Hair coverage in Judaism

In Judaism, Orthodox women cover their hair from the moment they get married. The way women cover their hair is a different story, and understanding the semantics of hair coverage compared to head coverage is also an important aspect of halakha (law) of coverage.

At the beginning
Coverage is rooted in the sotah, or suspected adulteress, in the narrative of Numbers 5: 11-22. These verses describe in detail what happens when a man suspects the wife of adultery.

And God spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to the children of Israel and of them: 'If a man's wife is lost and unfaithful against him, and a man lies with her carnally and is hidden from his eyes husband and she become impure or impure (tameh) in secret, and there will be no witnesses against her or she is captured, and the spirit of jealousy that will descend on him and he is jealous of his wife and she is or if the spirit jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of her and she is not impure or impure, so the husband will bring his wife to the Holy Priest and bring an offer for her, a tenth part of a barley flour ephahdi, and not he will pour oil on it, nor will he pour incense upon it, for it is an offering of corn of jealousies, an offering of memorial grain, which brings to memory. And the Holy Priest will approach it and put it before God and the Holy Priest will take the holy water in a ship of earth and dust that is on the floor from the offering that the Holy Priest will put it in the water. The Holy Priest will set the woman before God and Parah the hair and put commemorative oblation iIn his hands, which is the grain offering of jealousy, and in the hand of the priest there is the water of the bitterness water which brings a curse. And it will be put under oath by the Holy Priest, saying: “If no man has lain with you and you have not become impure or unclean with another beside your husband, you will be immune from this water of bitterness. But if you have gone astray and are impure or impure, the waters will make you waste and she will say amen, amen.

In this portion of the text, the hair of the suspected adulteress is parah, which has many different meanings, including not braided or untied. It can also mean disappointed, uncovered or disheveled. Either way, the public image of the suspected adulteress is altered by a change in the way her hair is tied on her head.

The rabbis understood from this passage from the Torah, therefore, that covering the head or hair was a law for the "daughters of Israel" (Sifrei Bamidbar 11) directed by God. Unlike other religions, including Islam which has the girls covering their hair before the wedding, the rabbis have found that the meaning of this portion of sotah means that hair and head coverage only applied to married women.

Final decision
Many sages over time have discussed whether this ruling was Dat Moshe (Torah law) or Dat Yehudi, essentially a custom of the Jewish people (subject to region, family customs, etc.) which has become law. Likewise, the lack of clarity on semantics in the Torah makes it difficult to understand the style or type of headdress or hair that has been employed.
The overwhelming and accepted opinion regarding head coverage, however, affirms that the obligation to cover one's hair is immutable and not subject to change (Gemara Ketubot 72a-b), making it Dat Moshe or a divine decree. Thus, a Torah - observant Jewish woman is needed to cover hair on marriage. This means, however, something completely different.

What to cover
In the Torah, it says that the "hair" of the suspected adulteress was parah. In the style of rabbis, it is important to consider the following question: what is hair?

hair (n) a slender thread-like growth of an animal's epidermis; in particular: one of the usually pigmented filaments that form the characteristic coat of a mammal (www.mw.com)
In Judaism, covering the head or hair is known as kisui rosh (key-sue-ee rowh), which literally translates as covering the head. For this reason, even if a woman shaves her head, she still has to cover her head. Likewise, many women take this to mean that you only need to cover the head and not the hair that falls out of the head.

In the codification of the law of Maimonides (also known as Rambam), he distinguishes two types of discoveries: full and partial, with the first violation of Dat Moshe (Torah law). It essentially says it is a direct Torah command for women to prevent their hair from being exposed in public, and a custom of Jewish women to raise the standard one in the interest of modesty and keep an intact covering on their head at all times , including inside the house (Hilchot Ishut 24:12). Rambam says, therefore, that full coverage is law and partial coverage is a custom. Ultimately, his point is that your hair shouldn't be disappointed [parah] or exposed.
In the Babylonian Talmud, a more indulgent pattern is established in that minimal head covering is not acceptable in public, in the case of a woman going from her courtyard to another through an alley, it is sufficient and does not transgress Dat Yehudit, or personalized law . The Talmud of Jerusalem, on the other hand, insists on a minimal headboard covering the courtyard and a full one in an alley. Both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds deal with "public spaces" in these sentences. Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet, the Rashba, said that "hair that normally extends out of the handkerchief and her husband is used to it" is not considered " sensual. In Talmudic times, Maharam Alshakar claimed that the threads were allowed to dangle out from the front (between the ear and the forehead), despite the habit of covering every last strand of a woman's hair. This ruling created what many Orthodox Jews understand as the tefach rule, or hand width, of hair which allows some to have their hair loose in the form of a fringe.

In the 20th century, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein decreed that all married women had to cover their hair in public and that they were obliged to cover every strand, except for the tefach. He claimed full coverage as "correct", but that the revelation of a tefach did not violate Dat Yehudit.

How to cover
Many women cover with scarves known as a tichel (pronounced "tickle") or mitpaha in Israel, while others choose to cover with a turban or hat. There are many who also choose to cover with a wig, known in the Jewish world as a sheitel (pronounced shay-tull).

The wig became popular among non-Jews before those among observant Jews. In France in the XNUMXth century, wigs became popular as a fashion accessory for men and women, and rabbis rejected wigs as an option for Jews because it was inappropriate to emulate the "ways of the nations". Women also considered it a loophole to cover the head. Wigs were embraced, reluctantly, but women generally covered wigs with another type of headdress, such as a hat, as is tradition in many religious and Hasidic communities today.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, believed that a wig was the best headdress possible for a woman because it was not as easy to remove as a scarf or hat. On the other hand, the former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel Ovadiah Yosef called the wigs a "leper plague", going so far as to say that "she who comes out with a wig, the law is as if she came out with her head [ discovery]. "

Also, according to Darkei Moshe, Orach Chaim 303, you can cut your hair and turn it into a wig:

"A married woman is allowed to display her wig and there is no difference if it is made from her own hair or from her friends' hair."
Cultural oddities to cover
In the Hungarian, Galician and Ukrainian Hasidic communities, married women routinely shave their heads before covering and shaving each month before going to the mikvah. In Lithuania, Morocco and Romania women did not cover their hair at all. From the Lithuanian community came the father of modern orthodoxy, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, who strangely never wrote his views on hair coverage and whose wife never covered her hair at all.