What I Wore 5: Pretty, But Not Good for Clothes Shopping...

 This is two scarves, layered a la what the Style Underground calls "the urban wrap", if moified, as I can't quite manage to get all my layers to stay, so I just wrapped my last one around my bun.  It was the most successfully I managed to carry off the style.  It was helped by the addition of two bobby pins behind the ears, besides my usual 2 clips.

 It stayed wonderfully for regular life.  However, my sister was in town, and we did some thrift shopping.  This is not a good head-covering style for trying on clothes, even with both scarves being cotton ones designed for the purpose of head-covering.  But it is pretty...

Ramblings About Ambiguity, Ethnicity, and Law

When we looked at Shulhan Arukh Even Ha'Ezer 21:2, I really only addressed the main text, that by R. Yosef Karo...  Today, I opened up the book to see if I'd missed any comments by the Rema on that halakha.

There's nothing.  Not a word.

In other words, this is something where Sefardim an Ashkenazim were in agreement.  When the Rema wrote his gloss to adapt the Shulhan Arukh for Ashkenazi audiences, he didn't have anything to say to alter what he saw on the page.  That speaks pretty loudly, to me, for a community whose current practice is for unmarried women to go sans any head-covering, almost across the board (I know some Haredi communities have unmarried women braid their hair, a la the other interpretation of  BaMidbar 5:18, where the term "" means to 'unravel one's hair', i.e. braids, rather than 'uncover one's head').  However, if the same source phrase was supposed  to mean different things for married and unmarried women, you'd think that a halakhic text would say so explicitly.

How this came to be is a real mystery to me, for all that the usual theories have to do with the practices of surrounding cultures.  Nevertheless, the "uncovered head=unmarried woman" equation is deeply coded into current Ashkenazi culture, and putting on a head-covering for the first time after you get married is a big deal.  Heck, it was a (quiet) big deal for me, and I'd been wearing a kippah/etc for over half a decade already.

So I am all in favor of a broader sort of head-covering practice for women as well as men (someday, I'll start talking more about men, kippot, and the like), but I don't want to deprive people of a social practice that speaks to people so deeply.  I liked my own transition from kippah to full-head covering.  But would it work more broadly?  Is this a change worth pushing for, for that matter, or is it just a spiritual practice that works for me, and shouldn't be socially supported?

Yalkut Yosef on Women's Head-Covering

The Yalkut Yosef is a Shulhan Arukh-based work of halakha, consisting of the rulings of R. Ovadia Yosef as compiled by his son R. Yitzhak Yosef.  (Wikipedia article)  Here's what he has to say about women's head-covering:


אשה נשואה חייבת על פי הדין לכסות את ראשה, ואין לה לצאת לרה"ר כששערה מגולה. ועל פי הדין מותר לאשה נשואה לילך בביתה בגילוי ראש (כשאין שם אנשים זרים), אבל ראוי מאד לנהוג שלא לילך גם בבית בגילוי ראש.    [אוצר דינים מהדו"ק עמוד שנט

ט פשט המנהג שבנות רווקות הולכות בגילוי ראש ברשות הרבים, שמעיקר ההלכה אשה שאינה נשואה אינה חייבת בכיסוי ראש. ורק בעת שמתפללות או מברכות ומזכירות שם שמים, תכסנה ראשן. [אוצר דינים מהדו"ק עמוד שסא. יביע אומר ח"ד אהע"ז סי' ג'. וחלק ה' סימן ה אות ב]

8. A married woman is obligated by law to cover her head, and she should not go out into the public domain with her hair uncovered.  According to law, it is permitted for a married woman to walk in her house with an uncovered head (when there are no unrelated men present), but it is very appropriate to also not go about with an uncovered head at home as well.  


9. The tradition spread that unmarried girls go with an uncovered head in the public domain, as from the essence of the law, an unmarried woman is not obligated in head-covering.  And only at the time when they pray or make brachot or say the name of God, they should cover their head.  


In his view, married women should always have their head and hair covered when men can see it- and preferably, pretty much always, even when there aren't unrelated men around.  Unmarried women seem to have no need to cover their hair at any point (I think- it seems a little unclear, honestly, given how consistently the covering of hair and head are not really distinguished), but should cover their head for the full range of prayer/blessings and presumably for study as well (which I want to find implied in "say the name of God", although it is certainly isn't explicit- do you think that's a reasonable interpretation?).  In other words, unmarried women should cover their head in the same way that I began wearing kippot- for religious behaviors.  I wonder how much this is halakha is followed in practice...  

What I Wore 4: Shabbat

So, I'm a little behind on photos (there are photos from today that you'll see probably tomorrow), but here's what I did for Friday night.  It's a combination of a scarf, an shawl and a small headband, and one of my more creative assemblages...  The scarf is rather too small for full coverage, and I've always wanted to do something with the shawl, and the outfit I was wearing made the combination perfect...

 The shawl isn't tied, just held together with a ponytail holder, over my bun (to give it something to hold it up, and also for the way the lines work).

 Here's a quick glimpse of the outfit it went with...

"My Hair Is For My Husband"?

I was recently looking at some videos on rivkamalka.com, with the aim of seeing a tichel style tutorial that had been recommended.  Indeed, the style itself and the ideas presented with it was very nice (for that, I can recommend the site), but it also presented a certain sort of ideology about head-covering that I find both tremendously attractive and uncomfortable and possibly even dangerous, all at once.

This ideology includes a variety of claims, coming down to something like this:
1. Covering my hair gives me something that I share only with my husband, and that is its main purpose
2. Covering my hair makes me beautiful, and one can't be beautiful and sexy at once
3. More of who I am shows when my hair is covered
4. Covering your hair inherently makes your relationship better

The thing is, a lot of the ideology really works for me.  I feel really good with a tichel on, and I think that it is beautiful.  And I would rather be beautiful than sexy, out in the world.  But I don't like the sort of claim that tries to make beauty exclusive.  It's a hard enough thing without such limitations.  If being sexy is what makes someone feel beautiful, I don't want to deny that experience, for all that I personally wish that they would save that sort of beauty for private.  This point is something of a contradiction for me.

Am I "more me" to the world with my hair covered?  I don't think so.  At least, nothing seems so different in how people react to me, so far.  I'm perceived as more Orthodox than I had been.  But is that "more like myself"?

The real issue that I have is that last claim.  It's a lot like the claim they make about niddah: keeping taharat hamishpacha will make your marriage better and stronger.  Sometimes that's true.  Sometimes- not so much.  It's a mitzvah, and so you do it, and if there are rewards, then good, and if not, then that's a gift you give to God, or something of the sort.

I also question the first claim, going back to basics.  If one keeps tzniut in any way, there's a whole bunch of body that your husband is the only one who sees, so making hair one more of those things just seems like more, not something special in particular about covering your hair.

And yet, I'm very attached to this practice, and I find it meaningful.  If this ideology doesn't work for me, what makes it so compelling?

What I Wore 3: For Cooking and a Party

Today, although it is set to be a day full of cleaning, cooking and then hosting a sheva brachot meal (i.e. I may well change later), somehow inspired some creative scarf-tying, perhaps because my dress is rather hard to match to (it's a sort of purply-brown with yellow and chartreuse designs).  This is another 3 scarf combination- I was watching some videos on rivkamalka.com (more about that later) which have inspired me in that direction, lately, although I haven't quite tried her effect yet.  I want to- sometime soon.  There are actually a few styles that I want to play with in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled...

In any case, this is 3 triangles, with the smallest thereof (the bright green, which is silk, but bandana-sized) folded up like a headband, and all layered over eachother- blue, green then red.  The red I made myself- meaning that I got a yard of fabric from a store specializing in African fabrics, cut a triangle out of about half of it, and then hemmed it.  Pretty easy (probably easier if you have a sewing machine), and cheap...

So here it is.  Front:

 Side:

 And a not-very-clear shot of the back.  Sometime I'll do this with the camera and not my webcam, and then there will be slightly better-quality pictures, I dearly hope.  (Also stay tuned for such a re-do of the way I did my tichel for the wedding we went to on Sunday.  There wasn't a chance to photograph it properly then, but it was deserving of documentation- I was pretty proud of the effect, and done with all hand-me-down items from family too...)

What I'm Wearing 2

Today's head-covering involves two scarves, one triangular, one short and rectangular, folded into a sort of thick headband.  The triangular scarf goes on first, followed by the rectangular one.  Then the tails of the triangle are criss-crossed over my head, mid-way on the rectangular scarf.

Here's the front view.  Unfortunately I can't seem to look straight at the camera and show the top of my head at once...

And now the side.  This should give the best view of the general scarf arrangement.

Sorry for the messy view of the table behind me.  Maybe this is my motivation to clean it up.

An Instance of Interpretation

One of my favorite pieces of Shulhan Arukh is the following:

 לא תלכנה בנות ישראל פרוענות בשוק, אחת פנויה ואחת אשת איש (Even HaEzer 21:2)
The daughters of Israel should not walk with uncovered heads in the marketplace, both unmarried and married women.

It has always sounded pretty definitive, to me.  In fact, when I was in college, I had fairly strong feelings that I was "doing it right" in contrast to my Orthodox peers, in this matter.  Of course, nothing stays that simple- halakha expands and comments and interprets, and as you'll see later, the term פנויה/unmarried woman gets interpreted in rather surprising ways in this case.  I don't want to jump ahead of myself, but the interpretations lead to what is normative practice today, which very clearly does not involve all Jewish women wearing a head-covering of some sort.  Although, before I was married, this source was one of the ones that gave me support in choosing to wear a kippah or the equivalent all the time, without feeling like it was inauthentic.

I'm also told, although I haven't researched it myself yet, that there are Sefardi/Edot HaMizrach communities where unmarried women do, or at least did, cover their heads.  And I've heard of Sefardi rabbis who promote the idea that all women should have a head-covering of some sort to pray.  It'll be an interesting area to explore...  I expect that the fact that women in the broader society in which those Jewish communities were living did cover their heads influenced this halakha and its interpretation.

"Liberal" Head-Covering And Israel

When I was contemplating my mandated rabbinical school year in Israel, along with all the other concerns on my mind (I'd never been before), I spent a bunch of time worrying about how I was going to cover my head while I was there.  I didn't have the guts to wear kippot of the normal variety.  Friends of mine had already shared plenty of stories ranging from awkward questions to accusatory statements.

So I planned to go significantly with the folded-scarf route.  However, I wanted some other option, and so I started playing with the idea of larger kippot.  I knew that plenty of liberal Orthodox married women wore hats that looked similar, although placed slightly differently.  

So I set to crocheting.  I took a lot of inspiration from various doilies that I was working on at the same time.  By the end of that year, I had quite a number of different colored, lacy kippot that cover a good majority of my head.  

These actually seemed to work out pretty well for what I wanted: I  don't know what my neighbors thought of me, but no one asked me awkward questions, and I got several requests from my Israeli peers at Machon Schechter for their own kippot of similar sorts. 

These days, I am a little unsure about how I feel about this level of coverage.  In theory, I think that I'm ok with it, paired with a braid/bun (instead of loose hair), but I haven't actually worn them as such outside.  In fact, except for a couple of my largest, they've gone to my "sell/give this away someday" pile.  It's a journey, as they say.  

In any case, here's an example: 

Click here to view these pictures larger

What I'm Wearing this Shabbos 1: Friday Night

Here's my first "what I wore", head-covering style.

Here's a side-view of the rather complicated arrangement (but fun, and actually pretty easy) that I put together for this Friday night.   It consists of 3 fairly small scarves, one of which has been folded into a headband, and a small headband.  The use of three scarves let me create a subtly shaded braid.  (I have long hair- I'm fond of having something to hold on to and play with...)

 Here's a back view.  This really is a different scarf from what you see in front.

And here is the full interplay on my head- and a little glimpse of the dress that I'm matching my scarves to.

And with that, I'm off.  Good Shabbos!