The Lilith Blog

December 26, 2008 by Mel Weiss

The View From Under The Bus

Let me start by saying happy Hanukkah, everyone, and I hope whatever other holidays you celebrate are also full of joy and peace.

While we turn off the world for a few days to celebrate, though, interesting and frequently disquieting political stuff continues to go down all over the place. And frankly, I’m not fond of too much of it, because the tossing of people under the metaphorical bus seems not to have taken much of a holiday break. I’m not even talking about the under-the-bus-chuck of the auto industry (especially labor in that sector) by congressional Republicans like Louisiana Senator David Vitter. (And isn’t it a totally weird coincidence that many of the Southern states that crashed the auto bailout happen to have lots of factories from foreign-run, unionless auto companies?)

No, no, I’m talking about much more in-your-face, flip-you-the-bird-as-I-toss-you, not-even-any-TARP-money-from-the-White-House-as-a-consolation-prize under-the-bus chucks. Like the Israeli government’s tearing down of the country’s first “eco-mosque,” at Wadi Na’am in the Negev. The project had been scheduled for demolition in November; the demo was postponed, but now Bustan, a cooperative eco-org in Israel, is reporting that yesterday, under the cover of darkness, the mosque was totally destroyed. Merry Christmas, everyone!

If you’re an American searching for bus-chucking closer to home, consider our still-administration deciding that hey, if you don’t want to perform a medical procedure or do your job in the health industry because of religious objections, that’s totally cool. To refresh your memory, this just-passed jewel enables anyone employed in any sector of the medical world—from your dentist to your gynecologist to the person who schedules your medical appointments to the person who cleans medical tools in a doctor’s office and on and on—to refuse to participate in any part of any medical procedure they personally reject on religious grounds. The sprinkles on this ice cream cone of absurdity? Nobody is required to inform his or her employer beforehand of any such scruples that might come up! Anyone who’s ever been to or plans to go to a medical professional for anything, ever, should go to NCJW’s action page and tell your representatives in Congress and the president-elect that you think this is ridiculous.

Oh, and while you’re enumerating for President-Elect Obama the things you’re not wild about, how about adding on that you’re not pleased to have America’s gays (and women) tossed under the bus right now either. Obama’s pick to lead the invocation at the inauguration is the gays-and-repro-rights-hating Pastor Rick Warren. (If you’ve missed some of the more salient recent commentary, start catching up now.) In the wake of Prop 8 (or “Prop H8,” as innumerable email forwards have renamed it) and its concomitant protests from pissed-off Americans of all sexual orientations, it seems like now is maybe not a great time for Democrats to be totally taking advantage of the gay vote. (Numerically, I’d like to point out that it’s almost never a good time to mess with the women’s vote, as we’re kind of the majority. Not that that seems to stop anyone…)

My own ritual Christmas movie was “Milk,” an excellent reminder that even a small group of people, organizing to claim their rights, can refuse to lay down under the bus anymore. As I sat in the darkened theater, I thought of the powerful ending to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: “The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.” And when I got home from the movie, I lit my menorah as it sat in my window for any and all to see, a reminder that small groups of dedicated individuals can win our freedoms, but only we, though dedication and courage, can keep that light alive in our own times.

I hope your holidays are peaceful; don’t lie down under the bus.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

December 8, 2008 by Mel Weiss

What You Won't See

I was really touched by Anna’s most recent post on missing women, and also stumped about the theme of my post this week. So here is your shamelessly-ripped-off roundup on what you might find missing in the political universe around you.

Medical Care. Remember that guy, we used to all talk about him a lot, his name is President George W. Bush? Yeah, he’s still president, and he’s got about five weeks left to do some nice damage before he bounces. Among those things are the “Provider Conscience” rule, which, according to NOW, “has the potential to severely restrict women’s access to birth control and other reproductive health services.” Essentially, the rule says that “any healthcare worker who morally objects to any medical procedure or service can legally refuse to perform it or take part in any way.” And—get this—although this is an obvious poke at abortion, birth control, and other repro rights beneficiaries, technically, this rule could protect medical staff that didn’t want to make appointments, prescribe drugs, or clean medical instruments. Um…what?

Jobs. Well, only if the auto industry gets good and shot down by Congress, and by Congress, I mean Congressional Republicans. The auto industry bailout is one of those things that I just didn’t want to think about, because it makes my head hurt. But the truth is, no matter how bad your bailout fatigue, you should really give this one a few minutes of consideration. For starters, this is not your investment broker’s bailout: this one’s a lot smaller ($25 billion vs. the financial industry’s $700 billion); it’s in loans, and not straight giveaways; it’s got the support of the United Auto Workers, normally not too chummy with the heads of the Big Three. However, I can’t do nearly the job explaining this as can Senator Barney Frank, interviewed by the ever on-target Rachel Maddow, so watch this.

By the way, yeah, you’re in America in the 21st century, watching a gay senator being interviewed by a wildly popular, incredibly talented and totally butch lesbian talking head, which brings us to…

Gays. This Wednesday is scheduled to be Day Without a Gay. LGBTQAI etc. folks and their straight allies are encouraged to call in “gay” to work and do service projects of all sorts. I think this is sweet. If you’re missing lots of folks from the office on Wednesday, I hope DWaG is why.

Senator Nita Lowey. With Secretary of State Clinton getting ready for the transition, Gov. Patterson needs to fill her seat soon, and not shockingly, everybody’s got an opinion. As ever, I have several, but at the top of my little list was Congresswoman Nita Lowey, who was under consideration but has apparently formally declined. In addition to her great progressive voting record, I had really been hoping for a resurgence of of those great dancing-head videos about Jewish women in Congress. Oh well—more’s the pity.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

December 3, 2008 by admin

Missing

While in China this summer, I read as much as I could about the country’s “orphan problem.” I particularly loved The Lost Daughters of China, written by Karin Evans, an American adoptive mom of a Chinese baby girl.

Evans’ book overflows with perspectives personal, academic, and literary. She talks about how the complete unprecedented-ness of this international exchange that brings babies from poor, rural families on one side of the earth to grow up with upper-middle-class families, usually of a different race and culture, on the other side of the earth (30,000 in America alone); shares an adoption researcher’s belief that adoption does important work stretching the notion of “family”; quotes a poet who addresses “these women of the world’s first international female diaspora”; and discusses the hundreds of thousands of women “missing,” scientifically speaking, from the world’s population.

What this means is that in many countries, especially in East and South Asia and the Middle East, there are not as many women in the population as are biologically expected: in nature, a birth rate of about 105 males to every 100 females and a better survival rate for females yield a nearly 1:1 ratio.

I had heard of China’s “gender gap” before, and I knew about female infanticide in China and of gender-selective abortions there and elsewhere (India especially), but I had never thought of the women missing as just that…real, individual people, people of all ages, across the world, who aren’t where they should be.

In China, old women, who were killed as infants in the 1930s and 40s, are “missing”; middle-aged women are “missing,” whose brothers were more likely to get their family’s last bits of food during the famine of 1958-61; girls and young women are “missing” from the advent of sex-determining ultrasound (since outlawed); and females of all ages who have been the victims of poorer health care, nutrition, and basic care than those received by their male counterparts are “missing.”

This is so haunting. I was glad Evans educated me about these women so I could think about them, honor their memory. In hindsight, the idea of not knowing about them made me sick.

I didn’t think until much later that this haunting presence had surely echoed, for me, our phantom population after the Holocaust: the millions, and the millions upon millions that their descendants would now be. They are in our peripheral vision when we look at our own community; to the left and right of us we know, eerily, the invisible branches on our family trees. I think, at our core, we are simply horrified knowing of so many people for whom no one was even alive to say kaddish.

Fifteen years ago, a government-sponsored survey in China showed more than 12% of that country’s baby girls missing, or more than one and a half million babies yearly. In all, about 30 million females are missing there, and worldwide, 100 million.

If we as Jews are the primary remembers of lost Jews, then we as women should – and will – be the primary remembers of lost women. They are an enormous and greatly diverse group that has amassed over the centuries right up to today. How can we memorialize them?

Info about infanticide on Gendercide Watch:
www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html

An appropriately angry blog post on the subject with an interesting slant (those articles about how hard it is for men in China to find wives):
http://www.anglofille.com/2007/01/13/the-chinese-holocaust/

–Anna Schnur-Fishman

The Lilith Blog

December 2, 2008 by admin

You're Invited to View My Photos!!!

I’m invited to view your photos!!!
But maybe, just maybe, I couldn’t care less?
Your swaddled new infant, in pink cap or blue cap
In mom’s arms, then dad’s arms, then still, fast asleep.
I’ve seen it before, far too many times over
First smile! First bottle! First eyes open wide—
Well I can’t be wide-eyed! Your blah blah baby bores me.
I can’t ooh and ahh when you cry “He adores me.”
So thanks for the photos, and sorry to Snap-
Fish around for another to view the whole slide show.
Though I’m sad to miss out on what Baby just did now,
Delete! To the trash! He’s a garbage pail kid now.
The phone rings. It’s you: “Did you look at my beauty?”
I grimace. I pause. I squeal: “Oh what a cutie!”

–Chavatzelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

November 24, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Madame Secretary!

Google’s newish ‘suggested search’ function can be irritating, but it also gives you a feel for what’s on the mind of The Public. Like when you search “Hillary Clinton secretary of state” and see that nearly a million and a half other folks have done the same, you get that nice cozy feeling of being on the same wavelength as so many others. For the record, it’s now pretty clear that, post-Thanksgiving, Obama’s going to offer Clinton the post and she’s going to say yes. Now, I know plenty of people are worried about plenty of angles on this one (and as a New Yorker, let me say me, too!, because we’ve got quite a situation on our hands here, and she’s been an amazing senator), but please allow me to list some reasons why this is a good thing:

Senator Clinton, in her own right, which is to say if you don’t think about the nasty things she and the President-Elect said about each other in the primaries, is an obvious and amazing choice for SoS. She’s clearly brilliant and capable, has sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee for a while now, has traveled for the Senate extensively (remember the vodka incident?), met and cultivated relationships with an amazing number of dignitaries during her tenure as First Lady, and, last but far from least, she’s tough as nails.

I can’t deny that the idea of two successive strong women in the position is appealing, even though Condaleeza Rice may no longer have any soul left to sell at this point in the game, which should disqualify her from my approval. [This week’s New York magazine has a surprisingly straightforward—and kind of depressing—article, not yet available online, about the Hillary Clinton/Sarah Palin bitch vs. ditz conundrum. I was won over to the idea that the ditz rep is far more damaging, so I say, the more aggressive, self-possessed, smarter-than-you-and-you-know-it women we can get back into the spotlight asap, the better.] Nor can I deny that, along with Bill Richardson and Janet Napolitano (and we can throw in Lawrence Summers for good measure), Clinton’s presence helps me believe that this is an administration that will manage to ‘look like America’ in a non-pandering, non-condescending kind of way.

And I know people are worried that they’re not going to be able to work together, and there’s been plenty of bashing of the “team of rivals” concept (many thanks to Doris Kearns Goodwin for popularizing that phrase), but I guess I just can’t help appreciating at least the appearance of adults acting like adults and putting the country before their own petty grievances.

And to all y’all who still fear that Obama is somehow not good for Israel, take a deep breath. This appointment will confirm that, sorry, you’re wrong. Even Republicans, during those years of the primary that now, in my mind, stretch back a decade or so, admitted that Clinton had a good record on Israel. Israelis certainly thought so.

Yes, this does open up, to quote Rachel Maddow, “about 1.7 trillion political questions.” Yes, it may cause conflict. Yes, it may well be concerning to note all these Clintonites and fairly hawkish folks in an Obama administration, especially in the foreign policy and diplomacy department.

But it still makes me smile*.

–Mel Weiss

*The fact that I won a bet by calling this appointment weeks ago is totally beside the point.

The Lilith Blog

November 18, 2008 by admin

Entry #6: On Gratitude

Needless to say, it’s been a long time since I’ve written. The fall months have swirled up and overhead, dried leaves rushing away from me, ungraspable. These months have been a whirlwind of academic rigor in my doctorate program, while the real conquest has been unspoken for. These months my mother has slipped quietly into doctor’s office, the obligatory testings. They count her blood cells and tap out her heartbeat, make sure one is multiplying slowly enough while another beats quick-tempo enough. I remember years ago now, when the doctor explained to us why my mother was subject to constant echocardiograms. Chemotherapy isn’t localized but attacks the whole body, depressing the heart, he had said. At the time, I swore my heart slowed too, depressed by the news. I pictured her strong beating heart then like a tired dog. I pictured the heart that had once brought life to mine. Back then I asked myself the most universal question—how do we cut out those damaging pieces in our life while protecting and not forsaking those most essential life-giving parts? Back then it was a funny puzzle for us to work out, how to keep the best parts of her.

These months we walk unsaddled by the immediate fears that cancer brings. These months there is no screech in the record player, we glide through the hum drum of busy daily monotony, in a premature victory.

It’s funny how quickly gratitude melts into the unchecked privilege of the daily grind. It’s unchecked because we just go, just do. We just fall into our deadlines, our paychecks, our minutiae of life stressors. We just consume, our daily meals our daily news, we are consumed. And through this I try so hard to ask mindfully, what is gratitude, how do I engage my thankfulness? Do I think of cancer often and daily, do I hum a silent morning ohm for motherhood and life? Do I let myself drive full throttle through the streets of daily life, full engagement as the ultimate act of gratefulness? How shall I be grateful for my hushed non-newsy existence these past months, for my mother prattling off Thanksgiving recipes and movies I ought to see and the blessed nag she has honed and crafted in her elder years? I still await the answer.

–I. Kramer

The Lilith Blog

November 17, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Marital Blues

The whole “same-sex marriage” thing has been on my mind a lot since the election, mostly because that’s where we lost. The succor of those magic words, “President-elect Obama,” has been a balm for me, but, to mangle a metaphor or two, the bloom is about to be off the rose and people still can’t get married. So. Let’s discuss.

For starters, in case you were overwhelmed by aforementioned magic words, allow me to remind you that just under two weeks ago, California, Florida and Arizona voted to make same-sex marriage illegal. Arkansas voted to make sure that no one not legally married—and that means y’all, too, straight single folks—can adopt or foster a child. That brings the number of states with a constitutional ban up to twenty-nine. (Not to mention those that have bans written into law but not the state constitution.) There are two states that will marry The Gays, eight states and a district that will guarantee some sort of vague, partnership-type legal relationship that may look like marriage and smell like marriage, but is definitely not marriage, and one clearly befuddled state, squeaking out legal gymnastics a Talmudist would be proud of, which will not permit gay marriage to happen instate, but will recognize it formally when performed in a state where it is permitted*. Basically, we’re not feeling the love.

So, why should Jewish feminists care, specifically? How many levels of outrage can this hit for us?

Well, first of all, there are some out there who’d say that the right to marry the person you love is a universal right, something every human should be allowed. But let’s leave them aside for a moment, because that kind of argument just shuts down debate. Historically, some of the early rifts between the secular feminists and gay folks (lesbians, mostly)—“Lavender Menace,” anyone?—didn’t exist between the Jewish feminist and Jewish queer movements**. We have a longstanding closeness and a history mutual aid and support—not to mention a vast pool of people with dual identification—so it’s time to step up.

Furthermore, this is an issue of the separation of church and state if ever I have seen one. Forget the ten commandments in public parks and school prayer; ask anyone who says that they think gays shouldn’t be allowed to get married—including that strange breed who insist that we should be given every legal right that accompanies marriage without the marriage itself—ask them to provide a definition of marriage unrelated to religion. Listen, if there are churches out there—or synagogues, say—that want to refuse to do gay marriage, I’m okay with that. I might find it painful, but it’s legitimate in the eyes of the law. But the nation doesn’t get to work that way. And Jews, especially, ever attuned to the ruling authorities’ views on state/religion, should be concerned and opposed to this sort of blurring.

Lastly, given that we’re a people with a reputation for economic acuity, we should all recognize that gay marriage will be good for the economy. And right now, just about anything that merits that praise should be strongly embraced.

The World Congress of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Jews points out that we’re not going to have a unified Jewish front on this any time soon. (Nu? Remember that old joke about two Jews and three opinions?) But I had to put this out there—even at the risk of raving at the choir—in case any of this could possibly change someone’s mind. Seriously—we are not the enemy, and we need every vocal ally we can get.

People have been taking to the streets, which is heartening***. Jews were an important part of the last civil rights movement, and I hope we stay just as involved in the next one.

—Mel Weiss

*I refer, of course, to my ancestral homeland, the big NY. The only analogous legal comparison I can make, actually, is to the recognition of non-Orthodox marriages in Israel. Coincidence?
**Lilith (ahem), particularly, has embodied that historical non-divide. If you’re looking for more academic sources, read Pamela Nadell’s chapter in Women Remaking American Judaism for details.
***Although wouldn’t it be so much better if we could all focus our energies on making sure everyone has food and a home and affordable healthcare?

The Lilith Blog

November 11, 2008 by admin

Election

Last Tuesday, as I flipped between channels, I was endlessly enthused by the number of people over 65 giving live interviews on television, and the number of people of all ages invoking their parents and grandparents.

Seeing older people acting as crucial sources of perspective in an election year, not as cute and endearing characters led onto camera or into stump speech anecdotes just to win our hearts over, was moving, orienting, and a joy.

Americans lending their life experience included veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, the average citizen who remembers the time before the Voting Rights Act, and the average citizen who remembers someone who remembered it. One station’s anchor reported (spontaneously, it seemed) on his phone call with his mother just after the race was called. A famed presidential historian was on air – and described her grandmother’s childhood. The 67-year-old Congressman John Lewis from Georgia, a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was, as always, a fount of stirring comments, but equally stirring to me were the leading questions of his interviewers: “I was just gonna ask,” one interrupted, “who it makes you think of, what are some of the names, what are some of the faces flying through your head right now?” It was the hugest night of the last four years, and it wasn’t the History Channel, but he was being invited to reminisce freely, the value of listening to him self-evident.

The names and faces flying through his head were Martin Luther King, President Johnson, President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, the “countless individuals that stood in those unmovable lines in Selma,” and those young people who gave their lives for the cause.

Before Tuesday, I had never calculated that my parents were 16 years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated – I had never integrated the timeline of Civil Rights history with the timeline of my family history…to figure out when it was that, as my father proudly reports, my immigrant grandmother passionately encouraged him to join the movement.

Last night I heard a lecture by Kenyan-born author Ngugi wa Thiong’o. He said he remembered two things when the race was called last Tuesday. First, he imagined the first African captured and taken to America, and second, he remembered the story of an African-American man who, when Obama won the Democratic nomination, ran to the graveyard of his parents and grandparents. He had not expected or planned to do that, Ngugi recalled, but when the moment came, he just “wanted to be with them.”

In a way, I think we’ve all “run to the graveyard of our parents and grandparents” with this news in our hearts – in honor of them, in honor of those buried around them; out of elation, gratitude, and nostalgia; with questions; for information, confrontation, and celebration; to be sobered, to be reminded, to be made grateful, to relate the news, to receive a blessing, to herald a new day, to recall the old days – just to spend time with the soil in which they were buried.

As Jews, we know that history is always relevant, reliving it an imperative, and as women, we can be confident that the stories less aired have just as much to teach. Maybe we, as a nation, are too scared to take the long (and wide) view sometimes, but a shared, popular, primetime willingness and excitement to do so is one of the many phenomena of this election that I hope sticks around through January and beyond.

–Anna Schnur-Fishman

The Lilith Blog

November 11, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

Promoting Promiscuity?

The perils of public transport are too much to bear for some of the delicate flowers of northwest London. Golders Green and Hendon have a seedy side and many anxious parents insist on driving their daughters to and from school to shield them from the sort of people they are likely to meet on the bus en route to one of the religious schools in the area.

I have a different approach – stick our kids on the bus and let them see how the other half lives: girls with skirts up to their pupik [belly button], with pallid skin and multiple earlobe piercings, smoking nervously and looking pathetic hanging onto the shirttails of smelly, gangly and pimply boys. This has to be the most effective antidote to any frum girl’s aspirations to be ‘normal.’

There is a climate of fear about teenage girls. Media reports suggest that girl gangs take pleasure in gratuitous violence and target defenceless victims. We don’t know what to do about the young girls drinking alcohol to excess and starving themselves to death. The crowds will part in a shopping mall to let a group of prowling girls pass by. I know as I have done it myself – they can be very intimidating, even though underneath it all, they just want a young man to love them and look after them. This is why the UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe.

One of the obvious implications of multiple sexual partners is the increased chances of sexually transmitted diseases, and recent news that the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccination, designed to protect against ‘the commonest causes of cervical cancer,’ will soon be available to 12 and 13 year olds has confused religious parents. The government sponsored brochure explains that the virus is very common and you catch it by being sexually active with another person who already has the virus…you need to have the vaccination before you start being sexually active. And, while most girls don’t start having sex before they’re at least 16 or quite a bit older, it is recommended that you have the vaccine at 12 or 13 years of age to protect you as early as possible.

Community responses has varied: doctor-mothers have not blinked an eyelid and are signing the parental consent form without hesitation while fathers who don’t like the innuendo implying that their religious daughters are sleeping around are wavering before signing on the dotted line. Most parents seem to have taken the ‘better safe than sorry’ route of agreeing to have their daughters vaccinated while in the same breath have expressed a wish that the Jewish schools would take more of an interest in coping with breast cancer and educating young women about proper self-checking as they get older.

In the Jewish Tribune, one of the weekly charedi newspapers, a news article on the 30th October explained the vaccination and cited support by key members of the community including a prominent rabbi and a frum doctor. However, in this week’s edition (6th November) the Office of the Rabbinate of the Union of Hebrew Orthodox Congregations issued a large advertisement saying that

“It was reported last week in certain newspapers that the Rabbinate has given its approval to the current vaccinations programme, for girls, against HPV. This report is untrue, and the Rabbinate has not advocated participating in this project.”

Have the Rabbis advocated anything? Would it be too much to ask that they advocate seeking a medical opinion? This ambiguous proclamation, without citing medical evidence or consultation, is irresponsible and places families guided by rabbinical authority in an invidious position. The implicit message is that if parents allow their daughters to have these vaccinations, they are suggesting that their young maideles could be promiscuous and we, as a community, are condoning behaviour that is contrary to a religious lifestyle.

This approach is so naive and endemic of the “hush hush” approach to relationships and a denial of the changing social mores that are trickling through to every part of the religious community. There will always be unblemished boys and girls from good families who will marry very young, however, there are sexual diseases in the religious community acquired in a number of unsavoury ways and we have a responsibility to the young girls of the community to protect them. The percentage of people affected may be much smaller than in the general community, but how can these medically unqualified leaders who intimidate their community into avoiding this vaccination carry the burden of potentially contributing to an unnecessary and devastating illness in the future?

–Modesty Blasé

Cross-posted to The Jerusalem Post blog.

The Lilith Blog

November 10, 2008 by admin

Out with "the Sarah Palin," in with "the Marie Antoinette?"

The new hair of Orthodox married women?

The most recent garment-related decree of Rabbi Yosef Sholom Elyashiv, of modesty courts fame, has given us a great new marketing idea for Orthodox women’s fashions. In a recent talk, R. Elyashiv announced that contemporary sheitels, as wigs worn by married Orthodox women are often called, are not an acceptable way to cover one’s hair in accordance with the tradition for married women. A woman who wears one, R. Elyashiv said, is considered as if she is going bareheaded, reports Yeshiva World News. Given that wearing sheitels — often pricey, designer models — is common practice amongst married women in many Orthodox communities, this pronouncement is a big deal.

It’s not the concept of wearing a wig that R. Elyashiv considers problematic, though (indeed, a Talmudic discussion deems them acceptable as a form of head covering); rather, it’s that today’s wigs, “contemporary” sheitels, look too much like real hair.
(Rabbi Elyashiv’s talk (in Yiddish) can be viewed online here. )

Not everyone agrees with the controversial ruling. Hirhurim’s Gil Student, for one, explains some of the relevant halacha and why he disagrees with R. Elyashiv. For once, though, we can see R. Elyashiv’s point — that “covering” your real hair with even nicer looking hair misses the point of the matter — and we appreciate that in this instance he blames both women and their husbands equally for allowing the offending practice (after all, one reason the Gemara says wigs are okay is because they make women more attractive to their husbands.)

But sheitel-machers and wearers need not fear. In forbidding only “contemporary” sheitels, R. Elyashiv has left open a huge and untapped niche in the sheitel industry, and we smell a huge opportunity here for the fashion-forward Orthodox woman: vintage and vintage-style sheitels.

If “contemporary” is the problem, go for old. If real-looking is the problem, go for over-the-top. No one said sheitels can’t be pretty or interesting, just that they can’t look to much like your real hair. (I’m reminded that an unmarried friend once suggested she might cover her hair with a clown wig when she gets married. One wonders if that would pass muster…)

R. Elyashiv did not specify when exactly the “contemporary period” of sheitel-making began, but we figure if you stick to pre-Victorian styles, you can’t go wrong. And looking to high fashion from previous centuries and other countries would be a great source of inspiration. After all, Marie Antoinette was a style icon of 18th century French fashion, and she had some of the biggest wigs around. (“Let them eat sponge cake!”) By comparison, the Sarah Palin wig that made a splash last month is plain and school-marmish. Even with the matching Kawasaki 704 glasses.

Come to think of it, men wore wigs back then, too. Maybe we could start thinking about replacing kippot with, say, an English barrister’s wig. It wouldn’t look any more out of place than a streimel.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman