Even if you hear that a rabbi you trust to decide questions of Jewish Law says something to another person, that doesn't mean that the decision is applicable to you. And even more seriously forbidden are those blanket announcements of new/old "opinions." They really should be ignored.
My dear friend of over forty years, Risa, just posted something on her blog. She tells of how some strange man accosted her and her husband in the rudest way insisting that she should wear a wig and not the cloth covering she had on her hair. Read her post, please.
Here's my comment:
I guess the quack never heard of derech eretz nor has any idea of the actual history of the halachot of covering hair. Wigs are far inferior halachikly. The controversy is an old one. I'm named after my paternal (x2, father's father's mother) great-grandmother who vowed to her father that she'd only cover her hair with a scarf/hat, never a wig. After his death and the family's decision to emigrate from Poland to NY, a special Beit Din was called which decided that my great-great grandfather would agree that NY is different. With every ounce of my being I have no doubt that he wouldn't have changed his mind.
4 comments:
I just answered you on my blog.
"Full disclosure: (you might even remember) I bought a wig around the time my eldest was bar mitzvah & I did wear it. It looked great (like my passport picture that I took when I was 18 only I was 40) but I was never 'comfortable' with the idea of it actually being a hair covering."
I'll check your blog. I don't remember your wig experiment. we were less in touch then, though Gannie and I traveled up to Ramat HaMagshimim for the Bar Mitzvah Shabbat and the whole family to the Jerusalem celebrations.
An actual example involves a neighbor of mine and a friend of his who are both left handed. At bar mitzvah, they were both told to wear their tefillin on their right armsThey both went to Yeshiva University and learned some subtleties of the halach (involving writing) that might have affected the original determination. They both asked the same Rav and the circumstances appeared identical.
One was told to wear the tefillin on the left arm (ligh a right handed person) and the other was told to wear it on the right arm (as a left handed person).
The actual difference was a subtle one involving how the original psak had been given to each of them. The details do not matter, it is just that this shows how the smallest difference could change a psak and how deep an analysis must go.
Thanks for the example. Even how the question is asked can bring a different psak, answer/decision.
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