Jewish religious clothing

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Hasidic men in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The man on the left is wearing a shtreimel and a tallit, and the other man traditional Hasidic garb: long suit, black hat, and gartel
.

Jewish religious clothing is

Jewish religion. Jewish religious clothing has changed over time while maintaining the influences of biblical commandments and Jewish religious law regarding clothing and modesty (tzniut
). Contemporary styles in the wider culture also have a bearing on Jewish religious clothing, although this extent is limited.

Historical background

The Torah set forth rules for dress that, following later rabbinical tradition, were interpreted as setting Jews apart from the communities in which they lived.[1]

Classical Greek and Roman sources, that often ridicule many aspects of Jewish life, do not remark on their clothing and subject it to caricature, as they do when touching on Celtic, Germanic, and Persian peoples, and mock their different modes of dress.[2] Cultural anthropologist Eric Silverman argues that Jews in the late antiquity period used clothes and hair-styles like the people around them.[3] At 2 Maccabees 4:12, it is said that the Maccabees slaughtered Jewish youths guilty of Hellenizing in wearing caps typical of Greek youths.[3]

In the

Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur decreed that Jews must wear a dark blue garb, with very large sleeves and a grotesquely oversized hat;[5] his son altered the colour to yellow, a change that may have influenced Catholic ordinances some time later.[5] German ethnographer Erich Brauer (1895–1942) noted that in Yemen of his time, Jews were not allowed to wear clothing of any color besides blue.[6] Earlier, in Jacob Saphir's time (1859), they would wear outer garments that were "utterly black".[citation needed
]

In France, during the Middle Ages, Jewish men typically wore trousers and a shirt (chemise), thought by Rashi to have been equivalent to the tunic worn by Jewish men of the east.[7]

Men's clothing

Many Jewish men historically wore a

tarbush on their heads.[11]

A Yemenite Jewish elder wearing a sudra with central hat

Tallit, tzitzit

The

Ramban, require burying the dead with their tallit,[15]
and which has become the general practice amongst most religious Jews. Among others, the matter is dependent upon custom.

A Jewish woman praying with a tallit and tefillin

Since tzitzit are considered to be a time-bound commandment, only men are required to wear them.

bat mitzvah.[20][22][23]

Kippah

A

tarboush.[citation needed
]

Kittel

A

Ashkenazi Orthodox circles, it is customary for the groom to wear a kittel under the chuppah (wedding canopy).[citation needed
]

Women's clothing

Jewish Yemenite women and children in a refugee camp near Aden, Yemen in 1949. According to Jewish religious law, a married woman must cover her hair

Married observant Jewish women wear a scarf (

sheitel) in order to conform with the requirement of Jewish religious law that married women cover their hair.[27][28]

A Greek Sephardic couple in wedding costume ca. late 19th century. The woman wears a veil in accordance with wedding custom.

Jewish women were distinguished from others in the western regions of the Roman Empire by their custom of veiling in public. The custom of veiling was shared by Jews with others in the eastern regions.[29] The custom petered out among Roman women, but was retained by Jewish women as a sign of their identification as Jews. The custom has been retained among Orthodox women.[30] Evidence drawn from the Talmud shows that pious Jewish women would wear shawls over their heads when they would leave their homes, but there was no practice of fully covering the face.[31] In the medieval era, Jewish women started veiling their faces under the influence of the Islamic societies they lived in.[32] In some Muslim regions such as in Baghdad, Jewish women veiled their faces until the 1930s. In the more lax Kurdish regions, Jewish women did not cover their faces.[33]

Jewish vs gentile customs

Based on the rabbinic traditions of the Talmud, the 12th century philosopher Maimonides forbade emulating gentile dress and apparel when those same items of clothing have immodest designs, or that they are connected somehow to an idolatrous practice, or are worn because of some superstitious practice (i. e., "the ways of an Amorite").[34]

A question was posed to 15th-century Rabbi

responsum, Rabbi Colon wrote that any Jew who might be a practising physician is permitted to wear a physician's cape (traditionally worn by gentile physicians on account of their expertise in that particular field of science and their wanting to be recognized as such), and that the Jewish physician who wore it has not infringed upon any law in the Torah, even though Jews were not wont to wear such garments in former times.[35] He noted that there is nothing attributed to "superstitious" practice by their wearing such a garment, while, at the same time, there isn't anything promiscuous or immodest about wearing such a cape, neither is it worn out of haughtiness. Moreover, he has understood from Maimonides (Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim 11:1) that there is no commandment requiring a fellow Jew to seek out and look for clothing which would make them stand out as "different" from what is worn by gentiles, but rather, only to make sure that what a Jew might wear is not an "exclusive" gentile item of clothing. He noted that wearing a physician's cape is not an exclusive gentile custom, noting, moreover, that since the custom to wear the cape varies from place to place, and that, in France, physicians do not have it as a custom to wear such capes, it cannot therefore be an exclusive gentile custom.[35]

According to Rabbi Colon, modesty was still a criterion for wearing gentile clothing, writing: "...even if Israel made it as their custom [to wear] a certain item of clothing, while the Gentiles [would wear] something different, if the Israelite garment should not measure up to [the standard established in] Judaism or of modesty more than what the Gentiles hold as their practice, there is no prohibition whatsoever for an Israelite to wear the garment that is practised among the Gentiles, seeing that it is in [keeping with] the way of fitness and modesty just as that of Israel."[35]

Rabbi

Mishne Torah, Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim 11:1), making the wearing of gentile clothing contingent upon three factors: 1) that they not be promiscuous clothing; 2) not be clothing linked to an idolatrous practice; 3) not be clothing that was worn because of some superstitious practice (or "the way of the Amorites"). Rabbi Moses Isserles (1530–1572) opines that to these strictures can be added one additional prohibition of wearing clothes that are a "custom" for them (the gentiles) to wear, that is to say, an exclusive gentile custom where the clothing is immodest.[36] Rabbi and posek Moshe Feinstein (1895–1986) subscribed to the same strictures.[37]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-84520-513-3
    . Jews dressed differently as God's outcasts. But Jews also dressed differently in premodern Europe because their rabbis understood any emulation of non-Jews as a violation of the divine Law as revealed by God to Moses atop Mount Sinai. The Five Books of Moses, after all, together called the Torah, clearly specify that Jews must adhere to a particular dress code-modesty, for example, and fringes. The very structure of the cosmos demanded nothing less. Clothing, too, served as a "fence" that protected Jews from the profanities and pollutions of the non-Jewish societies in which they dwelled. From this angle, Jews dressed distinctively as God's elect.
  2. ISBN 978-1-84520-513-3
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-1-84520-513-3
    .
  4. Abodah Zarah
     34a, et al.)
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-1-84520-513-3
    .
  6. ^ Brauer, Erich (1934). Ethnologie der Jemenitischen Juden. Vol. 7. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Kulturgeschichte Bibliothek, I. Reihe: Ethnologische bibliothek., p. 79.
  7. Babylonian Talmud
    (Shabbat 120a, s.v. חלוק‎)
  8. Ben-Zvi Institute
    : Jerusalem 1982, p. 186.
  9. OCLC 754770102. ḥalūq [= tunic], it is the outer garment [which is worn].. Cf. Erich Brauer, Ethnologie der jemenitischen Juden, Heidelberg 1934, p. 81 (German). Quote (translation): "A blue tunic that has a split that extends down to the waistline and that is closed at neck level is worn over the maizar (i.e. undergarment). If the tunic is multicolored and striped, it is called [in Arabic] taḥtāni, meaning, the lower. If it is monochrome, it is called [in Arabic] ‘antari. Finally, the outer layer of clothing, worn over the maizar and ‘antari, is a dark-blue cotton kuftān
    . The kuftān is a coat-like garment that extends down to the knees, that is fully open in the front and is closed with a single button in the neck."
  10. Baba Bathra
     57b)
  11. ^ Kahlenberg, Caroline R. (Feb 2018). "The Tarbush Transformation: Oriental Jewish Men and the Significance of Headgear in Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 25 June 2019. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  12. Israel Kessar
    ), Tel-Aviv 2005, p. 30 (Hebrew)
  13. ^ Deuteronomy 22:12
  14. ISBN 0-19-815402-X., s.v. Menahot
    4:1
  15. ^ Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah § 351:2
  16. Mishne Torah (Hil. Avodah Zarah 12:3). The same Posek
    (decisor) has, however, cited its leniency, where women are permitted to wear them if they wish to do so.
  17. ^ Brody, Shlomo (October 15, 2010). "Why Do Orthodox Women Not Wear Tefillin or Tallit?". The Jerusalem Post.
  18. ^ Signs and Symbols
  19. ^ Rebecca Shulman Herz (2003). "The Transformation of Tallitot: How Jewish Prayer Shawls Have Changed Since Women Began Wearing Them". Women in Judaism: Contemporary Writings. 3 (2). University of Toronto. Archived from the original on 2012-03-17. Retrieved 2019-03-08.
  20. ^
    ISBN 978-1-55753-657-0
    .
  21. ^ Halpern, Avigayil (22 January 2014). "Women, Tefillin, and Double Standards". My Jewish Learning. Retrieved 2 October 2018.
  22. ISBN 978-0-7624-4041-2
    .
  23. ISBN 978-1-58023-090-2
    .
  24. ^ "Kippah". Archived from the original on 2009-02-14. Retrieved 2009-03-20.
  25. ^
    ISBN 0-87306-864-5
    .
  26. ^ Pesach - The Kittel, Four Cups, And Afikomen (PDF), Teaneck, New Jersey: Kof-K
  27. ^ Sherman, Julia (November 17, 2010). "She goes covered".
  28. ^ Schiller, Mayer (1995). "The Obligation of Married Women to Cover Their Hair" (PDF). The Journal of Halacha (30 ed.). pp. 81–108. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 27, 2016. Retrieved June 26, 2016.
  29. ISBN 978-0-520-22693-7
    .
  30. ISBN 978-0-299-13854-7
    .
  31. ISBN 978-1-57910-284-5
    .
  32. ISBN 978-1-317-45167-9
    .
  33. ISBN 978-0-231-50759-2
    .
  34. Mishne Torah
    (Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim 11:1)
  35. ^ a b c Questions & Responsa of Rabbi Joseph Colon, responsum # 88
  36. ^ Yoreh De'ah §178:1
  37. ^ Igrot Moshe (Epistles of Moshe), Yoreh De'ah I, responsum # 81

Further reading

External links
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