BLESSING MEW CLOTHES
Whatever it is that we wear, we are taught not to take it for granted. Upon dressing each morning, a Jew recites this blessing:
Baruch ata Adonai Elohainu melech ha’olam malbish arumim.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, Who clothes the naked.
This is one of the Shacharit blessings; it was originally intended to be recited, as were the other morning blessings, at its appropriate moment—that is, when getting dressed. Gradually, however, all the morning blessings were grouped together as part of the formal prayer; thus, sometimes we tend to lose sight of the fact that we indeed thank God for clothing as we thank Him for food and shelter and for life restored each day.
The Malbish Arumim blessing is also recited when one wears a new article of clothing for the very first time. Like all firsts, we add a Shehecheyanu, thanking God for bringing us to this special moment (see p. 153). The only exception to this is when we buy shoes of leather. As on Yom Kippur, when we wear no leather on a day that we ask for life, similarly all the year through we refrain from reciting a blessing on the wearing of new shoes. Though, happily, we can put it out of our minds every day, at the moment of its newness we are reminded that leather shoes, after all, represent life that no longer exists.
SHATNEZ: THE LAW OF MIXED KINDS
Other than modesty, which is given wide latitude in interpretation, there is only one other restriction on clothing for a Jew. That is the law of shatnez. Shatnez is the Biblical injunction against wearing a garment made of a mixture of wool and linen. This is one of the laws of the Torah for which no reason is given, but rabbis throughout the ages have attempted to give their own explanations. The most logical ones refer back to Genesis in which each animal is described as being created “according to its own kind.” In other words, there is a certain distinctiveness of species which must be preserved. The laws of mixed kinds, therefore, are meant to remind us not to violate this ecological integrity of nature. So even when we fling ourselves with abandon upon the racks of Barney’s or Bloomingdale’s, the laws of the Torah ad‘dress’ us there.
There are certain synagogues and independent laboratories which test garments for shatnez; that is, a shatnez expert will take apart the lapel of a woolen suit and test the interlining for linen. As in all other thou shalt nots, this law of shatnez is binding upon men and women alike.
TZITZIT
To some extent, the issue of “Jewish dress” is more relevant to men than to women. Only males are obligated to fulfill the mitzvah of tzitzit, the wearing of the ritual fringes.
The tzitzit garment is also known as a tallit katan (a small tallit) or arba kanfot (four corners). “Four corners” refers to the fact that the Bible requires the strings to be attached only to a garment that has four corners. As clothing changed and garments no longer had four corners, a special rectangular garment with four corners was created to be worn under the clothes so that males would carry this reminder with them all the time.
The difference between tzitzit (tallit katan) and a regular tallit is that the latter is a prayer shawl worn only at prayer time, while a pair of tzitzit (that is, one garment) is worn all through the day. Why day and not night? Find the clue in the Biblical passage quoted on page 190, or the answer on page 192.
To the uninitiated, tzitzit look like nothing more than strings. And so it is the amazing power of a religion to transform strings into something of much greater meaning. My favorite translation of tzitzit came from Moshe.
One summer, on a sandlot in Gloucester, Moshe was playing baseball with a group of boys from town, none of them Jewish. As he ran around the field, his tzitzit strings began to fly out from under his T-shirt. After the game, as the boys were finishing up and getting ready to leave, one of the townies asked Moshe, “What are those strings hanging out of your shirt?” Moshe, then fourteen, thought for a moment, grinned, and said, “Those are my soul threads.”
The origin of those “soul threads” is Biblical: “And God spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel and say it to them so that they shall make for themselves tzitzit on the corners of their garments throughout their generations … And you [the children of Israel] shall see them and shall remember all of the commandments of the Lord and observe them so that you do not go after your own heart and your own eyes to go lusting after them. So that you will remember to observe all of my commandments and become holy unto your God” (NUM. 15:37–40).
Very simple, very direct. The purpose of tzitzit, then, is to remind the wearer that he is commanded to live according to a special set of values. Like tefillin, tzitzit are a sign of the Covenant between God and the Jewish people.
Before donning the tzitzit in the morning, a man recites this blessing:
Baruch ata Adonai Elohainu melech ha’olam asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al mitzvat tzitzit.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the mitzvah of tzitzit.
This is what a pair of tzitzit looks like (one garment is called a pair):
The garment is white, and generally made of cotton or polyester, although it can be made of any kosher material, in other words, not shatnez. (There ought to be a market for woolen tzitzit among energy-minded Jews in northern winter climes, but so far none exists.) The fringes are either white cotton, or white wool. The Biblical command was to use strings of sky-blue wool, a color that was used in the original Sanctuary; since we do not know what shade it was, the mitzvah is fulfilled with all-white fringes. Tzitzit can be purchased in a Jewish religious articles store or from the synagogue sexton. The fringes will be tied just so, as in the tallit, and there is a good deal of numerical symbolism in the manner of tying. The tzitzit garment is worn over an undershirt and under the regular shirt. In the religious neighborhoods in Israel, something very practical is sold, which I have yet to find in America: tzitzit undershirts. The bottom side seams of a regular undershirt are cut in a small inverted U to make a four-cornered garment through which the tzitzit fringes are looped and tied.
In contrast to the tallit, which is worn only by married men, tzitzit are worn by males of all ages. Long before the mandatory age—thirteen for all adult mitzvot—young boys begin wearing them. We started our sons on tzitzit when they were about four years old. If it is daytime, you can pretty safely bet that the fellow at the next desk wearing a kepah is also wearing tzitzit. But don’t put a whole lot of money on it, because there are some few Jews who wear a kepah and not tzitzit. They consider themselves as having fulfilled the mitzvah of tzitzit through donning the prayer shawl for morning prayers. The blessing recited upon donning tallit is slightly different from the blessing over tzitzit. (see p. 158)
To say that the tzitzit garment is characteristically worn by Orthodox Jewish males does not mean that individuals in other denominations don’t wear them. However, in Conservative, Re-constructionist, or Reform Judaism, it is the exception, while in Orthodoxy it is the rule. This true tale bears that out:
Several years ago, David S., a lawyer friend, helped place an eleven-year-old black Jew in a day school in the borough of Queens, New York City. David S. had been active in an organization called Hatza’ad Harishon (The First Step), whose purpose was to help integrate America’s black Jews, of whom there are a very small number, into Jewish community life. The child had formerly attended an Orthodox yeshiva in the Bronx, but now the family had moved to Forest Hills; the closest school was a Conservative day school. After a week, our friend called a colleague of his whose child attended the same school. In reply to David’s question, the colleague said, yes, the new boy had been nicely received; in fact his son had come home after the first day and told his father all about the new student, adding, “And you know, Dad, we went to gym together and I learned something else about black kids. They wear strings under their shirts.”
Clue: The Torah says, “And you shall see them.” By dayli
ght, it was possible to see them, but not by the dark of the night. Therefore, the rabbis ruled that the mitzvah of tzitzit is only by day.
Taking this one step further, there are those who have interpreted “And you shall see them” as meaning that they should be obvious to all, which is why some loop their tzitzit fringes through a belt loop or leave them hanging outside their clothes, so that they will be highly visible to all.
Women do not wear tzitzit. There is slight discussion of this issue in rabbinic literature; the conclusion is that women are exempt. The same reason given above with regard to fixed-time prayer applies here: women are exempt from time-bound positive commandments. Since tzitzit must be worn by day and not by night, the Rabbis placed it in the category of time-bound commandments. That categorization seems a bit overdrawn, I would say, but it achieved their general goal of distinguishing between male and female in certain mitzvot and of levying fewer distinctive ritual responsibilities on women. As a result, tzitzit came to be generally associated with a man’s clothing. So, Orthodox women do not wear them. In the most authoritative medieval code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, we read, “A woman should not wear tzitzit because she should not try to outdo her husband” (THE LAWS OF TZITZIT 17:2). What does that mean to men and women of these times?
KEPAH
The kepah is another story altogether. Not Biblical in origin, not even Talmudic, it has taken on a whole life of its own. Most non-Orthodox Jews wear a kepah at prayer, but Orthodox Jews wear it all the time—indoors, outdoors, at work, on the campus, in the bank, and so forth. I even spotted one behind a desk recently in the bureaucratic labyrinths of New York’s City Hall. Like a woman who sets her rings on the night table before retiring, and puts them on when she arises, so a man does his kepah. No matter what he does during the day (except perhaps nap or shower or swim), it hardly comes off his head.
But it wasn’t always that way. I have observed the transformation of kepah, even in my own lifetime. Barely a generation ago, hardly any Jews wore one in the street. “Be a Jew in the home, be a man in the street” was the unspoken maxim. A hat or a cap? Yes. In fact, that was how you could smoke out an Orthodox Jew in a summer crowd. But what about proper etiquette? Orthodox Jews were also reasonably well-mannered, and that meant removing one’s hat in the public indoors—an elevator, the theater, the public library, a college classroom. I remember, as a young girl, the time my father took me along to the Fort Lewis army base in Washington State to visit my twin uncles who were then U.S. marines. My father removed his hat without replacing it, as he always did, with his black rayon, slightly bepurpled yarmulke. I have never before seen him bareheaded and it startled me.
Gradually, I came to understand that inside public office buildings or places of business, my father and all of Seattle’s Orthodox Jews did not wear their yarmulkes. But they weren’t necessarily changing their stripes, either.
In the fifties, young men on dates, including Orthodox rabbinic students and ordained rabbis, were much less casual about wearing a kepah in public than their sons are today. I recall the various maneuverings by means of which they would try to be inconspicuous, yet remain faithful to Jewish law, such as slipping on a kepah in an ice-cream parlor to recite the blessing, then removing it while eating, or waiting until the theater darkened before putting it on. It wasn’t that wearing a kepah was distasteful or disagreeable to them or presented a problem on ideological grounds; it was simply the social burden of being different, of sticking out in a crowd. In the fifties Orthodox Jews, like everyone else, wanted to look like the Pepsi generation: wearing a kepah just didn’t jive.
It wasn’t only the wearer who was affected by this “with it” psychology. My husband-to-be, ahead of his time in many things, wore his kepah all the time. With some retrospective shame, I remember the great discomfort I felt on our very first date, when he wore it through the entire Broadway musical Silk Stockings. Even though it was he and not I who was wearing the kepah, I was extremely self-conscious, and while I knew it wasn’t right to ask him to “hide his religion,” as I told my sister later, I sure as anything wished he would remove it so I could relax and enjoy myself. But today, wearing the kepah has become so perfectly natural. It is a sign of membership in a particular community, a sign of a singular commitment, and to the extent that it commands any special attention, it generally is one of respect, not derision.
The metamorphosis of the kepah in Orthodoxy reflects many things: the growing ethnicity in America, the general comeback of Orthodoxy after its decline in the thirties and forties, the influence of the post-Holocaust European immigration, the increasing Holocaust consciousness among Jews in general, Israel’s Six Day War in 1967 and its freeing of young American Jews from the ghetto mentality of their parents, and the increasing desire for ritual and for overt expressions of identity and commitment.
Of late, the kepah has also become the symbol of the new social initiative of young women. Young women, some starting at age thirteen, crochet kipot (plural) for their boyfriends (as well as their fathers and brothers). I even know of one mother who felt bad for her fifteen-year-old son, the only boy in the crowd who didn’t have a kepah crocheted by a female friend. So she quietly commissioned a white kepah with a border of green hearts and had it sent to him “from a secret admirer.” The mother probably spoiled it for him for life: the boy, now twenty-one, is still fantasizing that some Jewish femme fatale will come up to him in a crowded room and disclose herself.
How is it that the kepah has become such a sensitive social and cultural barometer? The answer lies in the nonspecificity of the original laws, which has allowed great leeway in interpreting “covering the head.” Earlier, I said its source wasn’t to be found in the Talmud but that is only partly true. The Talmud does discuss headcovering, as a sign of piety and reverence, but it doesn’t mandate a hat, kaffiah, or any other headdress popular in the Middle East at that moment in history. Even the word kepah (which means “dome”) is a very late invention. By the end of the Middle Ages, the legal codes fleshed out a bit more the laws of covering one’s head; still, nothing about the sizes, shapes, and exact laws of kepah wearing. As late as the eighteenth century, Elijah Gaon the great sage of Vilna, in his commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, assumes that headcovering is worn regularly only in synagogues.
Today, however, it has become firm and fast a mark of the Orthodox community. Even battle lines have been drawn around the kepah. For example, the large, black velvet yarmulke crowd looks down critically upon the small, finely crocheted, colorful kipot. I would venture to say that the large black yarmulkes signify Chasidic and right-wing Orthodoxy while the crocheted ones are a sign of the modern Orthodox Jew. A year ago, in the Dear Abby column of Jewish law (Dear Rabby??) of a right-wing, English-language Jewish newspaper, a young man wrote, explaining his plight: as part of a professional commitment, he was required to view a contemporary film being shown in the public theaters. Inasmuch as movies were off limits in his religious circle, he asked whether he should wear his yarmulke as always or remove it so as not to shed disgrace on his community. The answer: he should not go about bareheaded. Instead, he should substitute a crocheted kepah when going to the movies.
Internecine politics aside, the kepah takes on large overtones of identity and community. Sometimes, one must pay a price, for a kepah is like waving a red flag before a violent anti-Semite. Many Jewish youth have been beaten up for wearing one, and some street-wise Jews have learned to camouflage kipot when traveling in unsafe territory.
But there are also compensations; for example, on the coldest day of the year, we were to pick up J.J. at Madison Square Garden. We were fifteen minutes late, and I was upset at the thought of hatless J.J. standing there with his ears and toes freezing off. When he got into the car, I apologized. He said, “Oh, no, I was fine. Some nice man let me wait in his car.” In a millisecond, all the weirdos of New York marched through my mind, and I began to chastise J.J. “Don’t you know by now never to get in
to a stranger’s car, even at your age?” “Oh, Ema,”* said J.J., combining laughter and exasperation, as only a teenager talking to his mother can, “the man saw my kepah and called out my name [his Hebrew name is crocheted into the design] and asked me if I wanted to wait in a warm car. …”
When I see a kepah-hatted young man in a place where I expect to see none, such as driving a Greyhound bus out of Pittsburgh, the music hall at Oberlin College in Ohio, or at a lonely bus stop in the northeast Bronx, I feel a great sense of camaraderie. I am not in the habit of picking up strange men, but immediately I go over and strike up a conversation. We’re part of the same family.
But it’s not only family; nor is it only community and shared values. It’s expectation. Underneath that crocheted kepah I expect to find something as beautiful as pure gold and as fine as the finest silk. A kepah says to me something about its wearer that we all long to say with a measure of surety about another human being—that there is a special person here, with decency, a good heart, a pureness of soul, and high ethical standards.
But that, too, is not all. The kepah has a kind of circular effect. Not only does its wearer bring to the kepah a whole set of values, rituals, and ethical precepts; it also places upon him an immediate sense of responsibility. In that respect, the kepah achieves what the tzitzit was intended to achieve: to remind the wearer that he must act in a manner that befits the kepah. We call this Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God’s name)—by living a certain way we give testimony to God’s teachings.
How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household Page 19