Jewish Covering Thoughts

Some random thoughts from Hadassah’s Musings at wordpress:
If I cover my hair will that draw attention to me?

In the Torah - Bamidbar 5.18 – it talks about the Sotah – a woman suspected of adultery – who is made to uncover her hair. The rabbis extrapolated from this that a woman back in the day kept her hair covered as a general rule. Therefore Jewish married women are commanded to cover their hair. The Shulchan Aruch commands a man not to pray or recite blessings if there is a woman in front of him with a “tefach”(4 inches) of skin uncovered that would usually be covered, this applies to hair as well as it is considered part of the body that is normally not seen. I could cite many more sources that say the same or similar. I will point out though, that at the time of all these discussions, it was the societal norm for women of all faiths to cover their heads, not just the Jewish women.

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There are some modern Rabbis who have ruled that a divorced woman is allowed to uncover her hair if she believes it will help her chances for another shidduch, and some that say she can uncover her hair but only after she moves to a different town. Some say not at all, that she may as well walk around naked. I guess it all depends on who you ask IF you ask. I needed to do what was right for me and my emotional state at that point in time. Maybe one could even argue, that uncovering my hair was showing my grief for the end of my marriage. After all there is no shiva when a marriage has died / failed.

Read the full entry at the link above for more thoughts on wigs, covering, law, choice, modesty, standing out in a crowd, respect and etc. Also some thoughts on this in the comments offered to the author.