Reflections on Wig Burning
Stepping onto 13th Avenue in Borough Park is like crossing a threshold between two worlds; gone are the Dominican fruit vendors and Honduran car mechanics. Instead, falafel signs boasting rabbinical approval compete with kosher bakeries. Orthodox Jewish men in stark black suits hurry by, their hats wrapped in plastic to protect them from the pelting rain. Theirs is an insular community, and it is hard to believe that only a few months ago throngs of people gathered here and in Williamsburg to throw wigs onto a blazing fire and watch them burn.
Mass burnings are historically the setting for highly charged emotions, so it was no surprise to learn that religious beliefs were at the root of these incensed actions — a frenzied response to a rabbinical ban that had just been issued in Israel against wigs made from hair used in sacred Hindu ceremonies. These wigs, or sheitels, can cost up to $3,000, and are generally worn by women in the Orthodox Jewish community who can not show their hair in public after marriage for reasons of modesty. The intersection of these vastly different religions was like a sudden encounter between two strangers on a path who realize that they are somehow connected. What a beautiful thought — or at least that’s how I interpreted it in my naïve, idealistic manner. Yet this was not to be, and thousand-dollar wigs were promptly sacrificed at the first cry of idolatry.
The specific ceremony that Israeli rabbis were referring to takes place at the Tirupati temple of Sri Venkateswara on the Tirumala hill in the Andhra Pradesh province of India. Devotees have their hair cut off and offer it as a means of symbolizing the effacement of the ego. This ritual is called “tonsuring,” and most Hindus will try to make this pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. The Tirupati temple receives approximately 50,000 pilgrims a day, and about a ton of hair. It is this hair that caused a stir in the Orthodox Jewish community as its removal was viewed as idol worship, or avoda zara in Hebrew, and therefore inappropriate for use in wigs.
While it is widely known that Judaism rejects visual representations of God, and many Jews even believe that sculpting or carving a human image for any reason is itself a form of idol worship, I was determined to understand the reasons behind the wig hysteria, and why a ritual that has lasted thousands of years should suddenly be deemed idolatrous.
Months have passed; the ashes have been swept away, and life in Orthodox neighborhoods, such as Williamsburg and Borough Park, is more or less business as usual. Yet there are small, imperceptible differences. A sign hangs by the front desk of Yaffa’s Wigs on 13th Avenue, naming the sheitel models that are “questionable” and should not be worn. It clearly came as a shock to learn that many of these sheitels were suddenly deemed un-kosher, although this was an issue that had first been raised in Israel in 1990 and was subsequently forgotten. Amrom, 18, a student at the Bobov Hasidic Synagogue community school in Borough Park, spoke about the reactions of people he knew. “It affected everybody — for years and years they used the hair from there, no one knew,” he said. “If they take off their hair for religious reasons of their god, that’s a problem for us to wear it.”
Rabbi Bala Gluck from the Central Rabbinical Congress, which represents a small, anti-Zionist sect of the Orthodox community, said, “[It was] a problem with the idol in the Tirupati temples; because [the hair] comes from a deity — that’s the purpose.” But no matter how much he was pressed, he would not say anything more. Yet this response dismisses one of the most fundamental and complex aspects of the Hindu belief system. It assumes that Sri Venkateswara, one of the most popular deities of the Hindu pantheon, is merely an idol — one of many — when in fact he is more accurately seen as a manifestation of God. This is not unlike Christianity, in which the Son and the Holy Spirit are seen as incarnations of the one true God. Hinduism incorporates over 30 million deities that are all different manifestations of the same divine source of being.
It is important to recognize the symbolic element that is at work here. Indian pilgrims who trek to the Tirupati temple are not offering their hair to Sri Venkateswara in the literal sense; instead, the objective of tonsuring is as a symbolic gesture demonstrating that he or she completely surrenders the ego at the feet of the Lord. Dr. M. G. Prasad, who lectures on Hinduism at the Sri Venkateswara temple in Bridgewater, New Jersey, said, “[Tonsuring] is a symbolic offering of the self … there is no idol worship. This is a misunderstood concept … the idea of offering is to be humble, to recognize that there is an omnipotent, all-prevailing, all-mighty.” The hair is not what is being offered, it is simply a by-product.
Yet this is not necessarily known in the entire Orthodox Jewish community, and this misinterpretation is what led to the burning and subsequent banning of Indian-hair wigs. Married Orthodox women wear wigs to conceal their natural hair, which is sensuous and should be reserved for the husband only. When Jewish men wear a kipa to cover their head, it is meant to remind them of the presence of a higher being. Women do not need this reminder as they are already said to be on a higher spiritual plane, yet parallels can be drawn between these practices and those of the thousands of Hindu pilgrims who remove their hair to humble themselves before a higher power. In both cases, there is a relinquishment of the self to God, in whatever form that may take. Jews cover their hair; Hindus remove it. Both are choosing belief over vanity.
As I wandered through Yaffa’s Wigs — a welcome refuge from the pouring rain — and ogled the rows of stoic, unblinking mannequin heads, I imagined the ritual of choosing a wig, and the level of commitment that is involved. With the recent scandals in France prohibiting female Muslim students from wearing veils, the choice to cover one’s hair seems almost archaic, especially in a globalized society that grows more and more homogenous each day. And yet wigs continue to be bought, and hair continues to be shorn, and these sacred traditions are kept alive. It is our understanding of them that crashes and burns.
