kelly5078:
Incorrect. The expectation that a married woman should cover her hair is implied in the book of Numbers, and as such, has the force of “mitzvah.”
Wrong again. Even if covering the hair were not a mitzvah, it is forbidden to derive any benefit whatsoever from idolatrous implements, not merely forbidden to use them in a mitzvah.
Well, some days you just can’t win 
Anyway, the following link is pretty much how I learned it, with the Numbers reference being a sort of rabbinic backfill:
http://www.jhom.com/topics/hair/woman.html
You cast it in the fires of Mt. Doom from whence it was forged. Actually, I think metal idols are supposed to be melted down, but I’m not sure.
kelly5078:
Referring to Talmudic statements as “Rabbinic backfill” is common amongst those who are not Orthodox Jews. However, we consider it to be part of a tradition they had received since Sinai, but was not committed to writing until the oral traditions were committed to writing en masse in the Talmudic era.
<< An integral part of (Orthodox) Jewish belief is that the letter of the law is the spirit of the law. That’s why so much of the Talmud is centered around textual analysis of scripture. >>
I certainly concur with the general statement. I find it amusing that many Orthodox women fail to understand this point, and purchase gorgeous (and expensive) wigs, thus violating completely the concept of modesty that lies behind the rules.
It is also worth commenting that not all Orthodox groups follow the wig tradition. The so-called “modern Orthodox”, for instance, do not.
Ooooooh, I want a snood.
I think they’re pretty and they would be a really neat thing to wear to keep my hair out of the way when I’m giving massage.
Can I have a snood? Pllllleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaasssssssse?
Not really. I’d call myself ‘modern Orthodox’ if someone forced me to label myself (and how Jews label each other is a sore topic, but not really for this thread), but plan on covering my hair when I get married. Ditto for almost all of my Orthodox female friends, married and single. Hair-covering among the modern Orthodox (not a monolithic group; more a general range within Orthodox Judaism without any clear borders) tends to break more along generational lines than anything else. My mother and many of her friends (mid-forties to mid-fifties) don’t cover their hair, but the large majority of my peers (early and mid-twenties) do. That’s not a hard-and-fast rule either (I certainly know plenty of modern Orthodox women my mom’s age who cover their hair, and have peers who are married but don’t), but generally, the younger a modern Orthodox woman is, the more likely she is to cover her hair upon marriage.
Thea Logica, definitely get a snood if you’re ready for the questions about the bag/sock on your head. They’re supposed to be comfortable, FWIW.
Re Letter Of The Law And Hair Splitting
The problem with seeing various interpretations and commentaries as attempts to keep the letter of the while ignoring the spirt, or to to find a way to engage in a forbidden action is that the commentaries and interpretations generally lead to stricter practices.
Fer Example
Zev, Chaim, GilaB and the any other Dopers who keep kosher aren’t violating the ban on shellfish should they eat imitation crab meat made from carp, whitefish, salmon or another kosher fish. However, tradition teaches that we should avoid things that may give the appearance of violating the law.
Or
The Torah just says ‘thou shalt not boil a kid goat in the milk of its mother’ So we seperate meat and dairy. Observant Jews have four sets of dishes and four sets of silverware- meat, dairy plus two more sets to be used only during Passover. There are strict procedures for cleaning ovens. The local Israeli restaurant had several prominent signs reminding patrons that all milk products (Including many of the candies any bubby is certain to have in her purse) were not allowed inside. Again, a burger topped with vegan soy cheese is technically acceptable. But since this could result in people thinking that they just saw a guy in a yarmulke eating a cheeseburger, all the great sages forbid it.
Re Burning The Wigs
OTTOMH The only fast methods of destroying human hair are fire and acid. While dunking the wigs in a big vat of H[sub]2[/sub]SO[sub]4[/sub] would’ve been a lot cooler, it would have been much more messy and expensive.
Are you saying that what looks (to some outsiders) like attempts to weasel around a commandment from G-d should be seen more like a delicate adjustment to (or rejection of) the human-created expansions of the law? As in, a person feels that the some of the Rabbis (?) who wrote the commentaries and interpretations went ‘too far’ in some cases, resulting in inconveniences in leading your life that weren’t actually required by or desired by G-d? But rather than cause scandal or open controversy by deliberately defying these expanded version or declaring them null, you sort of sidle past the too-exteme human-additions by add more human additions that result in ingenious work-arounds?
Hmmm. I hope that’s what you mean, because it makes a lot more sense than what it seemed to me like before. (Which sort of boiled down to, you believe in a G-d who is almighty and omnipotent and all that stuff and yet can be fooled by hanging some string from poles???)
Hmmm. Are there Jewish factions that could be seen as the equivalent of Protestant fundamentalists? As in, just as Protestants feel free to ignore any teachings from any Pope, are there Jews who feel bound only by the Torah itself, and ignore the expansions?
For example, if indeed the only dietary restriction in the Torah re meat/milk was that ‘boiling kid in its mother’s milk’ bit, then a ‘fundamentalist’ jew might feell it was perfectly all right to eat cheeseburgers because after all that’s beef and not goat meat? And no boiling of meat was involved anyway?
That would be the Karaites. They reject all the oral tradition. AFAIK There are a few Karaites in Israel and none anywhere else.
Re Fooling G-d
Indeed, the idea isn’t ‘I beat G-d on a technicality’ but ‘What does the Torah say? What does the Talmiud say? How does this law apply to this situation? What other things can be derived from the law?’
Note the hyphens. Should this thread be printed out, the hyphen prevents the name of G-d from being defaced, or treated improperly. However, when dealing with magnetic media or the letters on a computer screen, you can write and erase the unhyphenated name all you want. The idea isn’t ‘Heh heh. It doesn’t count cause it’s on a computer.’ But various rabbis ruling that unlike the printed word, the images on a screen or data on a disk lack a kind of realness or permanency. I have yet to find a rabbinical decision on cds. AFAIK, the ones and zeroes are represented physically in the tracks. As the rule on sacred text applies to other languages, it likely applies to translations into binary. As the cd is arguably concrete and permanent (I know that cds are far from permanent, but they last at least several years) the rules regarding sacred text (it cannot touch the ground, it cannot be disposed of other than in a ceremony for that purpose, etc) may apply.
The hyphen isn’t an attempt to fool anybody. It is a legitimate attempt to avoid defiling sacred text, or doing anything that would lead others to defile it. I’ve seen Hebrew text use an apostrophe for the same purpose. A newspaper containing the unabbreviated word would be sacred text and require special treatment at every stage. I once read a letter complaining that since the local Jewish paper published the unabreviated text of the blessing for lighting sabbath candles each week, the reader had to be very careful while reading it and couldn’t throw it away when they finished. The letter asked why they didn’t just use the apostrophe.
How do you define the concept of modesty? As far as I can tell, covering the head is the act of modesty. I haven’t found anything that says a woman has to look unattractive.
If what cmkeller said is true:
Then it seems to me a necessary conclusion that the purpose of modesty is to reduce a woman’s attractiveness in the eyes of men other than her husband and that obeying with the letter of the rule meant to impose bodily modesty on married women that fails to reduce their attractiveness is a violation of the spirit of such a rule.
… in a manner that fails …
acsenray: You are not addressing my post. Modesty does not necessarily equate with unattractiveness.
Hmm. I’m not sure how to rephrase this but I’ll give it a try. I didn’t say that modesty necessarily means unattractiveness. However, it seems to me that if what cmkeller said is true–that is, that the purpose of modesty is to prevent breaches of sexual misconduct–then the only conclusion I can come to is that modesty can effectively prevent breaches of sexual misconduct only if the result of modesty is to reduce the attractiveness of the woman to men other than her husband. Furthermore, it seems to me a necessary conclusion that any manner of complying with the rule of bodily modesty that fails to result in attractiveness, then it is effectively circumventing the purpose of the rule.
Am I missing something here?
What I’m after is a cite from someone outside of this message board that says not only must a woman be less attractive to the general public than to her husband, but that she must be unattractive. I’m not trying to be argumentative. I’ don’t agree with the strict Orthodox position because I’m not Orthodox, but in entering this discussion I’m just after knowledge. I’m not sure you can say that a sheitel has to be pretty crappy looking or it’s violating halacha, and that seems to be what people are saying here.
Came back to this thread after hearing the Orthodox wig (and now water) stories on Brian Lehrer’s WNYC show this morning:
NYC Water May Not Be Kosher: From NBC
They’re behind the times - that water broke (ha!) the same day the wig problem did. I guess the news can’t carry more than one “Wacky Orthodox Jews” stories per day or something.
The question at hand is whether or not these creatures can be seen with the naked eye. Any bug (or non-kosher creature) too small to be seen is irrelevant as far as Kosher laws are concerned. Perhaps something in the water has been causing these things to grow bigger in recent years/months. The Rabbinic jury is still out.
I live in a huge building, which happens to be half stoner art students, half orthodox Jews. (the two sides are physically separate though). A year or so back, one of my idiot friends came running up to my apt babbling about some orthodox kids out front asking him to follow them. He was wondering what the hell they wanted and thought they were going to rob him or something. (he was only joking thank goodness). I jumped up, because I had to find out what was going on. I ran out in front of my building and saw a pack of kids sort of pacing up and down the sidewalk. I approached them and asked them if they needed help with something. Without saying anything, they motioned for me to follow them, so around the corner we went, into Hassidic entrance of the building. To me it was like some bizarro wing of my building, exactly the same layout, but decorated quite differently. I seemed to be getting a lot of attention as we walked through the building. Of course I was wearing a Spurs basketball jersey, a fair amount of ink (I have a solid tattoo from my neck to my wrist), flip-flops, and some army pants that had been cut into shorts. Hmmmm, maybe I wasn’t that strange, they just weren’t Tim Duncan fans 
Anyhoo, we end up deep in the building on the 4th floor, and go into their apt (there must have been 15 kids in there, it was strange). Finally, I am led into the kitchen, and one of the kids points at the oven knob. The friggin oven was on!. I whispered a little thing to myself (don’t let there be a lightening bolt), as I reached to turn off the knob, because if they can’t do it, why can I 
. I turn the knob off, get a “thank you” from the one kid, and stealthily slip out their side of the building back into the night.
I assumed (feel free to correct me), that is was Sabbath, and maybe the kids parents went off to go to some services, and either the kids were screwing around, or the oven was just accidentally left on. I think the kids may have done it, because I think recruiting random people off the street is some desperation move. It also seemed like they weren’t allowed to ask, they just could only lead me there. I’m sure the parents would have their head on a platter, if they found out. I’m also under the impression that usually there’s a specific guy around that can help if something like that happens.
Anyway, I thought I would share that with you all, and just say this is a most interesting thread.
About 20 years ago, when VCRs were still a pretty new technology, I worked with an Orthodox woman at a magazine. I asked her if she was allowed to set the VCR on a Thursday to record something on Friday night.
She was absolutely flummoxed, asked her rabbi; he was equally lost, and the question was batted all over the community till the ruling came down: she could not set her VCR to record on the Sabbath, but she could have someone else set it.