#sheitel

Why do some Jews cover their hair or heads?

For some, it’s law. For others, it’s culture, spirituality, modesty, or identity. Men might wear kippot, hats, or turbans; women might wear sheitels, scarves, or nothing at all.

Sources like Ketubot 72a and Mishnah Berurah shaped centuries of practice, but today, it varies by community and conviction.

There’s no single story, only a rich mosaic of tradition, choice, and meaning.

The Effects of Wearing a Sheitel

The hair-covering has a profound effect on the wearer. It creates a psychological barrier, a cognitive distance between her and strangers. Her beauty becomes visible but inconspicuous; she is attractive but unavailable.

The wig achieves the desired effect exactly, because a wig allows a woman to cover all her hair, while maintaining her attractive appearance. She can be proud of the way she looks without compromising her privacy. And even if her wig looks so real as to be mistaken for natural hair, she knows that no one is looking at the real her. She has created a private space, and only she decides who to let into that space.

Perhaps in other religions modesty and beauty don't mix. This is not the Jewish view. True beauty, inner beauty, needs modesty to protect it and allow it to thrive.

In ancient Near Eastern cultures it was considered a sign of respect to keep one’s head covered. With its roots in that part of the world, Judaism adhered to that custom. In Mesopotamia, for example, men of high caste wore some sort of head covering in public at all times; in the period of the First Temple until its destruction in 586 BCE, priests and other officials of the Temple wore turbans or mitres, probably in imitation of the local custom.

In the Talmud, there were a variety of opinions expressed but, finally, the day was carried by those who believed it impertinent to allow the Shekinah, the female manifestation of God, to see their bare heads below Her.

The debate over men’s head covering would continue for several more centuries, but in the Middle Ages the choice was gradually taken away from the Jews. In much of Europe, Christian authorities demanded that Jews wear special hats or hoods that, along with yellow badges that prefigure the Nazi-imposed star of the Holocaust period, identified them as non-Christian.

Since that time, customs regarding head covering have evolved to reflect the history of various Jewish communities. Hence, some Hasidic Jews of Eastern Europe (and their successors in the United States, Western Europe, and Israel) favored the fur-covered round hat called a shtreimel. Today, many American Orthodox Jewish men wear black fedoras. The Jews of Central Asia wore turbans, but now are most identified with the brightly colored cylindrical Bukharan skullcaps.

The most familiar manifestation of the custom of covering the head, however, is the flat, round skullcap known in Hebrew as a kippah (plural kippot) or in Yiddish as a yarmulkah, the head covering of choice for the vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews. Even here, the minhag has evolved in different directions: Orthodox men will wear a kippah throughout their waking hours; Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews may do the same, but are equally likely to wear it only in the synagogue, at meals, or while studying sacred texts; some Reform synagogues actually went so far as to proscribe the wearing of headgear on their premises, but in recent years many Reform congregation have begun offering kippot to worshipers (both men and women), and students at Hebrew Union College, the Reform rabbinical seminary, usually are seen wearing kippot.

Throughout the debate on men’s head covering, all the sages were in agreement on one thing: married women must cover their hair. Even in Biblical times, it was considered a brazen violation of the rules of modesty for a married woman to allow anyone but her husband to see her hair. For the Orthodox, this regulation remains in place. Contemporary women’s head coverings run the gamut from scarves and snoods to fashionable hats. Hasidic women will, even today, have their heads shaved just prior to the wedding ceremony and will wear a scarf to cover their heads. One other option available to Orthodox women is the sheitel, a wig. In all Orthodox, many Conservative, and even some Reform synagogues, women are asked to cover their heads during worship and “chapel caps,” small, flat lace equivalents of the kippah, are provided for that purpose.