“Instead of being a man at the top of the pyramid, it`s the image of a man lifting his brothers,” said Press, who has a majestic red beard. The prohibition of cutting the corners of the beard may also have been an attempt to distinguish the appearance of the Israelites from that of the surrounding nations and to reduce the influence of foreign religions; [18] Maimonides criticizes it as a custom of idolatrous priests. [19] The Hittites and Elamites were clean-shaven, and the Sumerians were also often beardless; [20] Conversely, Egyptians and Libyans shaved their beards into very stylized elongated goats. [20] [Failed exam] The Shulchan Aruch quotes the Talmud according to which, because scissors have two blades, it would therefore be permissible to cut the beard with them, since the cutting effect would result from the contact between two blades and not from the contact between the blade and the skin. [29] In Germany and Italy, in the late seventeenth century, Jews began to remove beards using pumice stones and chemical depilatories, which smoothed the face as if it had been shaved. These are razors that are not prohibited. [18] Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (Tzemach Tzedek) argued that shaving the beard would fall under biblical rule against man as a woman (he also extended the prohibition of wanton destruction to the destruction of beard hair); Shulchan Aruch interpreted this ordinance differently,[30] arguing that it prohibited men from removing hair from areas where women used to remove hair, such as armpit hair and pubic hair. [31] For the pious who follow such teachings, “beards are a channel of divinity” that connects them to God, he said. An example of how the clothing of Hasidic Jewish men is not so different from public fashion in the past is: the United States of the 1800s. Coats and top hats were common among formal men.
Beards were common. And many men even had biblical names that sounded like Jewish names. An example of this is Abraham Lincoln – many photos show him with a long frock coat and beard. In the next photo, he even wears a waistcoat and a white button-down shirt, which are also worn by Hasidic men. This is the reason why some observant Jews have short or trimmed beards because they do not use razors. Similarly, some observant Jews achieve a clean-shaven appearance by using certain rabbi-approved rotary razors that do not cut like a razor, but in a scissor action. The law against Kohanim to shave one`s head also appears in Ezekiel`s Rules for Priests (44:20), but with a different verb. The verse refers to the prohibition of cutting the beard, but the term here is not “destroy” (שחת), but “cut” (גלח). Why this change in terminology? The rabbis suggest that this be done to teach us a rule (b. Makkot 20a; b. Kiddushin 35b): Jacob Milgrom hypothesizes that the rule against shaving parts of the head or beard in mourning began as a rule for Kohanim. Although the School of Holiness retained this rule and included it in the Holiness Collection in chapter 21, it extended the rule to the entire population.
The same procedure of extending priestly legislation to the whole population could also be at the origin of the Deuteronomic rule, although in this case the original rule applicable only to Kohanim was rejected, as it does not appear anywhere in Deuteronomy. In this sense, Milgrom writes (Continental commentary on Lev 19:27): According to biblical scholars, shaving hair, especially the corners of the beard, was originally a custom of mourning; [8] The behavior seems to have been practiced by other Semitic tribes of the Book of Jeremiah,[9][10][11] although some ancient manuscripts of the text read live in remote places instead of cutting off the ends of their hair. Bible scholars believe that regulations against shaving hair could be an attack on the practice of offering hair to the dead in the belief that they would receive protection in sheol; [12] Nazi rites shaved after contact with a corpse, imprisoned women shaved after mourning the death of their parents, and the general prohibition in the Code of Holiness is immediately followed by a rule against people cutting their bodies for the sake of the dead. [13] Since the verse is explicit that tonsure is forbidden as a mourning ritual, rabbis categorize it as such. [8] They understand tonsure as a separate prohibition – a different word is used – independent of the prohibition on shaving the temples and beard. [16] It is possible that the strong custom among Italian Jews, even among rabbis, of shaving their beards may be part of the reason. For more information, see Mississippi Fred`s article “Beards and beardless in Italian Jewish History.” For more on the importance of the beard in Jewish culture during this period, see Elliott Horowitz, “The Early Eighteenth Century Confronts the Beard: Kabbalah and Jewish Self-Fashioning,” Jewish History 8 (1994), 95-115. See also the article on the Seforim blog entitled: “Jews, beards and portraits”. A man was allowed to cut his beard with scissors, but shaving with a razor was prohibited. Halakhically, a man can shave his beard with scissors, chemical depilators or double-edged electric razors.
Men shaved their beards only as a sign of intense fear. Conversely, because so many men shave their faces today, growing a beard can also be a sign of grief. A man also had to shave his body when he was sick with an illness to rid his body of the disease. While a Spanish law of 1408 forbade Jews from growing beards, Jews in Germany and Italy removed their beards in the late 1600s using pumice stone and chemical epilators (a shaving powder or cream). These methods left the face smooth and gave the impression of having been shaved and would not have been banned because they did not use razors. The prohibitions on shaving probably stem from the fact that in biblical times, shaving or shaping facial hair was a pagan practice. Maimonides said that cutting off the “corners of the beard” was an idolatrous custom (Moreh 3:37), for it is believed that the Hittites, Elamites, and Sumerians were clean-shaven. Egyptians are also depicted with elongated and carefully cut goatee.
Although the term is different here – shaving as opposed to tonsure – Rimon Kosher suggests in his commentary Mikra LeYisrael (ad loc.) that the first move could be parallel to the tonsuration ban in lev. 21:5.[12] If correct, it would mean that the biblical authors used some of these rules and terms interchangeably. [2] The Talmud (b. Kiddushin 35b) devotes almost an entire page to proving that these laws apply only to men and not to women. Although rabbis use a number of homiletic devices to prove this, it seems intuitive, as women usually can`t (there are always exceptions) grow beards or sideburns. AP — Facial hair is fashionable around the world these days, but in Jerusalem, beards have never gone out of fashion, projecting religious mysticism, nationalism and ideals of masculinity. The practice of growing a beard and not shaving is widespread among the Hasidim, originally from Eastern Europe. Eastern European rabbis understood the mitzvah of the beard as a ban on shaving one`s face. The custom of religious Jews wearing beards is rooted in a passage in the biblical book of Leviticus that forbids “destroying” the edges of the beard and forbidding shaving with a blade.
While Jewish law allows the use of electric razors or scissors to trim beards, some sects do not shave at all. For Hasidic and some other Orthodox men, the practice of not shaving at all extends to the side loops, known in Hebrew as payot (often spelled and pronounced payos or payes) – literally “corners.” As with beards, practices on Payot vary within orthodoxy.