Locks of Faith: Jewish Boy Gets First Haircut at Age 3

WILMINGTON, NC — For most three-year-olds, standing on a chair for 30 minutes while people line up to cut off pieces of your hair might seem scary and somewhat of an eternity.

Not for little Isser Lieblich. He stood still except for an occasional windmill swing of his arms.

But this was no ordinary haircut.

Isser’s trim last weekend on his third birthday was the first rite of passage in his young life as an Orthodox Jewish boy. It meant the start of his formal religious education.

It was an event that his parents, Rabbi Moshe and Chana Lieblich had prepared him for all his life. They run the Hasidic Jewish center, Chabad of Wilmington at 2714 Market St. (The center hopes to open a Jewish preschool in 2009.)

Running around in a gray pinstripe suit, wearing his yarmulke and tzitzit prayer tassels, Isser looked like a miniature man-angel with his cupid cheeks and black corkscrew curls.

About 75 people attended his birthday celebration and hair-cutting ceremony, including 10 members of his father’s family from New York. Though there was cake and food at Isser’s party, the main purpose of the celebration was education.

“Now he (Isser) is differentiated from the girls,” said Moshe Lieblich’s father, Rabbi Shmuel Lieblich. “Girls and boys have different purposes in life, and this ceremony starts him on his path as an Orthodox boy.”

Standing next to his son, Moshe Lieblich explained the scriptural reasons for the haircut.

In ancient times, Lieblich said, the Jews would allow their fruit trees to grow for three years without harvesting the fruits.

“They did this so people could recognize that those fruits are given to you by God and shouldn’t be taken for granted,” he added. Then in the fourth year, the fruits were harvested and taken to Jerusalem as a tithe at the temple.

In Orthodox Judaism, a person is compared to a tree in that “like a tree a person has a trunk or body, branches or arms and fruit in the good deeds that he does. His faith is like the roots of the tree. The stronger his faith; the more trust he has in God, he can withstand any storm,” Lieblich said.

“Here we let the child’s hair grow for the first three years and then we cut the hair to teach the child that there are certain commandments we keep and teach that you should give your life to God.”

The haircut also is the beginning of Isser’s growing the traditional Orthodox strands of hair near his ears as sideburns.

As people cut off Isser’s curls, they handed him coins to put in a box to teach him to be charitable. And the soft pile of curls grew on a silver platter his father held.

Though Chana Lieblich said she would miss her little boy’s curls, she said she was excited for the next stage of his education – learning to wash his hands in the morning, say his prayers in the morning and before bed and understanding God’s commandments.