The Magical Ingredient

[debka_notion]

I think I've found the magical ingredient for generating tons of comments on LJ, at least among my friend- circle, and it is very simple-

Talk about head-covering and/or ritual-wear and gender.

I guess people with those interests tend to congregate.

I think other halakhic concerns might get close- so, here's one I need to do some research into- what has the status of a shoe, and the acceptability going barefoot during (davening on) Yom Kippur.

Comments

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of going barefoot in shul - adds to the spiritual communion with our natural selves (and therefore with Hashem, in whose image we are made) or something to that effect.

Probably not as easy on the feet as might be imagined, however.

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

As for the girls wearing yarmulkes issue, I just think it looks weird. I don't presume to know anything about how it relates to halakhah, whether it's technically right or wrong or neutral, and I don't think you're wrong per se to wear one. But I do think it looks weird.

I don't know of any men who go to shul in a frummy women's hat, ankle-length dress/skirt, and wig, or who wear those doily-like headcoverings. ...

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

But men do go to shul in men's hats. I don't wear men's kippot- one reason that wearing ones I make helps.

Sometimes I'd rather wear a scarf. Go know.

The thing is, women in pants used to look weird too. Do you find that odd now though?

[boroparkpyro.livejournal.com]

i also think that women wearing yarmulkas looks weird. or at least i did.
then i saw men with long hair wearing yarmulkas and realized that it's not the sex/gender, it's the length of the hair that bothers me. yarmulkas go with short hair! :-P

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

The question that begs asking, then, is: what you think of men with long hair?

I.e. do you associate yarmulkas with short hair primarily, and therefore a woman with short hair and a kippah looks reasonably right, or do you associate long hair with women, and therefore a man with long hair and a kippah looks wrong?

[boroparkpyro.livejournal.com]

originally, i dunno. you'd have to pull one of those "latent racism" style image-flash-word-association tests on me to see what it is. but at this point in my life, having known many men with long hair, and a somewhat smaller number of women with long or short hair who wear yarmulkas, i feel like it's definitely the hair-length that does it.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

It was better for me than flip-flops that somehow put my feet in a funky position that really bugged my knees right away. Really, my feet only started getting sore towards the end of neilah, which is pretty impressive, considering that we were davening from 8:30-2 and 4:30 to 7:45ish, and I was standing barefoot for much of that time.