Just before our wedding almost 55 years ago, I asked my fiancé if he wanted me to cover my hair once we were married. His response seemed cryptic and somewhat indirect. He had grown up in the Boro Park of the 1930s and 1940s, at a time in which few women covered their hair at all, much less wore sheitels. So he asked his father, who had semikha from the renowned Slabodka yeshiva and had studied at other Lithuanian yeshivot, if his mother – my husband’s grandmother – had worn a sheitel. My father-in-law’s response was the indirect answer I would subsequently receive. My husband claims that the answer was something akin to, “Haven’t you any more important questions to ask me?” It seems that neither his paternal nor maternal grandmother wore a sheitel or kept her hair covered – certainly not in the house, within the family, as evidenced in several photos. My mother-in-law and two of her sisters, all fine religiously observant “Litvishe” women, did not cover their hair, not even when lighting Shabbat candles. (After our marriage, I, too, adopted that custom of blessing the candles without putting a doily on my head, much to my mother’s horror. “It’s a good thing you still light candles,” she once chided me.)
Let me share another aspect of the hair covering question in my family background. My father came from a hasidic Vishnitz family, but my mother’s side was not Hasidic and “very Hungarian.” Both of my grandmothers kept their hair covered, each in a different manner. My Hungarian grandmother had a thick dark sheitel, and my hasidic grandmother wore what was known as a “hoib.” As I understand it, a hoib was made out of thin strands of silk to resemble hair, but in no way did it look exactly like hair, as that would have undermined the whole point.
My paternal aunt and her daughters and daughter-in-law – my cousins – all wore sheitels. In fact they put on their sheitels right after the huppah. I recall that one of my feistier, rebellious cousins fought hard and “won” a victory: she did not put on her sheitel until the morning after the wedding.
In contrast, my mother did not, as a rule, keep her hair covered, though she grappled with her lovely print kerchief all Friday night, tying and untying the slippery silk. Of course she wore a hat to shul as did all women of that era. I recall an unsettling family incident when my cousin married into a prominent New York hasidic family in 1943, and his mother, my father’s oldest sister, pointed out that since we were now related to this important family it would behoove my mother to wear a sheitel. My father was deeply offended, and the family relationship was strained for some time. Nevertheless, this cousin and his wife seemed to put the issue of hair covering into perspective and became among my mother’s favorite couples, and to this day we are close.
What were the attitudes toward hair covering outside my immediate family? I grew up in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan in the 1940s and early 1950s, nestled between the German Breuer community and the more Modern Orthodox Yeshiva University (YU). The women at Breuer covered their hair as a matter of course, and we thought nothing of that. The women in the more American YU group did not cover their hair, and we also thought nothing of that. With very few exceptions, even the wives of the rebbeim at YU did not cover their hair all the time. All married women wore hats to synagogue services.
It was this world of my upbringing that motivated me to ask my fiancé the question about what hair covering was expected of me after marriage. However, it is significant that I asked him the question just before our wedding rather than early in our relationship. I understand that these days the issue comes up in the first meeting, and I find it disturbing that hair covering is so high up in the priorities of choosing a life-partner.
After we married in 1954, I did not cover my hair except to wear a hat to shul and possibly to communal dinners as was the style at the time. Only one of my close friends covered her hair all the time, rather symbolically, with one of those little “shells” that Audrey Hepburn wore in the movies of the 1950s. I remember my friend confiding in me that covering her hair was necessary to remind her that she was now a married woman and therefore should refrain from any flirtatious behavior. I should add that her young husband was one of the early Kollel students at YU.
We moved to the Boston area immediately after our marriage, and I recall that my friends there also did not cover their hair except in shul. I know that the hasidic rebbetzins did do so, but not the most prominent Lithuanian rebbetzin, even at public events. This was the norm until the hasidic community in Brookline grew, when we began to see a sprinkling of scarves and sheitels. Apart from regular shul services, here and there a woman would slap on a beret for a shiur. Another wore a hat all day on Shabbat; another covered her hair with a silk scarf but only on Friday nights.
In 1995 we moved to Israel. For a period of seven years, I taught at a religious (right of center) college for women in Jerusalem where married staff were required to cover their hair. I went overboard and kept my hair covered whenever I left the house for fear of jeopardizing my job. I enjoyed buying hats as they were easy to find. Yet I had to choose carefully as one could be identified by the type of hat one wore – big or little, fashionable or plain – and I did not want to be typecast too easily. Indeed my experience in Israel has been that the variety of styles of hair coverings – kissui rosh – are highly coded so that one can identify the group to which a woman belongs by her head covering. This holds true from the Edah Haredit to the Dati Le’umi groups. My sociologist friends tell me that the major impetus for choosing one head covering over another is to be identified as belonging to a particular subset. Anyway, after seven years, I was sorry to stop working, but was I ever happy to take my hat off. Free at last!
When I attend local feminist events in Israel and see so many women with their hair covered, I am puzzled. I cannot understand why so many feminists – women from all walks of life, from all regions in the country, no matter what their professions – choose to cover their hair today. Even at a local Jerusalem Orthodox egalitarian minyan, although some women choose no hair covering, others wrap their heads in multiple scarves and wear these scarves or small caps all the time. Indeed a whole industry of scarves and half-scarves is now thriving.
As I reflect on the history of hair covering and my observations both in the United States and in Israel, I am perplexed. Is hair covering a generational thing? When did the focus on hair covering start? I venture to say it became more commonplace about the time men stated to wear kippot in the streets (as opposed to hats or going bare-headed). I think both men and women have chosen to become more obviously Jewish in public. It is not only newly Orthodox women – the ba’alot teshuva – who seek rabbinic guidance and rulings rather than follow the traditions of their mothers or their families. I think that the desire to consult with rabbinic sources, however obscure, as well as the need to identify with what they see as more “authentic” traditions, seems to play a role in the choices many women now make. Do these women believe that their own mothers who did not cover their hair, while considering themselves totally Orthodox, were mistaken in their practice? Among older women who have begun to cover their hair all the time, I consider that the main motivation is pressure from offspring who are in the yeshiva world.
It also seems to me that the decision to cover one’s hair in contemporary society is a public statement of modesty, a small protest against what is perceived as an increasingly sexual and immodest world of fashion. Are we now more that ever in need of this protection? Do we see a need to pull inward against the threat of the open society, reflecting an increased disenchantment with the Western world? Yet covering one’s hair is motivated by more than modesty. In a religious women’s college in Israel, the special excitement of brides trying on various head coverings was made into a charming, witty film by the college’s audiovisual department. Is this a rite of passage? Is this a message to our openly sexual society: “We, too are sexually active, but … in our own way.”
Seeking to understand the growing prevalence of hair covering among Orthodox women, I asked one of the leading Israeli feminist journalists who is herself a ba’alat teshuva why she covers her hair. Did she not sense a whiff of patriarchy in the requirement for a married woman to cover her hair? She did not give me an answer, but only smiled at my question. I deduced from her silence, her smile, and her piercing look that, as a feminist, I should allow for choices. Well and good, but let us not judge the behavior of others. Each of us has adequate precedents upon which to base a personal decision about hair covering: one that is neither forced by social pressure nor by the agenda of others.