Jewish religious clothing isapparel worn byJews in connection with the practice of theJewish religion. Jewish religious clothing has changed over time while maintaining the influences ofbiblical commandments andJewish religious law regarding clothing and modesty (tzniut). Contemporary styles in the wider culture also have a bearing on Jewish religious clothing, although this extent is limited.
TheTorah set forth rules for dress that, following later rabbinical tradition, were interpreted as setting Jews apart from the communities in which they lived.[1]
Classical Greek and Roman sources, that often ridicule many aspects of Jewish life, do not remark on their clothing and subject it to caricature, as they do when touching on Celtic, Germanic, and Iranian peoples, and mock their different modes of dress.[2] Cultural anthropologistEric Silverman argues that Jews in thelate antiquity period used clothes and hair-styles like the people around them.[3] At2 Maccabees 4:12, it is said that theMaccabees slaughtered Jewish youths guilty ofHellenizing in wearing caps typical of Greek youths.[3]
In theMishnaic period, as well as in many Islamic countries until the mid-20th century, Jewish men typically wore atunic (Hebrew:חלוק,romanized: ḥaluq), instead of trousers.[4] In the same countries, many different local regulations emerged to make Christian and Jewishdhimmis look distinctive in their public appearance. In 1198, theAlmohad caliphYaqub al-Mansur decreed Jews must wear dark blue garb with very large sleeves and a grotesquely oversized hat;[5] his son altered the colour toyellow, a change that may have influenced Catholic ordinances some time later.[5] German ethnographerErich Brauer (1895–1942) noted that in Yemen of his time, Jews were not allowed to wear clothing of any color besides blue.[6] Earlier, inJacob Saphir's time (1859), they would wear outer garments that were "utterly black".[citation needed]
In France, during the Middle Ages, Jewish men typically wore trousers andchemise, thought by Rashi to have been equivalent to the tunic worn by Jewish men of the east.[7]
Many Jewish men historically wore aturban orsudra,[8] atunic,[9] atallit, andsandals in summer.[10] Oriental Jewish men in late-Ottoman andBritish Mandate Palestine would wear thetarbush on their heads.[11]
Thetallit is a Jewish prayer shawl worn while recitingmorning prayers as well as in thesynagogue onShabbat andholidays. InYemen, the wearing of such garments was not unique to prayer time alone but was worn the entire day.[12] In manyAshkenazi communities, a tallit is worn only aftermarriage. The tallit has special twined and knotted fringes known astzitzit attached to its four corners. It is sometimes referred to asArba kanefot (lit. 'four corners')[13] although the term is more common for a tallit katan, an undergarment with tzitzit. According to theBiblical commandments, tzitzit must be attached to any four-cornered garment, and a thread with a blue dye known astekhelet was originally included in the tzitzit. However, the missing blue thread does not impair the validness of the white.[14]
Jewish tradition varies with respect to burial with or without a tallit. While all the deceased are buried intachrichim (burial shrouds), some communities (Yemenite Jews) do not bury their dead in their tallit. TheShulhan Arukh and theArba'ah Turim, following the legal opinion ofNahmanides, require burying the dead with their tallit,[15] and which has become the general practice amongst most religious Jews. Among others, the matter is dependent upon custom.
Since tzitzit are considered to be a time-bound commandment, only men are required to wear them.[16] Authorities have differed as to whether women are prohibited, permitted or encouraged to wear them. Medieval authorities tended toward leniency, with more prohibitive rulings gaining in precedence since the 16th century.[17]Conservative Judaism regards women as exempt from wearing tzitzit, not as prohibited,[18] and the tallit has become more common among Conservative women since the 1970s.[19][20] Someprogressive Jewish women choose to take on the obligations oftzitzit andtefillin,[21] and it has become common for a girl to receive a tallit when she becomesbat mitzvah.[20][22][23]
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Akippah oryarmulke (also called akappel) is a thin, slightly-rounded skullcap traditionally worn at all times by Orthodox Jewish men, and sometimes by both men and women in Conservative and Reform communities. Its use is associated with demonstrating respect and reverence forGod.[24]Jews in Arab lands did not traditionally wear yarmulkes, but rather larger, rounded, brimless hats, such as thekufi ortarboush.[25]
Akittel (Yiddish:קיטל,romanized: kitl) is a white, knee-length, cotton robe worn by Jewish prayer leaders and some Orthodox Jews on theHigh Holy Days. In some families, the head of the household wears akittel at thePassoverseder,[26] while in other families all married men wear them.[26][27] In many Ashkenazi Orthodox circles, it is customary for the groom to wear a kittel under thechuppah (wedding canopy).[28][29][30]
Ezra the Scribe is said to have made one of the earliest enactments on women's attire, requiring all Jewish women to be girded with a wide belt (waist band) (Hebrew:סינר),[31] whether from the front or from the back, out of modesty(Babylonian Talmud,Baba Kama 82a). In subsequent years, theSages of Israel forbade Jewish women from wearing any predominantly red colored accoutrement, as it attracts undue attention to themselves.[32]
Married observant Jewish women wear a scarf (tichel ormitpahat),snood, hat, beret, or sometimes a wig (sheitel) in order to conform with the requirement ofJewish religious law that married womencover their hair.[33][34]
Jewish women were distinguished from others in the western regions of theRoman Empire by their custom of veiling in public. The custom of veiling was shared by Jews with others in the eastern regions.[35] The custom petered out among Roman women, but was retained by Jewish women as a sign of their identification as Jews. The custom has been retained among Orthodox women.[36] Evidence drawn from theTalmud shows that pious Jewish women would wear shawls over their heads when they would leave their homes, but there was no practice of fully covering the face.[37] In the medieval era, Jewish women started veiling their faces under the influence of the Islamic societies they lived in.[38] In some Muslim regions such as in Baghdad, Jewish women veiled their faces until the 1930s. In the more laxKurdish regions, Jewish women did not cover their faces.[39]
Based on the rabbinic traditions of the Talmud, the 12th century philosopherMaimonides forbade emulating gentile dress and apparel when those same items of clothing have immodest designs, or that they are connected somehow to an idolatrous practice, or are worn because of some superstitious practice (i. e., "the ways of an Amorite").[40]
A question was posed to 15th-century RabbiJoseph Colon (Maharik) regarding "gentile clothing" and whether or not a Jew who wears such clothing transgresses a biblical prohibition that states, "You shall not walk in their precepts" (Leviticus 18:3). In a protractedresponsum, Rabbi Colon wrote that any Jew who might be a practising physician is permitted to wear a physician's cape (traditionally worn by gentile physicians on account of their expertise in that particular field of science and their wanting to be recognized as such), and that the Jewish physician who wore it has not infringed upon any law in the Torah, even though Jews were not wont to wear such garments in former times.[41] He noted that there is nothing attributed to "superstitious" practice by their wearing such a garment, while, at the same time, there isn't anything promiscuous or immodest about wearing such a cape, neither is it worn out of haughtiness. Moreover, he has understood from Maimonides (Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim 11:1) that there is no commandment requiring a fellow Jew to seek out and look for clothing which would make them stand out as "different" from what is worn by gentiles, but rather, only to make sure that what a Jew might wear is not an "exclusive" gentile item of clothing. He noted that wearing a physician's cape is not an exclusive gentile custom, noting, moreover, that since the custom to wear the cape varies from place to place, and that, in France, physicians do not have it as a custom to wear such capes, it cannot therefore be an exclusive gentile custom.[41]
According to Rabbi Colon, modesty was still a criterion for wearing gentile clothing, writing: "...even if Israel made it as their custom [to wear] a certain item of clothing, while the Gentiles [would wear] something different, if the Israelite garment should not measure up to [the standard established in] Judaism or of modesty more than what the Gentiles hold as their practice, there is no prohibition whatsoever for an Israelite to wear the garment that is practised among the Gentiles, seeing that it is in [keeping with] the way of fitness and modesty just as that of Israel."[41]
RabbiJoseph Karo (1488–1575), following in the footsteps of Colon, ruled in accordance with Colon's teaching in his seminal workBeit Yosef on theTur (Yoreh De'ah §178), and in his commentaryKessef Mishneh (on Maimonides'Mishne Torah, HilkhotAvodat Kokhavim 11:1), making the wearing of gentile clothing contingent upon three factors: 1) that they not be promiscuous clothing; 2) not be clothing linked to an idolatrous practice; 3) not be clothing that was worn because of some superstitious practice (or "the way of the Amorites"). RabbiMoses Isserles (1530–1572) opines that to these strictures can be added one additional prohibition of wearing clothes that are a "custom" for them (the gentiles) to wear, that is to say, an exclusive gentile custom where the clothing is immodest.[42] Rabbi andposekMoshe Feinstein (1895–1986) subscribed to the same strictures.[43]
Jews dressed differently as God's outcasts. But Jews also dressed differently in premodern Europe because their rabbis understood any emulation of non-Jews as a violation of the divine Law as revealed by God to Moses atop Mount Sinai. The Five Books of Moses, after all, together called the Torah, clearly specify that Jews must adhere to a particular dress code-modesty, for example, and fringes. The very structure of the cosmos demanded nothing less. Clothing, too, served as a "fence" that protected Jews from the profanities and pollutions of the non-Jewish societies in which they dwelled. From this angle, Jews dressed distinctively as God's elect.
ha-sūdarīn: meaning, that which is like a small turban.. Cf.Babylonian Talmud,Kiddushin 29b;Yosef Qafih,Halikhot Teman,Ben-Zvi Institute: Jerusalem 1982, p. 186.
ḥalūq [= tunic], it is the outer garment [which is worn].. Cf.Erich Brauer,Ethnologie der jemenitischen Juden, Heidelberg 1934, p. 81 (German). Quote (translation): "A blue tunic that has a split that extends down to the waistline and that is closed at neck level is worn over themaizar (i.e. undergarment). If the tunic is multicolored and striped, it is called [in Arabic]taḥtāni, meaning, the lower. If it is monochrome, it is called [in Arabic] ‘antari. Finally, the outer layer of clothing, worn over themaizar and ‘antari, is a dark-blue cottonkuftān. Thekuftān is a coat-like garment that extends down to the knees, that is fully open in the front and is closed with a single button in the neck."
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