Confession Time: The Toughest Part About Being in the U.S.

I have a confession to make: It's hard being back in the U.S. Really hard. Yes, I miss my friends and my adopted family back in Neve Daniel and Jerusalem, and I miss the convenience of observing Judaism with ease and a level of comfort I can't find anywhere else. But this isn't what I'm talking about. 

I'm talking about the temptation. 

I didn't grow up Jewish. We all know this. In fact, I didn't start strictly observing things like modesty and keeping kosher until well into my 20s. That's a lot of my life spent with the conveniences of America: McDonalds, Chick-Fil-A, and other terrible, bad-for-you convenience restaurants and fast-food stops. I mean, I could probably count the number of home-cooked meals I made in college on my two hands. No feet needed here, folks. College was Subway, Wendy's, Taco John's, Taco Bell, D'Leon's ... (no wonder my pregnancy food was Mexican). 

Do you know how hard it is to drive down the street, starving, and not stop into a Mickey D's for some delicious, greasy French fries? 

Having worked at McDonalds for two years in high school, I know that they are pretty strict about their standards of what they cook and where. The fry stations are used strictly for fries. No chicken nuggets or patties or anything. Just. Fries. 

Knowing this, of course, is hard for me. Yes, there are a million problems with picking up French fries from a completely non-kosher establishment, even if there was a giant box around the fry station that other, non-kosher food never entered, but knowing, just knowing that those are dedicated fryers ... AGH! It kills me. 

The temptation, of course, is constantly pushed down by the fact that I'm a kosher-keeping Jew, of course. Being gluten free also helps push the temptation down because, well, let's be honest, there isn't much eating out I can do here or in Israel where I can eat carefree. 

But it's tough. Yes, this is a first-world problem situation, but it's just plain difficult. You have to constantly have snacks with you and plan meals out like a drill sergeant because if you get caught starving and it's dinnertime, Denver gives you few options for a quick bite to eat. 

There's the ever-amazing Brooklyn Pizza, but how much pizza can you eat in one week? There's a delicious ice cream joint High Point Creamery, but too much ice cream makes for tummy woes and despite an Italian-themed favorite, it isn't a meal. We don't go to the local deli because, well, too many stories about food poisoning and the place just doesn't respect itself enough for me to respect it.  And then there's the fact that all of these restaurants are clustered in a specific part of town absolutely nowhere near where I work. 

Oh what I wouldn't give for a nearby restaurant to go out to lunch with my coworkers. To feel like a normal member of a "working lunch" society. 

The amount of times we've been out running errands and stopped someplace to buy a package of lettuce, some tomatoes, and packaged smoked salmon to hodgepodge a bite to eat would blow your mind. We can't pop into an Aroma or local gas station where the food is just plain kosher like in Israel or even in places like Teaneck or NYC. 

Am I kvetching too much? Perhaps. I'm just feeling the pressure. The pressure of being a full-time working mother who lives someplace that is chock full of Jews but doesn't have the dining and cultural infrastructure to meet the demands.

No worries folks. No slippery slope over here (been there, done that). 

I suppose this is part of teshuvah (repentance). I'm being placed in situations and scenarios where it would be easy for me to eat out here or there just getting the "vegan" or "vegetarian" option like I did once upon a time when I was less than strict in my observance of kashrut. 

I just keep telling myself: The tummy grumbles and moments of hunger are worth the healthy choices at home. We'll be back in Israel soon. HaShem is working this out with me. One day at a time. 

Tale of a Sheitel, Tale of a Scarf

I'd thought long and hard about video blogging this (vlogging, as it were), but I opted out of it. When I vlog, I tend to wander and not stick to a set trajectory of conversation. Thus, here we are, a text blog. Old fashioned-style.

I went to an event last week, between all of my orientations and receptions at NYU. My first day of classes is Tuesday, so I was excited to hit campus last week and meet the new students and do some student-y activities. So I showed up for a Jewish student event to visit the Jewish Heritage Museum down in Battery Park, eager to meet some students (knowing most would be undergrads) and excited to see the museum. I walked in to this facility around 10 a.m. where we were congregating before heading down to the museum and was greeted by a familiar face who quickly jetted off to a meeting or something elsewhere. Then, I was left in a room of about 10-15 people, whom I didn't know. There were about three or four individuals who were dressed in the facility's garb, and it became quickly clear that these were the group leaders, there to introduce themselves to the students, ask them how things were going, and make them feel warm and welcome as we schlepped down to the museum. So I stood there, awaiting the introductions. And then?

One of the group leaders stepped -- literally, and I mean that -- in front of where I was standing to address a group of students sitting in the lounge area. She proceeded to introduce herself to everyone in the room, except for me. She asked them their names and what they were studying. She even went out of her way to walk over to a guy that walked in a little late, asking him his name and how he was liking everything. He, too, was a graduate student.

So I stood. I waited. I thought, Okay, this girl is going to talk to me, right? She's made an effort to speak to every single person in this room, so I'm next. And I waited. I waited. I waited for anyone in this group of people -- leaders and students alike -- to say ANYTHING to me. And? Nothing. Not a darn word. Not a smile or a look or anything.

One of the girls offered water bottles to everyone in the room, I said no thank you, and we were off. As we were nearly at the transit station, finally a girl said something to me. "What are you studying?" she asked. I told her, she said that it was nice, and moved along.

Now, I'm not trying to play the oppressed Jewess here, but after my day there and at the museum I sort of had this realization of being exceedingly uncomfortable as the Frum Jew in a Secular Room. There was one guy there in tzitzit and a kippah, but he was the life of the room. There I was, in my skirt and ridiculous sleeves for the heat of the weather and the scarf covering everything but the tefach of my bangs. And no one wanted anything to do with me. People didn't look at me, smile at me, come near me. I was the leper in the room. At least, that's how I felt. It's entirely possible that these people were just as shy as I was. But that girl ... that girl who made such an effort to speak to everyone in the room ... bypassing me with a serious effort ... that says something to me. Something negative. Something hurtful.

I later thought to myself that maybe if I had been wearing my sheitel (wig), I would have fit in. Looked normal. Like a girl with long dark hair like the rest of the girls in the room. I would have been worthy of an introduction or a "hello" or something. Anything. But is that a good enough reason to actively wear it?

I spent Shabbos tormented over this incident and my sheitel. We were back in West Hartford, in our old community of no scarves or some scarves. I opted out of wearing my sheitel both Friday night and Saturday during the day for two reasons: fear of judgment that I'd gone off the deep end and my husband's aversion to the darn thing. I ended up throwing the sheitel on for motzei Shabbos as we drove to the Poconos because it's the easiest way to travel with it -- on my head. Friends saw it, and some said it was cute and one told me I looked silly. I felt ... relaxed. I felt the sheitel on my head, the netted cap causing a bit of an itch, but I felt good. I was irritated with myself that I had let what I worried the community and my husband would say reign over my emotions. The rabbi's wife wore her sheitel both days. Why didn't I? Fear. My old community is a very Conservadoxish one. When we siad we were moving to Teaneck we got laughs, scoffs, and questions of "Why?" I didn't want them to think I'd consumed the Kool-Aid or become one of those "rightwing judgmental Jews." I'm still me.

Sheitel or not. I'm still Chaviva. I'm still who I've been and will be.

But for those who don't know me, I'm a girl in a scarf or a hat or a sheitel and whatever my headgear says about me, I find myself frustrated. I've been told before that I've become more judgmental since becoming "more observant." The funny thing is, I almost feel like my observance allows other people to judge me in ways I have never been judged before. The way I dress, my headgear, my language, everything physical about me says to other people that I'm something that I'm not.

I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated that a scarf on my head made a room full of Jewish people not want anything to do with me, and that the thought of wearing a sheitel made a room full of other Jewish people cringe at who I've become. But how much of this is a projection, and how much is reality?

I guess I'll never know.

Covering Your Hair: Leprous Plague?

Now that we've established that covering your hair is considered Dat Moshe, or law directly from Torah, which makes it binding for the Torah-observant, married Jewish woman, and that head covering doesn't come directly out of the call for modesty per se, we can now discuss how we cover. This, I think, is a more gray area that has led to a lot of conversations over the years and a lot of animosity among a lot of women in a lot of Jewish communities. So let's dig in.

hair (n) a slender threadlike outgrowth of the epidermis of an animal; especially: one of the usually pigmented filaments that form the characteristic coat of a mammal (from m-w.com)

Most of us know the act of covering our hair as kisui rosh, which actually means covering the head. By this account, even if a woman shaves her head, she's still required to cover her hair. Similarly, many women take this to mean that you merely need to cover the whole of your head and that anything that falls away from the head is unnecessary to cover (it's hair after all, not your rosh). But have you ever noticed that in some very religious communities all of the little girls -- no matter their age -- have their hair tucked up high in pony tails? That, folks, is an extension of the idea of keeping the hair bound, not loose. Let's explore. 

In the Rambam's codification of law, he discerns between two types of uncovering: full and partial, with the former being a violation of Dat Moshe (clear enough, right? we already figured this one out). In Rambam's discussion in Hilchot Ishut 24:12, he essentially says that it is a "direct Torah command (Dat Moshe) for women to keep their hair from becoming exposed in public, and a custom of Jewish women to increase that standard in the interest of modesty and maintain an intact covering on their heads at all times" ("Hide and Seek," 201). Rambam says, then, that full covering is law and partial covering is custom. Ultimately, his point is that your hair should neither be let down [paruah] nor exposed [galui]. So that thoughtful and tightly formed braid hanging out of your clearly covered head is not kosher in the eyes of Maimonides.

In the Babylonian Talmud, a more lenient pattern is established, maintaining that although a "minimal head covering is not acceptable in public, in the case of a woman going from her courtyard to another by way of an alley, it is sufficient and does not transgress Dat Yehudit" (20). So, I suppose, I could walk out of my apartment in whatever would constitute a "minimal" head covering and go through the alley to a neighbor's without fault. The Jerusalem Talmud, on the other hand, insists on a minimal head covering in the courtyard and a complete one in an alley. On that note, who has courtyards anymore? Luckily, the actual sources (BT and YT) explain what constitutes each of these public places. For us, it's not significant at the moment, but rest assured: they matter to modern understandings of how we cover where we cover.

The Rashba says that "hair which normally extends outside the kerchief and her husband is used to it" is not considered" sensual. But does that mean she halachically can leave that hair out? In talmudic times, the Maharam Alshakar said that it was permissible to allow some strands to dangle out the front (between the ear and forehead), despite the custom being to cover every last strand of a woman's hair. This, then, births the idea of the tefach, or hand's breadth, of hair that allows some (including me) to keep bangs showing or some hair out the back of a hat exposed.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled (in the vein of Rambam) that all married women must cover their hair in public and that they are obligated to cover every strand. However, he was a proponent of the tefach, saying that "a woman's hair can be regarded in the same way as any other part of her body that is typically concealed from view -- if a handsbreadth is revealed, so be it" (22). Rest assured, the slippery slope was not something Rabbi Feinstein was concerned with, as he advocated complete covering as "proper," but that the revealing of a tefach was not in violation of Dat Yehudit. This revealing of a tefach, to many, is considered "lenient."

The funny thing is -- I wouldn't consider myself lenient in hair covering. I'm just infinitely attached to my bangs, as my forehead is abnormally small. But if others consider me lenient for embracing the tefach, so be it.

Did you know that in Hungarian, Galician, and Ukrainian Chassidic communities, the women customarily shave their heads before covering and shave each month before going to mikvah? I know what you're thinking: crazy! However, the logic makes sense to me (am I crazy?). When you go to the mikvah, if you have long or longish hair, when you dip, if all of your hair doesn't go down with you and is left floating on top, your dip isn't kosher. So these communities resolved this by shaving their heads. I'm not as brave as Demi or Natalie Portman or these Chassidishe women. I also keep my hair short enough I don't think we'll have this problem.

The sheitel is the real thing that brought us here: How is the sheitel kosher? If the point is to cover your head and hair, how can it be okay to cover it with hair? And if it is okay, why not just cover it with your own hair? One argument in favor of wigs is based on the premise that head covering is all about modesty, which doesn't really fly -- it isn't based on modesty, at least not exactly. This idea revolves around the idea that by wearing a sheitel, you more easily blend into the population and don't bring unnecessary attention to yourself. A brightly colored tichel with some gnarly pattern on it (ahem, like mine), will make you stand out in a crowd, especially in South Carolina (believe me, I know).

The funny thing is that wig-wearing became popular among non-Jews before it did among observant Jews. In Europe, especially. In France in the 16th century, wigs became popular as a fashion accessory for men and women. Rabbis rejected wigs as doable for Jews because it was inappropriate to emulate the "ways of the nations (chukkot ha'goyim)." Women, too, were uncomfortable as it fell like a loophole out of hair covering. Wigs were embraced, begrudgingly, but women typically would cover their wigs (which didn't look natural to begin with) with another type of head covering, as is the case in many very religious communities today (I think of Monsey -- lots of hats on wigs).

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, believed that a wig was the best possible hair covering for a woman. Why? It wasn't as easily removed as a scarf or hat. This makes sense, believe me. He even helped needy brides purchase their wigs! On the other end, then, we have the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel who called wigs a "leprous plague," even stating that "she who goes out with a wig, the law is as if she goes out with her head [uncovered]." Yikes. Big yikes. For those of you curious about cutting your own hair and having it formed into a wig, it's kosher according to Darkei Moshe, Orach Chaim 303, which says, "A married woman is allowed to expose her wig and there is no difference if its made from her own hair or her friends hair." Of course, there's a lot more to it than this, but this discussion is more helpful than me trying to explain it all. In truth, even if you use your own hair to make a sheitel, it will never look or feel the same as your natural hair, period.

And then there are those who descend from Lithuania, Morocco, and Romania, where women did not cover their hair at all. From the Lithuanian community we have the great posek and father of modern Orthodoxy, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, who, interestingly, never wrote down his opinions on hair covering! This, some conjecture, is because he was incredibly frum but his wife did not cover her hair. Even those he entrusted his opinions to never shared his views on covering. As a result of this, however, many former students of the Rav teach their congregants that it is no longer necessary to cover their hair -- yet, how can they know? The great Rav Soloveitchik never spoke on this!

In conclusion: The majority opinion is that hair/head covering is Dat Moshe, a binding, from-the-Torah law. How we approach it, however, depends on time and place. The Rambam (Maimonides) and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein dictated that all hair should be both covered and unexposed, with Rabbi Feinstein leaving room for a tefach or hands' breadth of hair to be exposed. Wear a hat, wear a tichel, just keep it covered and unexposed. However, some communities never covered, and others shave their heads to cover. The important thing to note in all of this, then, is that all of these individuals who choose to cover and not to cover have basis in texts and the opinions of the great rabbis. Ultimately, you should seek out a reliable rabbi in your community to explain to you your community's standards. It is not -- ever -- advisable to "shop around" for a rabbi who will tell you it's okay to go out uncovered as a Torah-observant, married, Jewish woman. It isn't in the spirit of Judaism! As one rabbi has said, "It is not God-fearing to hunt for new leniences where there is no pressing need" (33).

Modesty, indeed, plays a role in hair covering, but that's a "scratch-the-surface" answer that results in more questions than answers. Yes, by covering my hair I carry myself in a manner that I view as modest. It keeps reminds me that I am a Jewish woman, it reminds me that I am married, it allows me to walk about without running wildly (my scarf would fall off!), and all of these things allow me to speak appropriately, think appropriately, and keep Judaism before me at all times. But knowing that this simple mitzvah is an act of Torah law? That's powerful. That's the crux of everything: Torah, HaShem. 

(Note: The Shulchan Aruch commentary does say that hair covering clearly is only a custom that may be subject to change based on societal standards and community practice. This goes back to the previous post, and even in the Mishnah Brurah and Aruch haShulchan there are discussions about what to do if a married woman does have her hair uncovered. As progressive and forward-thinking as some women today might think they are, someone's already attempted to push that boundary of uncovering.)

Action: Write your own story about why you are embracing it or aren't. If you're not married, write something to. Why would or wouldn't you embrace it? Post it to your blog. Link it here on this blog post. We'll start our OWN narrative on what gives us the heebie-jeebies about hair covering, what we don't buy into, and what makes our hearts sing when we cover our hair.

Covering Your Hair: Why?

This is part one of a multi-part series exploring the why, how, and when for hair covering for Torah-observant, married Jewish women. Enjoy, and please post any questions or additional thoughts you have in the comments section. PART TWO IS HERE. 

My sheitel post is my all-time, most-viewed blog post here at Just Call Me Chaviva. I'm proud that it got as many hits as it did, and I'm also really proud that people kept it civil without hat or sheitel slinging, so thank you for that.

Hair covering in Judaism is, as you guessed and may very well know from personal experience, a very tenuous and barely understood topic. If you ask a woman on the street why she chooses, as a Jew, to cover her hair, she'll probably answer immediately with "modesty." If she gets into explaining the depth of this simple answer, you'll probably hear things about the rabbis, respect for the husband, HaShem, and the marriage. Very few people ever really get to the core, the basis of why we cover, and many women begin covering with sheitels superficially -- it's what everyone else does, it's the community standard, it makes me blend in, I feel pretty. These same reasons could be said to apply to tichels in Israel, where sheitels are less normative than beautiful scarves are. Of course, in certain communities (such as Chabad Lubavitch), the sheitel is the commanded or preferred hair covering, no matter where you live. Just as you would find a Satmar woman shaving her head the day after she's wed, so, too, would you find a Lubavitcher in her sheitel whether running to the store or lighting Shabbos candles.

But why? WHY is the big question. Few people ask why, because, as we all can recognize, Judaism is a religion that requires a leap of action; Judaism is a very thing and action based religion, which is something that I adore about it.

Good ole' TheBrickTestament.com.

The entire story begins with the sotah narrative in Numbers 5:11-20. Yes, the reason women cover their hair is based on the incident of the suspected adulteress. What a colorful beginning, no? It is in this narrative that the suspected adulteress's hair is parah. The meaning of this word is, itself, contentious, as it means a few different things, which lead to a few different understandings of the law today. One meaning: unbraid or untie. Another meaning: let down, uncover, or dishevel. Either way, one thing is clear: the suspected adulteress typically has her hair in a certain fashion in public and in the eyes of HaShem, and by altering the way that it is held up or covered, she is shamed in the eyes of the public (only her husband would see her hair parah). Her private image is let go to the public. 

The rabbis, then, understood this as a direct-from-the-Torah law for the daughters of Israel (Sifrei Bamidbar 11). One would think, then, that this would apply to all married and unmarried Jewish women and girls (such as in Islam), but it has generally been accepted to refer only to married women (hence the intensity of the scene of the sotah). From here, however, we run into a few problems. Various sages throughout the years debated whether it truly was Dat Moshe or Dat Yehudi -- basically, a law from the Torah/Moses or a custom of the Jewish people (subject to region, familial customs, etc.). 

The overwhelming and accepted opinion regarding head covering, however, comes from Gemara Ketubot 72a-b, which states that the obligation to cover one's hair is immutable and not subject to change. It is, in fact, law. So there's that. The Torah-observant Jewish woman is required to cover her hair upon marriage, as dictated by Dat Moshe. 

The biggest question arising from this, then, is the one that concerns us today and results in the variety of looks we have ranging from a hat with natural hair pouring out to kerchiefs half-exposing hair to full-on sheitels and scarves that pull any thread of hair out of site. This question of HOW one covers their hair. What's okay, what's not, and what exactly is meant by the words "head" and "hair" in the law. The image of the sotah in my head is of a woman with long, thick hair, twisted up under a scarf, that is then parah -- both untwisted and let down. Or was it not really like that? Perhaps it was a long braid coming out of a scarf, or just a long braid period, or maybe it wasn't a braid at all and she had short hair shoved under some type of scarf. This, you see, is the complication. The Torah doesn't detail what her headgear was like, it merely explains the action that took place, which is why the rabbis had to sit down and figure out exactly what this meant. Of course, this now leads to us figuring out what the rabbis meant. 

I wanted to lay out where the idea (read: law) of head covering comes from in this segment, and my next segment will lay out the various opinions on the how of head covering, including what the great sages Rashi and Rambam (Maimonides) had to say as the final word on how a woman is to cover her hair. Yes, they had sheitels way back when, and yes head covering was a normative activity for most of the cultures of the world up until the last 100 years. 

Read Part II by Clicking Here!