Q:
What is the concept of a sheitel? Now a sheitel is even more beautiful than a woman’s own hair!
A:
Now some actually, you know, disapprove of a sheitel. However, I’m not going to preach the virtues of a sheitel, but if you’re asking me what is halachically the justification, it’s as follows:
When we know that this is only imitation hair, it’s a dampener on enthusiasm. When a person appears with a head of hair that came out of a sheitel box, immediately it’s an entirely different personality. Suppose you saw a person with a beautiful face, a beautiful appealing face, but you know that the face is only a mask put on, so it doesn’t have any appeal to you. Who will fall in love with a piece of paper?
And therefore, once you know that it’s a sheitel, that’s important. In frum communities, you see a woman pushing a baby carriage, there are two babies in the carriage and four more holding onto the sides and she has a beautiful sheitel, it’s not her hair, you know for sure. So therefore, that’s it… it’s insurance!
And that’s why you can make a bracha in the presence of a sheitel, where you cannot make a bracha in the presence of uncovered hair, because the yetzer doesn’t have such shlitah when you know it’s all artificial.
(March 1986)
