Articles

Her Children Rise and Call her Blessed

By Esther Vilenkin

Today, while browsing through a clothing store, I overheard a woman tell the saleswoman, “it’s beautiful, but I can’t get it. It’s not my colors.” I thought about our willingness to trust the judgment of “esperts” to help us figure out how to be our best. If we could only look our best and act our best, we would be content… (READ MORE)

The Meaning of Hair Covering

By Aron Moss

I heard an anthropologist talking about shaitels (wigs). He said how ironic it is that observant Jewish women wear wigs. In biblical Judaism, the rule was that married women should cover their hair in order to be modest and unattractive. In more recent times, women wear wigs, which are sometimes more attractive than natural hair… (READ MORE)

The Lubavitcher Rebbe on Hair Covering

By Rivka Slonim

In her definitive study of Orthodoxy in America between the years of 1880 and 1945, Jenna Weissman Joselit notes.

What animated and sustained that experience was not a lasting preoccupation with Jewish law (Halachah) or a collective nostalgia for the piety of an earlier, parental generation but rather… (READ MORE)

A Woman’s Journey of Understanding Modesty

By Yael Weil

To cover or not to cover? That was my question for some time. When I was in high school, the thought of covering my hair after marriage was something I never thought I would do. My mother didn’t cover her hair and my sister-in-laws didn’t cover their hair. Then as I began college, this observance was something that no longer seemed foreign, something I actually contemplated doing one day…. (READ MORE)