devarim

Wednesday:

Well, I don't have quite that many hats (yet), but I definitely have my fair share, and certainly enough simple cotton berets to keep people at work asking just how many colors they come in. Tomorrow is the first day since I started covering my hair at this job that I expect to sit in a courtroom (as an observer). I'm still not 100% sure whether the hat will stay on or come off...

Thursday:

The hat stayed on.

I feel like I owe my readers (all three of you, is it?) a bit of an explanation behind my covered/uncovered reasoning. Way back when Julian and I first started dating, we had a conversation about married (Jewish) women covering their hair. I knew very little about the mitzvah of kisui rosh (with regard to women) back then, but I knew my mother and most of the other women in the shul where I was raised mainly wore rounds of lace on their heads, often folded in half or quarters and secured by a bobby pin, and only during services. Occasionally some women (my mother included) would wear hats instead of these lace doilies, or would put on a larger, flatter, and more elaborate lace covering that actually took up most of the top of one's head, but these alternative hair "covering" decisions were made out of a sense of fashion rather than adherence to halacha. It was a token covering, an acknowledgment that there was some tradition involving married women, synagogues, and things on the women's heads, but there never seemed to be any recognition that the point was to actually cover one's hair (rather than to have a reminder of God's being above us, which is the most common reason given for men wearing kippot [yarmulkes]).

My mother (who passed away over ten years ago) also wore a lace kerchief when lighting candles Friday night, and I recall her leaving it on during Shabbat dinner. This only served to reinforce the idea that for women, wearing something on your head was a thing you did only when formally talking to God.

Savta (my father's mother), who was from Persia (what's this "Iran" business?) and now lives in Israel (has since the 1960s, I believe), does not generally cover her hair, though when in a religious/ceremonial setting (organized services, lighting candles, etc.) she will put on a headscarf that tends to cover all of her hair. Of course, that could be because she has short hair, and pretty much anything she would wear on her head (besides a lace doily) would cover all of her hair. I have no idea what she did in her "past life" (that is, any time before I was about five years old), or her real "past life" (when she was living in Persia/Iran, though there are pictures of her with husband, children, and uncovered hair. To her credit, I will say that every Persian Jew I know (um, that would be most of that side of my family) thinks that all women who are bat mitzvah (twelve years old or older) should have something on their heads when saying or hearing a bracha. My uncles will still scrounge around to toss something onto my (female) cousins' heads just before Shabbat kiddush, and my aunts, if they are not already wearing scarves, will place napkins (or their hands) on their heads for the duration. So maybe there's another mitzvah at play here altogether (although there is no reason to believe that Mizrachim [Jews of Persiian descent] are less obligated in the mitzvah of kisui rosh).

Grandma (my mother's mother, who passed away almost a year and a half ago), used to wear a sheitel (wig). This is actually quite common among women of Ashkenazic (Eastern European) descent who observe the mitzvah or kisui rosh; any of Grandma's sisters-in-law, nieces, and grandnieces who cover their hair (and that's a lot of them) wear sheitels as a matter of course. Anyway, Grandma wore a sheitel, at least to certain events, as late as my parents' wedding in 1974. Some time between then and when I showed up in Israel for the first time (1980), she stopped. In all my memories, she either went bare-headed or wore a hat (sometimes a turban-like deal that fit like a hat). The hair coverings were mostly reserved for going to shul and (sometimes) generally "going out": for lunch, for shopping, for a walk. I think the latter use of hats was more because she lived in fashionable New York from the mid 1930s through the mid 1970s...of course women of her generation wore hats!

It might be useful in the course of this discussion to mention the reasoning behind the mitzvah of kisui rosh (or even, y'know, explain what it is). In short, tzniut (modesty, in this situation modesty of dress) is required of both men and women.* For women, the areas of the body that must be covered are: the upper legs (to below the knee); the upper arms (to below the elbow); the back (not sure how high); and the front from the collarbone down. Obviously those areas within these boundaries (you know, the belly button and such) are included as well. The areas that must be covered are referred to as ervah (nakedness). Upon her marriage, a woman's hair also becomes ervah and may be seen only by her husband. I started writing a whole explanation here abotu the reasoning behind this, but instead I'll link to this (and this), which together explain it better than I ever could.

OK, end tangent. Over the course of my relationship with Julian (though not necessarily because of the relationship), I became more strictly observant of various mitzvot. Along with this, I gave new consideration to mitzvot that would not be incumbent upon me until I was married; namely, taharat hamishpacha and kisui rosh. Since this is already getting long enough, and I have sufficient thoughts about T"H alone to fill an entire blog, we'll set the former aside for now. My first "movement" on hair covering was that I agreed that the doily solution was inappropriate, particularly given the shul environments where we planned to daven regularly. Somewhere along the line--I'm not sure entirely where--I came to think of it as a particularly beautiful women's mitzvah. Long before I gave up tank tops and shorts (though I'll still wear knee-length shorts in some situations), I decided that I liked the idea of making a distinction between my unmarried self and my married self, a distinction that was unique to my religious identity.** I did not feel compelled to cover every last strand of hair, so hats would be an option. However, I also liked scarves, both for their beauty and their stronger identity as a religious (rather than fashion) symbol.

Somewhere along the line I began trying to reconcile hair-covering issues with professionalism in the workplace. I had many discussions with Julian (we may or may not have been engaged by then; I can't remember), who probably wants me to mention at this point that he expressed no preference whatsoever as to whether or wwith what I covered my hair, with two exceptions: first, that I cover my hair in shul, and with something other than "a doily"; and second, that I not become "one of those women" who wears a sheitel all the time and completely neglects the hair underneath. After all, what's the point of reserving your hair for your husband, if said hair gets ugly through the reserving process? As it turns out, I agreed with him on those two points, so we were in good shape.

I liked the idea of covering my hair even outside of religious settings (to do otherwise would, to me, feel like the equivalent of being a High Holidays Jew...no judgment made on those who do consider themselves such, but it's just not my thing). Julian and I discussed the "reason" behind women's kisui rosh; he maintained that it was to let other people know that you were married, and I responded that, as with many other mitzvot, there are many layers of reasoning, somoe of which we can't understand. According to his argument, a wedding ring serves the same purpose in secular environments as a hat or scarf would in Jewish settings. Well, yes, if you cover your hair only to let people know that you are married, which is not why you cover your hair, so...no.

There are good arguments to be made for covering only in public places but not in private, but there was no way I could construe work as "private." On the other hand, there are certain prejudices (try as we might to deny that they exist) against Jews, and observant Jews in particular, and I saw no reason to attract the inevitable discrimination and unwanted attention that would come with being "different." Such (perceived or actual) discrimination would have an even greater effect during interviews, when I otherwise would have no intention of announcing to prospective employers that I'd be leaving early on Fridays in the winter, refusing to work on Saturdays under any circumstances, and taking off up to thirteen weekdays each year for religious holidays. The entire issue was complicated by the fact that I planned to participate in my law school's early interview process, which began only four days after our wedding. There wouldn't even be enough time for me to decide what I thought about the mitzvah after practicing it for a little while.

The obvious solution for many of my classmates (and every other female Jewish lawyer I know who observes this mitzvah) was to wear a wig. Now, I realize that we should obey the letter of the law even when it violates the spirit of the law, and debates have been raging for years (with no signs of stopping) about the propriety of wearing a wig for this purpose, particularly when the wig looks nicer than one's actual hair, or when it's iimpossible for even one's closest relatives to tell that it is a wig. My readers should feel free to continue this discussion in the comments, but I'm not going to rehash both sides myself. Suffice it to say that I cannot wrap my mind around the concept of wearing a wig, either halachicly or with respect to my own comfort. It just wasn't an option--it would be a hat, a scarf, or nothing at all.

In the pseudo-end (because it's never really the end, and we all know this wasn't it for sure), Julian's argument won out, and I decided that professional appearance and keeping certain things to myself would win out over covering my hair to let others know that I was married. I did all of my second-year interviews bare-headed. I clipped back my hair, making it different from the loose hair of a sotah, but I doubt that this met even the minimum requirement of the mitzvah. Although I went entirely without a hat on the first day of interviews, my friend Akiva managed to convince me that I should at least have a hat stuffed into my bag, to put on when I had a longer break...so by the second day, I did that.

That summer, I ended up working in a pseudo-academic environment where we had no court appearances and no contact with clients. Hair covering was not an issue; hell, I could have worn jeans and a T-shirt to work every day if I wanted to (though I didn't). Come third-year interviews, though, I was back to my bare-headed ways.*** The following summer (that would be this year), while studying for the bar, I made a renewed commitment to covering my hair. When bar exam materials came telling me that hats were not permitted, I called to make sure I could cover my hair during the exam. Yet when I began my job in September, I went back to being uncovered. I even got a new, jazzier haircut--one more well-suited to being seen alone than to peeking out under a hatbrim. Professionalism won out again, particularly given that I would be interacting with judges and sitting in courtrooms on a semi-regular basis.

Over the first twelve weeks or so of my job, I started feeling more and more uncomfortable about hair-uncovering. I began wearing my beret during my commute. Then I began putting it on if I left the building for lunch. Next I was wearing it until I got to my desk instead of taking it off when arriving at the front door. On more than one occasion, I forgot (or maybe I "forgot") to take off my hat until 20 or 30 minutes into the workday. As the weather got colder and I found myself putting on my coat to go talk to judges in the other courthouse around the block, I decided that any time I could comfortable left my coat on, I could leave my hat on as well. And then, finally, I just left it on altogether.

I can't really say why or how that progression happened. Since I started, I have spoken with judges on several occasions (without an outdoor coat on) and sat in a courtroom during proceedings once (this morning). So far, no judges (or even registers or court officers) have asked about the berets, although I clearly was not wearing them a few weeks ago. I am fully prepared to explain myself and defend my position if asked, and I may even go back to not covering my hair if pressured enough, but until someone makes a fuss over it, I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing.

I just hope no one thinks I do it because my hair's dirty.

* Insert here the general disclaimer that different groups of different rules, that not everyone thinks that s/he is bound by all rules or that all rules are applicable today, and that, generally speaking, I have no authority on this matter whatsoever and everything I say should be taken with a generous helping of Lot's wife.

*** Well, except for the one time I accidentally left my beret on after arriving at an interview a minute late and rather flustered. That was unintentional, and I took it off after ten minutes, so it doesn't count.

PS: Let it be known that, despite the timestamp, I did not write the bulk of this entry during work hours.