I was taken aback a few years ago when I had a beard when an old woman told me I had to earn the right to have a beard and I clearly had not.<\/p>\n
I thought it was clearly the Jewish ideal for a man to have a beard.<\/p>\n
In his first lecture on the Steipler<\/a> for Torah in Motion<\/a>, professor Marc B. Shapiro<\/a> says: “Novardok [yeshiva]<\/a> students wore beards.”<\/p>\n “If you’ve seen pictures of the great yeshivas in Europe, none of them wore black and none of them had beards. The rosh yeshivas wore beards. The bocherim<\/em> (students) were not supposed to wear beards. It was haughtiness. Who heard of a 20-year old who doesn’t know anything wearing a beard? Maybe when you know 25 masechtas and you’ve been in yeshiva for 20 years.”<\/p>\n “This has changed in America. I was in Lakewood in six years ago. A good three-quarters did not have beards. It is disputed, but Rav Ahron Kotler did not believe that you could use shavers.”<\/p>\n “Maybe some women did not want a guy with a beard?”<\/p>\n “If you wanted to grow a beard [in a yeshiva traditionally], you had to get permission from the rosh yeshiva to grow a beard.”<\/p>\n “Black [clothes] only becomes yeshivish in the 1970s as a result of Hasidic influence. Until then it was, who do you think you are to wear black? It became rabbinic garb to wear black, even in the religious Zionist world.”<\/p>\n “Black means modesty but you [traditionally] needed a reason to be modest [so ostentatiously]. The yeshiva world today does not wear black for modesty. They wear it because it is their uniform.”<\/p>\n “People complain that YU<\/a> is so frum today because a lot of the guys wear the uniform. Penguins, they call it. Black and white with a hat. They just want that yeshivish mode. In Israel, they would never dress that way because black means haredi.”<\/p>\n “In Lithuania, they did not put their tzitzit<\/a> out.”<\/p>\n “In the Sephardic world, of course you don’t wear the tzitzit<\/a> out. The Ari<\/a> ruled that you wear tzitzit<\/a> in.”<\/p>\n “In Morocco, no one wore tzitzit<\/a> out.”<\/p>\n “R. Ovadiah Yosef has a long responsa that you should keep it in.”<\/p>\n “No one has done a history, a sociology, of the American yeshivas the way I would do it. We have Samuel Heilman<\/a>. William B. Helmreich.<\/a> I’m not interested in the things they’re interested in.<\/p>\n “I’m interested in when did the black clothing coming in. When did they start wearing tzitzit<\/a> out?”<\/p>\n “The Steipler<\/a> is the only gadol who was in a non-Jewish army.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was taken aback a few years ago when I had a beard when an old woman told me I had to earn the right to have a beard and I clearly had not. I thought it was clearly the … Continue reading