Sunday, October 14, 2012

Can a man divorce his wife for wearing a sheitel cut in a flapper's style? From 1927.

One more.

This little piece, which is from the Jewish Chronicle via the JTA newswire, states that a man in Warsaw tried to divorce his wife on grounds that she did not dress tznius. She wore a sheitel, but it was cut in a 'boyish bob.' And her sleeves were too short. No dice, ruled the rabbi.







































And in the tarte de-sasrei department, here is another JTA piece from 1924, recounting how an antisemitic French newspaper declared that the new fashion of the Flapper's bob is a Jewish conspiracy modeled on the sheitel and that head-shaving for gentile women was no doubt soon in store. I guess the aforementioned rav agreed with the Libre Parole.


8 comments:

  1. I'm surprised that La Libre Parole was still in business then. It was best known as the major anti-Dreyfusard mouthpiece at the turn of the century. But Wikipedia says that the paper in fact folded in June 1924 -- maybe this shaitel story helped kill it off.

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  2. MFM, Are you planning on doing a review of R' Elie Munk's translation of Shadal's Torah commentary? (http://www.amazon.com/Shadal-Torah-Commentary-Samuel-Luzzatto/dp/9655240673/)

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  3. Yeah, if the publisher or someone else want to send me one. :)

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  4. Sounds a lot like contemporary right-wing French (and American) anti-Muslim hysteria about headscarves as the opening wedge to the imposition of Sharia law. "The more things change..."

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  5. I wonder how many Jewish Women shaved there heads in Fracne at that time...

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  6. This is great. It's a shame the exact length of the sleeves are omitted. How many marriages could have benefited from that little bit of information?

    I second Abe's question. Come to think of it, I'm sure the French could pull off shaving better than anyone else.

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  7. I thought the common holding is that even if she burns the soup its grounds for divorce?

    [Nice vort once heard: Can something so trivial really be grounds for divorce? Rather, it's a siman. If someone is so demanding that a stupid thing like burning soup makes him want to divorce, then the marriage is already doomed.]

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