money (which can’t be touched/carried on the Sabbath, since it has no use because commercial activities aren’t done on the Sabbath), and not on holidays, when this stricture on carrying doesn’t apply.

[QUOTE]

What if your baby was sick and needed medicine? Could you carry money to the store to get it? Why does god care if you buy a gallon on milk on the sabbath?

17

Here is some information about Indian hair that comes from a religious ritual.

“Indian hair, the hair cognoscenti will tell you, comes in part from the thousands of Indians who have their heads shorn as a rite of tonsure – a religious offering. At the Lord Venkateswara Temple in Tirupati, as many as 25,000 pilgrims offer their hair to the Lord of the Seven Hills every day. Some 500 barbers are stationed at the temple regularly, and up to a hundred more show up during special religious events to give worshippers a close buzz. “The priests, not being idiots, have a hair broker at the back door,” says Greg Taylor, who started working at his father’s toupee business south of San Francisco when he was 7 and now makes hairpieces for medical patients.”
http://www.hairstyles-and-hair.com/hairstyles_and_hair/hair_articles/wigginess2.htm

The ritual was also covered in an episode of Guinness World Records. Unfortunately this all the website mentions:
“Largest Donation Of Hair - Pilgrims to the Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh, India, donate a tonsure of their hair as a gift. Every year an estimated 6.5 million people make donations of their hair, and more than US$2.2 million is raised through its annual auction.”
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/index.asp?id=52310

18

In life-threatening situations, almost all the rules are suspended. (The exceptions, before somebody asks, are The Big Three: murder, idolatry, and adultery/incest.) So if my hypothetical baby was really, really sick on the Sabbath, I’d call a cab, pay them money, and do whatever it took to get them treated. If it’s not very serious, then no, I wouldn’t buy something like a cold remedy.

Why the Sabbath rules are what they are would be taking this thread pretty far afield, not to mention that it’d be a long discussion and the Sabbath is starting pretty soon :slight_smile:

19

I mistakenly put this thread in “General Questions” rather than “Great Debates”–please, let’s not force it to move to the Pit, shall we? Mind your manners (says the atheist).

20

I am surprised that you live so close to DC (where there is a very large Orthodox population) and haven’t noticed this.

It’s pretty obvious that a lot of people believe that God cares if a woman shows her hair, or assorted other rules such as not mixing meat and dairy.