Yetzer Harah
The Hebrew word for hair, “se’ar - שֵׂעָר”, has the same letters as the word “shi’ur” meaning a measured portion.
Narrowness is associated with the spiritual energies of harshness, of din (judgment). Therefore, the narrowness of any physical thing, such as hair, indicates that it contains the spiritual energies of harshness. Rabbi Nachman taught that because God's life-sustaining light is so powerful, it must be constricted, filtered, and diluted. Human hair accomplishes this through its spiritual mechanism of constriction, thus HaShem’s light is absorbed into the body through the hair.
It is customary within Orthodoxy that a married woman cover her hair in the presence of everyone with the exception of her husband. Various rabbinic interpretations of this law state that one's hair, especially that of a woman's, is a source of eroticism and sexual power. The Jewish woman's role is seen within the sanctification of space: the space of the home, the womb, etc. The woman expresses her understanding of the need to govern her Yetzer Harah, i.e. the growth of hair that symbolizes appetite, by creating a space around her head. Thus, by exercising her prerogative as the sanctifier of space, she creates a boundary around her head through the covering she wears.
What determines what hair is to be hidden and that which can be seen?
I am told I should be as fertile as a pomegranate
One of the three laws pertaining to Jewish women is that of Niddah. Niddah entails a physical separation from one’s spouse during menstruation. According to the Torah the blood of a menstruating woman is impure, unclean and disgusting. However, it is the blood of a fertile and menstruating woman that continues the Jewish nation, this is because one’s ‘Jewishness’ is carried maternally and not paternally.
Within Judaism, pomegranates are a symbol of fertility and abundance. There is a popular superstition that a single pomegranate contains 613 seeds, the same amount of mitzvot (laws) found in the Torah. This video series explores the story of my older sister, who, when she was only sixteen, was blessed to be as fertile and abundant as the seeds within a pomegranate perpetuating this role of mother upon the next generation of Jewish girls. The violent breakage of the symbolic fruit becomes a cathartic means of rebellion against the patriarchal conventions that continue to rule over my life.