Here’s My Story: Hats Off To Leadership

Mrs. Chana Sharfstein

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In 1954, after I had finished college and got engaged to my husband, I had an audience with the Rebbe. First, he asked about how my life was going and what had been happening since the last time he had seen me. Then, because I was about to get married, he asked whether I was planning on wearing a sheitel – a wig worn by married women to fulfill the halachic requirement to cover their hair.

I was raised always to be totally truthful, and I had a very open, honest relationship with the Rebbe, so without thinking about being diplomatic, I just said exactly what I felt: “No, I’m not planning on wearing a sheitel.”

The Rebbe didn’t get annoyed or seem disappointed. He just looked at me with a big smile and asked, “Why not?”

“Well,” I explained, “All of my friends are college graduates from nice religious homes, and none of them are planning to wear a sheitel. Only old people do that, and it’s not something I’ve ever considered.”

I had been living in Boston since I was fourteen years old – when the Previous Rebbe sent my father to assume a rabbinic position there in 1947 – and it was a different world from the Chabad community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. There was a large community of Jews of all types, many of them observant, but they were more secular on the whole, and there certainly wasn’t a Lubavitcher community; there were maybe two or three Chabad girls in the whole city, and none of them were my age.

“Are you going to keep your hair covered?” the Rebbe inquired further.

“Oh yes,” I replied. “I’m going to wear hats. That is what everybody in Boston does.”

Besides wigs, some of the older religious women also wore scarves around their heads – tichels – but neither was fashionable. Most wigs were unflattering, and it wasn’t considered appropriate to wear a tichel out in public; certainly, no younger woman would wear a tichel to her job. Meanwhile, every lady wore a hat in those days; they made a young woman feel grown-up but were still fun to wear.

“That’s okay,” said the Rebbe, and that was the end of that.

After getting married, my husband and I lived in Crown Heights, and by the following year, I was pregnant. Around this time, I was also getting a little tired of always wearing hats.

At first, they had been exciting: There were hats with feathers, bows, flowers, and veils; there were pillboxes, cloche hats – which we often crocheted ourselves – and others.

In the wintertime, you could wear a woolen hat to keep your head warm. But summertime could pose a problem: What kind of a hat do you wear with a cotton skirt and a blouse? You can’t wear a hat with a feather to go shopping.

I also observed that many people in the community were beginning to wear sheitels and they didn’t look bad. So, in the back of my mind, I began considering it.

Then suddenly, just after Rosh Hashanah, a letter came from 770. It wasn’t uncommon for the Rebbe to send a letter to both my husband and me with his greetings for the new year, but this letter was addressed to just “Mrs. Chana Sharfstein.” I hadn’t asked or discussed anything with him recently so why, I wondered, was the Rebbe contacting me?

The letter was typed on a thin, onion-skin typing paper, and the Rebbe had signed it at the bottom. After noting that the Ten Days of Repentance – the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – are a time when G-d is especially close, the Rebbe began by saying that he wanted to continue the conversation that we’d begun in person.

The Rebbe noted that many Chabad women had begun to adopt a practice that, for a variety of reasons, had not been practiced widely before. Namely, he would like every woman in the Chabad community to join those who “wear a sheitel, give their children a true chasidic education, and run a true chasidic home.” This applied to everyone, “without exception” – and these last words were underlined. The Rebbe thought sheitels were the preferable head covering since hats don’t cover all the hair and can also be removed easily. The Rebbe concluded that he felt that I could be a leader who would influence other women, so he wanted me to very seriously consider the importance of this practice.

And then the mind-blowing part: The Rebbe brought to the fore every argument I had originally made in that audience the previous year. Instead of feeling out of place or uncomfortable in a wig, he wrote: “May G-d help you discover that it isn’t a difficult thing or something one ought to be ashamed of.”

Nor should the fact that my friends were not planning to wear a sheitel make me not want to wear one: “On the contrary,” the Rebbe continued, “you should be proud that you have the strength to not be ashamed,” because “when you walk in the street, your friends and acquaintances will see that here walks a Jewish woman who is committed to Jewish observance and its traditions… and does not want to hide it.”  Rather than feeling left out, I could lead the way for others.

After countering the arguments that I had given, he concluded with his wishes for a good new year.

“You know what?” I told my husband after reading the letter, “I was already thinking of wearing a sheitel, and if it’s this important to the Rebbe, I’ll do it.” I immediately wrote a note to the Rebbe about my decision and asked my husband to deliver it when he went to 770 for the evening services.

The next day my husband came home looking dumbfounded, with a big smile on his face. “You won’t believe what just happened!” he said. “This is what I received in 770.”

My husband took out a check which the Rebbe had handwritten for me, along with a message that I should buy “the most beautiful sheitel I could find,” and to wear it “with happiness and joy.” The check was made out for a large sum of money; enough to cover a top quality sheitel.

I went to a wig-maker in Williamsburg and used the money to get a wig custom-made to fit my hairline exactly, using the finest European hair. Those women really knew what they were doing and they put in each strand by hand.

It was the most gorgeous sheitel you could imagine, and I probably wore it for the next eight years. Eventually, when I couldn’t make any more repairs to it, I had to get a new one, but it was beautiful for that entire time.

The Rebbe’s gift, which made it possible for me to buy such a sheitel, was incredibly generous, but so was the patience and understanding he showed in encouraging me to wear it. At no time, neither when we spoke about it in person nor in the letter he sent me, did he ever try to make me feel bad or push me to change my mind. Rather, he expressed his belief that this practice was important and that it was a project he wanted Chabad women to undertake.

When I was ready, I was able to take it on myself, and I tried to be an example to others.

Mrs. Chana Sharfstein is an author, educator, and tour guide. She was interviewed three times in the years 2006, 2007, and 2014.