When you think of a Jewish headcovering the kippah, or yarmulke in Yiddish, might be the first thing that comes to mind. You know, those small caps that Jewish men (and some women!) wear, while praying or learning Torah as a symbol of respect for God. But did you know that Jewish women also have different, unique practices for hair covering?
After marriage, some Jewish women choose to cover their hair in public, a mitzvah called kisui rosh in Hebrew. This custom is primarily observed by Orthodox women, but there is no one size fits all when it comes to hair coverings. Whether it’s with a hat, scarf, or wig, each community — and each woman — has their own approach.
The reasons and significance of hair covering are as diverse as the women who practice it. For some, hair coverings are about observing religious commandments or a commitment to modesty. Others wear them to honor traditions, or to outwardly display their Jewish identity or marital status. Oftentimes, it’s a combination of all these reasons.
And like most Jewish traditions, hair covering has also sparked plenty of thoughtful debates within the Jewish community. While certain traditional sects of Judaism have strict customs about hair covering, others almost universally oppose the practice. As the saying goes: two Jews three opinions.
So, let’s unpack the origins of hair covering, how it has evolved over time, and the role it plays in Jewish life today.
Jewish hair covering today
Jewish women have been covering their hair since biblical times (we’ll get into that later), and the custom is alive and well today. But the way it’s practiced varies across different communities — and in many, it isn’t observed at all.
Outside of Orthodox communities, most Jewish women don’t cover their hair. In the U.S., only about 10% of Jews identify as Orthodox, while more than half belong to Reform or Conservative denominations.
In the Orthodox world, many see it as a religious duty for married women to cover their hair. This is typically rooted in traditional laws of modesty (tzniut in Hebrew), which teach that a married woman’s hair holds special intimacy that should be considered private between husband and wife. In this case, hair covering is seen as a way to honor that privacy.
Within the Conservative and Reform denominations, which are less traditionally observant, Kisui Rosh is less common.
A Reform statement from 1990 outright rejected hair covering after marriage declaring: “We Reform Jews object vigorously to this requirement for women, which places them in an inferior position and sees them primarily in a sexual role.”
In these communities, many women wear a kippah while praying or learning Torah, as a symbol of equality.
At the same time, headcovering is evolving in new ways among egalitarian Jewish women’s groups. For example, the “Headband Nation Movement,” invites women who are not married to wear headbands as a way to embrace the head covering mitzvah, similar to wearing a kippah but without the traditional masculine associations.
In 2019 the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis, advocated that like men, women should cover their heads when reading from the Torah and when receiving an aliyah. But for other times, whether to cover your head is really up to each woman and how she chooses to express her piety.
Why do (or don’t) women cover their hair?
Women who choose to cover their hair may have all sorts of religious, spiritual, and cultural reasons.
The traditional Orthodox perspective usually relates back to the sacred nature of hair as a part of marital intimacy.
“The special things in our life, we like to keep private, and our hair being that it makes up so much of who we are as women, is something special,” explained Tallie, an Orthodox wig seller and stylist based in Los Angeles.
Content creator Jazzie Morgan covers her hair because it connects her to Jewish pride, she shared in a TikTok.
“If you actually look into head coverings in the Talmud, they’re not really about modesty… Actually, head coverings are referenced as Daat Yehudit, or the ‘custom of Jewish women,’” she explained in the video. “That’s a big part of why I decided to cover my hair. It ties me to a tradition of Jewish women that’s been going on for thousands of years.”
Another perspective is that hair covering holds spiritual significance. A writer from PunkTorah explained: “Personally for me the practice of hair wrapping and head covering elevates my soul… The idea is that the holiness is revealed when the physical is hidden… (when wearing a head covering) we are free from the sexualized image norms bombarding us in society.”
On the other hand, there are also traditionally observant women (who keep kosher and Shabbat) that choose not to cover their hair or only cover their hair for synagogue or special occasions.
“I am an Orthodox Jew who doesn’t cover my hair… It’s just a personal choice that I make,” explained content creator Melinda Strauss in a TikTok. Strauss shared that like her mother, grandmother, and many other women in her Long Island Modern Orthodox community, she does not cover her hair daily but wears a hat to synagogue.
“While in some Jewish communities everyone covers their hair, and if you don’t cover you are judged for it, in my community there are so many people who do cover and so many who don’t,” Strauss explained.
Lynne Schreiber’s popular 2002 book “Hide and Seek” is a good place to learn more about the practice and its significance. It details the laws of hair covering and includes essays from Jewish women around the world who cover their hair.
Custom wigmaker Shani on TikTok also runs a series where she interviews women who wear wigs on their personal reasons for covering their hair, linked here!
Types of Jewish head coverings
The specifics of hair covering — the how and when — can vary quite a bit depending on community norms and personal choice. Different styles are often affiliated with specific communities. And while some women cover their hair everyday, some choose to do so only on Shabbat or special occasions.
These are some of the most common types of head coverings:
Sheitels (wigs)
It is believed that Jewish women started wearing sheitels, or wigs, in the 1600s in France.
At the time, rabbis weren’t too fond of the trend. They thought wigs looked too much like the elaborate hairstyles of non-Jewish women, and believed it was immodest for a woman to show off beautiful hair, even if it was a wig. But wigs didn’t fade away. Instead, they became more popular, despite the rabbis’ objections.
Today, sheitels are mostly worn among Orthodox women. In certain communities, like the Chabad movement and Haredi communities, women almost always wear wigs in public.
Even within these more traditional Orthodox communities, there are varying degrees of how strictly women cover their hair. Some women wear both a wig with a small headscarf or hat on top, to ensure that no one mistakes the wig for natural hair.
In some ultra-Orthodox communities — like the one famously depicted in Netflix’s “Unorthodox” — women are extremely stringent and even shave their heads after marriage to ensure no hair is shown below their wig. This level of adherence is pretty extreme and not what most Orthodox women do.
Raizel Namdar, a Hasidic woman who runs the social media channel “That Jewish Family,” addressed the head-shaving scene in “Unorthodox.” In her video, Namdar explained that the majority of women in her Orthodox community don’t shave their heads but simply wear a wig over their natural hair.
Wigs are still a hotly debated topic within the hair covering community. Some people argue that since wigs can look like natural hair, they defeat the purpose of modesty. While covering with a wig technically meets the letter of the law, these people think it’s a loophole. Others argue that a wig creates the same barrier as any head covering because it keeps the woman’s actual hair private.
Despite the debate, wigs remain super popular, especially in the United States, Europe, and certain communities in Israel.
Tichel and mitpachot (headscarves)
A tichel, or mitpachat, is a headscarf or wrap hair covering. There are countless ways to tie a tichel, with varying bow heights, colors and different amounts of hair left visible.
In more traditional communities, women cover their entire head with the scarf, allowing only a “handbreadth” (about four fingers), or tefach, to be seen.
While in more progressive circles, it’s common to see women only cover a portion of their hair, leaving some hair out of the tichel. These women often wear a headscarf that covers a large part of the top of the head, with hair visible in the front and back.
Many prominent Sephardi rabbis, including former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Rav Ovadia Yosef, believed that headscarves were more modest and appropriate than wigs, so tichels became especially popular in the Sephardi and Israeli Orthodox communities.
Headbands
Some women choose to cover their hair with a thick headband. This is often seen in Modern Orthodox or dati leumi communities in Israel.
Unlike other forms of head covering that focus primarily on modesty, many of these women see the headband as a customary symbol of marriage — kind of like a wedding ring.
That’s why it’s not uncommon to see Modern Orthodox women in Israel wearing jeans and t-shirts while also covering their hair with a headband.
Hats
Women who don’t cover their hair everyday sometimes wear a hat to synagogue as a sign of respect — picture fascinators, cloche hats, and wide-brimmed hats.
Unlike daily head coverings, which women wear to express faith and modesty, putting on a hat for synagogue is about showing respect for the sacred space and the rituals taking place. In the same way, men who don’t wear a kippah daily often put one on for synagogue services.
Outside of the Orthodox community, wearing a hat to synagogue has become less common among younger generations. But historically, starting around the 1950s, ‘Yom Tov hats’ were all the rage across denominations. In fact, women loved collecting and styling them.
(Photo: In the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, set in 1950s New York City, Midge has a hat for every occasion — this one, which she is wearing to synagogue on Yom Kippur, is a pillbox hat. Screenshot, Netflix)
In some communities, it was customary for women to buy a new hat for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), and other major holidays like Passover or Shavuot if they went to synagogue.
Read more: 8 top fashion designers you didn’t know are Jewish
The origins of Jewish hair covering
Where does the custom of women covering their hair come from? Like most Jewish traditions, it all starts in the Torah and has evolved through different phases of Rabbinical commentary and modern interpretations.
The first mention of women’s head coverings appears in the Book of Numbers (Numbers 5:18). The Torah describes a woman suspected of committing adultery having to uncover her hair in front of the kohen (Jewish priest). This act was part of the Sotah ritual, a biblical practice used to determine a woman’s guilt in such accusations.
This is the earliest reference to Jewish women wearing head coverings. It shows that hair covering for married Jewish women was a norm at the time, and having to uncover your hair was embarrassing or shameful, according to commentators.
The Mishnah in Ketubot (7:6) lists a woman “appearing in public with loose hair” as one of the behaviors that are grounds for divorce, along with “weaving in the marketplace and talking to any man.” These actions were categorized as violations of Dat Yehudit (Jewish custom).
Ketubot later establishes that a woman minimally covering her is a biblical obligation, but other standards on how and when to cover her hair are determined by the community.
In the Talmud (Brachot 24a), the rabbis explain that a woman’s uncovered hair is considered a form of “nakedness” (ervah) and prohibit men from praying in view of a woman’s hair. This idea has some roots in the Song of Songs, where it says, “Your hair is like a flock of goats” (Song of Songs 4:1), which, according to the rabbis, implies the sensual nature of hair. They understood this to mean that a woman’s hair has intimate connotations, and that covering it is important for maintaining modesty.
There are plenty of other mentions of hair covering within the Torah and its commentary. Over the centuries, different communities interpreted the texts in various ways, leading to a wide range of practices. While at their core, customs are shaped by their biblical origins, the way women cover their hair today is also deeply influenced by their own choice, family and community customs.
Originally Published Nov 15, 2024 08:56AM EST
