The Lilith Blog

June 11, 2018 by Marina Goodman

Why I Stopped Covering My Hair After Almost 20 Years

It was the Saturday night before Thanksgiving. My husband and I were planning on having a fun night out at Foxboro before traveling to see family for the holiday.  I wondered: should I wait till after Thanksgiving and not deal with my family’s reaction?  But no, I was ready now. 

So with that, I left the house without my hair being covered for the first time since I walked home from my wedding, nineteen and a half years ago. The sensation of the icy November evening air going through my hair was delicious.

Back in college, I had noticed that while Jews from all streams of Judaism went to dinner at the Kosher Dining Hall, it was primarily the Orthodox students who refrained from going to parties afterwards.  While I had no intention of becoming Orthodox back then, the integrity of those students’ behavior led me to include Orthodoxy in my soul-search while studying abroad in Israel, looking at it along with Reform and Conservative Judaism.