Sheitel in Blue Jeans

It happens to all Baal-Teshuvas (BT’s) many, many times. All of us suffer from embarrassing mistakes, spiritual slip-ups, setbacks beyond our understanding, and all that good stuff that goes along with the teshuva process. They’re certainly not funny at the moment, but many times we can laugh about our ignorance after the fact. I’d like to share with you such a moment from the beginning of my teshuva process, and hopefully it will help you realize that if a person like me can get it right, then anyone can get it right!

When I got married, I was doing a weird half-religious thing because my friends were doing it. You see, my group of friends was “spiritually enlightened,” and therefore we didn’t feel the need to follow Torah law in the traditional sense. We did things because of their spiritual value. G-d forbid we would do them just because they were mitzvot! The fact that G-d said so just wasn’t a good enough reason for us. We had a life-threatening allergy to religious robots, and were scared to death of turning into one of those freaky looking, awesome-dancing zombies in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video.

Oh, the ego…

Anyways, my friends that got married before I did told me that it was good to cover your hair because it keeps all of the blessings that the husband draws down. You know, enlightened spiritual stuff. Never mind the 800 other transgressions I was doing to cancel out those blessings. Those didn’t count. In my mind, if my hair was covered, then my family was covered, if you get what I mean.

So one friend who had a few nice wigs convinced me that I urgently needed not one, but two wigs – one for weekdays and one for Shabbat. Mehadrin style, yo’ (extra kosher.) I was easily sold, so I went to the sheitel macher (ultra-religious wig lady) and said, “Yo, Wiggly, hook me up with some super-fly sheitels!”

“Mmm, hmm,” she approved with a rhythmic head-jutting motion as we high-fived.

I managed to convince my cheap husband (did I just write that?) that I absolutely, totally, really really needed two sheitels since we were so spiritual now. “Don’t you want to keep all your blessings?” I challenged him. He caved in, not because he bought my ridiculous argument, but because he knew he was marrying an Iraqi, and he was terrified of starting the marriage off on the wrong foot.

I happily paid too much money for two wigs that weren’t worth even half of what I paid. Anyhow, I wore them, and soon enough the Shabbat sheitel became the all week sheitel and the all week sheitel became the sheitel that sat on the foam lady’s deformed head.

Around the time of our one year anniversary, I was big, pregnant, and fed up. I was eight months pregnant and didn’t know how much longer my feet would carry me around before they would suddenly decide to quit and run away.

One day, I managed to drag my round, heavy self and my silky, weightless sheitel to the wig lady for a wash and set. In other words, I took my overpriced dead piece of someone else’s hair to get a luxurious wash and blow-dry that was more expensive than what I used to get for myself.

I waddled in, out of breath from walking five steps from the car to Wiggly’s door. I didn’t understand why, but as soon as I walked through the door, all the women that were there turned and absolutely stared at me.  A few of them were gawking like confused geese.

“Why are they staring at me?” I wondered to myself. I gave them a “whatcha lookin’ at!” stare right back and stuck out my tongue at the geese women. Then I turned to Wiggly and sweetly smiled at her as I handed her my hunk of hair. “Ummm… it’ll b-b-b-e r-r-r-eady on Thursday,” she stammered, as she tried to force a smile.

“Alrighty, then,” I replied, feeling as if I had stepped into a parallel universe where everyone is in a perpetual state of shock and confusion. I walked out of there and ran my hands down the front and back of my pants to make sure I hadn’t sat in something brown and mushy…

Hold up, woman! Did you just say PANTS?!!

Why, yes. Yes I did.

I was so oblivious and willfully ignorant, wasn’t I? Looking back, I can only imagine the lashon hara fest those women were enjoying at my expense. I should have charged them. Even when Wiggly called me and gently tried to explain that wearing pants wasn’t modest, I brushed her off as archaic and unfashionable. I rolled my eyes a few times during our conversation and tried not to hang up on her.

Eventually, I got it right. Five years later, I heard Rav Brody’s translation of Rav Arush’s CD, “Your Beauty.” That was the first time I began to understand that dressing modestly was not some sexist man’s clever tactic on how to oppress Jewish women. Nope. For the first time, modesty began to make sense to me.

Slowly but surely, I began to evolve my wardrobe. I do admit that it was fun, now that I had a new excuse to buy lots of new clothes. Before I knew it, I was passing the half-religious mark with my new long, floor-length dresses. They had spaghetti straps, but hey- it was a step in the right direction!

Now here I am, eleven years later, writing about the Torah commandment that a woman has to dress modestly. Hashem has a great and very ironic sense of humor. And, as it turns out, so does my husband. In fact, he still loves to make fun of me by serenading me with his romantic rendition of Neil Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans.” Enjoy!

She walked in

And this is where the story begins

They just could not believe

What they were about to see

Sheitel in blue jeans!