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Before I get down to babble- Mazel Tov to Steve and Steve on their engagement! If they let me know that it's ok to publicize that fact in this sort of general medium, or if other folks on LJ start doing so first, I'll fill in names.
So, I've been doing another of my more militantly (for lack of a better word- suggestions for better words are being accepted) gender-egalitarian phases as far as my religious life goes, and have been experimenting with regular/most-of-the-time headcovering. I've found that I feel very oddly about wearing kippot- I'll wear one during davening, and all day on Shabbat or holidays, or in my room- but in public during the week, even on campus where people would probably adjust fairly quickly since they know me already, I don't seem to be up for doing that. I'm not sure why- clearly, I don't feel like it's men's clothing, since I wear one often enough- it's So much easier to deal with with tfillin than scarves/headbands... I guess I just don't want to deal with the looks. Of course, I wore a scarf the day I volunteered at the JOFA conference- bad move, someone told me I was married (in the context of apologizing for talking about being resentful of Kol Isha related issues in shul- not sure what that had to do with anything). Talk about making dress-code mistakes. I mean, related things have happened before ("You know you don't have to cover your hair until you're married." "Yes, I'm egalitarian and didn't want to wear a kippah at an Orthodox service, that's all. If I was covering my hair, I'd do it all the time, and more thoroughly than this (about 5 inches of head/hair covered tops) anyways." [THinking 'Unlike you, who's telling me I don't Need to do something until later when you use the verb need for something you don't do outside of shul.)
That paragraph was getting too long and wandering. So- back on topic... It's funny how much more aware of assorted brakhot with the headcovering. Sort of a "well, I don't have to go searching for something to put on my head now, so I guess I should at least start thinking about saying these things" sort of thing. I mean, that was one of the motivations behind the experiement (not sure if it's permanent or not yet). It's just a very different mind-set about what I do with my hair- headbands and clips tend to be a bit redundant. What I need is a really big clip that isn't one of those giant bows. Although the headbands are pretty non-obvious, I guess.
My other thought is- why am I up for maybe covering my head, which is minhag (custom), when I'm still sort of weirded out by the idea of me wearing tallit katan (still possibly minhag, but a way of fulfilling a piece of halakha). Partially I just don't know how wearing one with women's clothing would work (should talk to Amanda), but... Also because it still just seems outside the range of what women do. Kippot don't- I know lots of women who wear kippot in prayer situations. I always have. Tallit katan- seems entirely natural on men, it has from shortly after the first time I saw it. (Rather as tfillin, regardless of the gender of the wearer, just look Right. It was one of the startling things that happened the first time I went to an Egal morning minyan freshman year- it all just looked Right. But I'm sure I'm repeating myself.) But I just don't have a reference sphere for tallit katan on women.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zodiacmg has offered to let me try his, but I'm not sure that would give me a fair reading, since I tend to be very Aware of the fact that I'm wearing borrowed clothing if the clothing is anyone but maybe, maybe my mother's. And if I bought my own, I'd probably feel sort of obligated to wear it. Plus- I know zilch about how to know which sort one chooses, and I know there are sorts, and all that eep-inducing stuff. I want context, darn it.
So, I've been doing another of my more militantly (for lack of a better word- suggestions for better words are being accepted) gender-egalitarian phases as far as my religious life goes, and have been experimenting with regular/most-of-the-time headcovering. I've found that I feel very oddly about wearing kippot- I'll wear one during davening, and all day on Shabbat or holidays, or in my room- but in public during the week, even on campus where people would probably adjust fairly quickly since they know me already, I don't seem to be up for doing that. I'm not sure why- clearly, I don't feel like it's men's clothing, since I wear one often enough- it's So much easier to deal with with tfillin than scarves/headbands... I guess I just don't want to deal with the looks. Of course, I wore a scarf the day I volunteered at the JOFA conference- bad move, someone told me I was married (in the context of apologizing for talking about being resentful of Kol Isha related issues in shul- not sure what that had to do with anything). Talk about making dress-code mistakes. I mean, related things have happened before ("You know you don't have to cover your hair until you're married." "Yes, I'm egalitarian and didn't want to wear a kippah at an Orthodox service, that's all. If I was covering my hair, I'd do it all the time, and more thoroughly than this (about 5 inches of head/hair covered tops) anyways." [THinking 'Unlike you, who's telling me I don't Need to do something until later when you use the verb need for something you don't do outside of shul.)
That paragraph was getting too long and wandering. So- back on topic... It's funny how much more aware of assorted brakhot with the headcovering. Sort of a "well, I don't have to go searching for something to put on my head now, so I guess I should at least start thinking about saying these things" sort of thing. I mean, that was one of the motivations behind the experiement (not sure if it's permanent or not yet). It's just a very different mind-set about what I do with my hair- headbands and clips tend to be a bit redundant. What I need is a really big clip that isn't one of those giant bows. Although the headbands are pretty non-obvious, I guess.
My other thought is- why am I up for maybe covering my head, which is minhag (custom), when I'm still sort of weirded out by the idea of me wearing tallit katan (still possibly minhag, but a way of fulfilling a piece of halakha). Partially I just don't know how wearing one with women's clothing would work (should talk to Amanda), but... Also because it still just seems outside the range of what women do. Kippot don't- I know lots of women who wear kippot in prayer situations. I always have. Tallit katan- seems entirely natural on men, it has from shortly after the first time I saw it. (Rather as tfillin, regardless of the gender of the wearer, just look Right. It was one of the startling things that happened the first time I went to an Egal morning minyan freshman year- it all just looked Right. But I'm sure I'm repeating myself.) But I just don't have a reference sphere for tallit katan on women.
zodiacmg has offered to let me try his, but I'm not sure that would give me a fair reading, since I tend to be very Aware of the fact that I'm wearing borrowed clothing if the clothing is anyone but maybe, maybe my mother's. And if I bought my own, I'd probably feel sort of obligated to wear it. Plus- I know zilch about how to know which sort one chooses, and I know there are sorts, and all that eep-inducing stuff. I want context, darn it.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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About covering your head:
At Brandeis, no one will care (not no one will say anything) if you wear a kippah during the day. However, in basically the rest of the world, it will strike many people as odd. I stopped wearing mine regularly when I got to Penn. It wasn't that anyone was offended, but that it sent a variety of messages before I could even meet someone. Of course, so does a man wearing a kippah all the time, but the messages are significantly different. All too often, it came off as me being "feminist" first and Jewish second. I realized that even if my reasons were not feminist, that was the message I sent. That's not to say it's a bad message, just be prepared for it. I still wear kippah for anything that involves t'fillin, and variously at other religious functions. However, I've also acquired a hat that I like and frequently wear as an alternative. I've also developed a variety of responses to "married" remarks. (How much did you have to drink, you were one of the edim! Don't you remember??/The Rambam paskens that even unmarried women should cover their hair./Oh, I'm so glad you can't tell it's a sheitl.)
A friend told me recently not to worry about looking married, that when the right person comes along, he'll know I'm single despite the hat.
About tallit katan:
It's completely mutar for a woman to take on to wear tallit katan, but by no means an obligation. In fact, as far as I know, it's not an obligation for men either. The only issue is beged ish, since they are manufactured specifically for men. I buy mine at Israel Bookshop (they will sell to you) and alter them slightly so that (1) They fit better (2) I can wear them discreetly under my clothes (3) I do so with the intent that I am finished them for my own purposes and they therefore become beged isha.
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Most of the headcovering stuff I'd figured out. The whole feminist before Jewish statement is why I hadn't started to cover my head in some way before now. But I realized I was doing a lot of "I feel like I should be doing this, but it's too awkward, so I'll just have to wait until I'm married", and I didn't really like that train of thought. That and I lost my usual kippah, and started wearing scarves some, so I figured I might as well do it some more. I've getting better and finagling scarves and tfillin.
Sadly I don't pull off those sorts of comments well at all. It isn't that I'm afraid guys won't know I'm unmarried, it's just that I have this odd semi-paranoid, semi-overly-honest, or something need not to send false impressions. Maybe the kippah will be my way of communicating that I'm Not Orthodox to next years frosh, since I no longer feel entirely comfortable wearing sleeveless or particularly obviously low-necked shirts much of the time, especially on campus.
Yeah- or I could just finally get around to learning to tie tzitzit (something I've been meaning/needing to do anyways) and just make my own (probably would be smart if I got access to and learned to use a sewing machine before then, I suppose). So- fitting them under women's clothing isn't so bad, minus adjustments somewhere?
I know Israel Bookshop will sell to me, although I usually end up in there with a guy, just by coincidence- and they always presume he's buying, even when I ask, and I handle the money....
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Tzitzit take a bit of practice, but it's not hard. I'm a little paranoid about them becoming visible, since they are a very private piece of clothing. It's the same reason I don' want my bra to show.
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Yeah- I'm a little concerned about getting tzitziyot to fit under my clothing in a way they wouldn't show, but I think it's likely to be easier now than it would have been in the past.
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The problem with women's clothes and arba kanfot is not actually with the tzitziot themselves, but rather with the accompanying piece of fabric.
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I think it's rather more complicated than that.
Point 1: The issue is not so much a matter of trying to ban everything — lest somebody enjoy life — as an unfortunate tendency to view Haredim as the ones who practice the "real" Judaism to which we all aspire. If you want, you can attribute it to the gaping hole in our tradition that was left by the Sho'ah, which left people with no source for halakhah lema`aseh but the Shulhan `Arukh and its various commentaries.
(The Sh"A, like every other legal code, reflects the traditions of a certain time and place. Joel Roth has a very convincing apologetic of Conservative Judaism in which he argues that before Karo's time, guarded progressiveness was the way of halakhah, which is why there are so many practices mentioned in the Talmud that no longer exist in our day. The fact is that this continued even after the major codes were written, and only a very few stayed effectively frozen in their practice. Thing is, now we've decided that they're the keepers of the flame.)
Point 2: I think you're partly right. We're definitely in the midst of a pissing contest when it comes to humrot, but we're also living in the middle of what you could call a revival of sub-nationalism in the United States. Latinos, Blacks, Jews — pretty much everyone but Arabs — have a lot more freedom to express cultural differences without being declared beyond the borders of mainstream society. The American Jew who once dropped mitzvot in order to seem more "American" is now adopting them as a way to celebrate being Jewish, which includes advertising Judaism. My theory, at least.
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Forgot to add . . .
A lot of major poskim — R' Chayyim David Halevi, z"l, is the one in front of me — agree that beged ish/ah is a prohibition against conduct that might cause one to be confused for a member of the opposite sex. As such, I don't see how a deliberately concealed undergarment could fall into that category.
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Re: Forgot to add . . .
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Learning to tie tzitzit
Huzzah!
The Vortex
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Someone told me last night I would be comfortable at Chabad. He knew nothing about me except for the fact that my hair was tied up in a scarf. Like you, I was wearing the scarf instead of a kippah because I had gone to an Orthodox service.
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Sheitls *never* look like real hair. They look much better than real hair. That's how you can tell it's a sheitl.
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Good point. I like my hair, but it never looks perfect (maybe at formal—I have pictures).
Maybe the reason for the different explanations is that it's one of those things where we don't know the exact reason, so lots of explanations exist.
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Sheitels look stiff- I don't think that looks better than real hair, myself. But yeah, you can always tell.
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OK, I have to post this silly one-liner, since I got about two hours of sleep last night.
Hooray for Massachusetts!
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Re: OK, I have to post this silly one-liner, since I got about two hours of sleep last night.
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Re: OK, I have to post this silly one-liner, since I got about two hours of sleep last night.
That's when I realized that Maya was merely attempting to force these two wonderfully progressive men back into the closet by giving them pseudonyms. :)
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Re: OK, I have to post this silly one-liner, since I got about two hours of sleep last night.
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