Jewish rite of passage clips hair, welcomes son into age of intellect

Three-year-old Sholom Deitsch nibbled on a cookie as strangers pressed dollar bills into the plastic box he held in his other hand. Then they took turns clasping small scissors and snipping one curly lock from his head, then dropping it into a clear bag held by his mother.

When the long line of amateur barbers had finished giving Sholom his first haircut, the left side of his shaggy mane looked ravaged, but plenty more hair awaited a professional barber to finish the job later in the day.

Through it all, Sholom sometimes squirmed on his high, white throne, but showed restraint through the whispered injunctions from his mom.

Nearly 250 had gathered Sunday at the East Valley Jewish Community Center in Chandler for Sholom’s “upshernish” or first haircut, symbolizing the start of his Jewish education and his movement from babyhood to childhood. Upshernish is Yiddish for “shear off,” a derivative of the German word “scheren,” to shear.

All the fuss was for the fourth of five children — and second son — of Rabbi Mendy Deitsch and his wife, Shterna. Deitsch is founder and leader of the Chabad of the East Valley in Chandler. It was an event filled with symbolism and featured Deitsch’s habit of creating a teaching moment.

“At the age of 3, the child is no longer a baby,” he told the audience. “Until 3, he takes a passive role in his education.” But with that birthday, “his intellect starts to blossom,” giving him skills to understand stories, think in full sentences “and start to play an active role in his own education,” said Deitsch.

Deuteronomy 20:19, the rabbi said, compares man to a tree in the field. “Just as a tree will grow bent if you do not straighten it when it is small, so, too, is it with a human being,” he said. “We have to start educating our children when they are very young.”

The rabbi pointed to Leviticus 19:23-25, which commands that no fruits of the first three years of a tree can be consumed. “At the start of the fourth year, in ancient temple times in Israel, one would have to bring the first fruits to Jerusalem as a symbolic tithing to God,” he said. In the fifth year, the crop could be consumed.

“Likewise with a child,” Deitsch said. “For his or her first three years, it is hard to truly enjoy the child’s intellect.” While watching a child learn to walk and talk is gratifying, “there is nothing like taking pride in his ability to think and to reason.”

Deitsch said upshernish is not commonly carried out by Jews in the East Valley, especially as a public event. Orthodox Jews are most likely to carry it out for their sons, and if they do so, it will be a small event at home. As a custom, upshernish dates to the 16th century, when Rabbi Isaac Luria, a Jewish mystic, took his son to cut his hair at the grave of a revered rabbi. Mystics believed hair contained profound energy, and the ancient text, the Zohar, noted that “from the hair of a person, you can know who he is.”

Untouched in the cutting are the child’s nascent sideburns, or peyos, in keeping with Leviticus 19:27: “Do not cut the hair at the sides of our head . . .” It’s also a practice, Deitsch said, to weigh the final harvest of hair and translate it into the weight of silver and gold and give its equivalent worth, in dollars, to a charity. Sholom’s locks came to about 2 ounces, and the family plans to give $180 to Israeli family war relief.

Sholom carried out another custom — reading the “aleph-bet,” or Jewish Hebrew alphabet. Concentrating on large letters posted on a plastic-coated cardboard, Sholom called out each letter he knew. As a reward, he could lick honey from the square of each letter he identified. The exercise suggests that the Hebrew language has a sweetness and Torah study is “sweet on the tongue.”

The boy was also given his first kippa (or yarmulke, the skullcap) and began wearing a tzizit, an undershirt with knotted tassels or fringes on the ends serving as a reminder to do one’s commandments.

Ilan Baldinger of Tempe watched the upshernish and laughed and clapped with each part of the ceremony.

“It is a milestone,” he said. “It is the start of a child’s education — and it is important to keep the traditions.”

“I think it brings blessings to a child,” said Shirley Gerston of Sun Lakes. “It’s a life cycle. It’s a coming of age,” and what she termed a “mini” bar mitzvah, referring to the formal ritual Jewish boys undergo at age 13, when they officially become “a son of the commandment,” a male adult in Jewish tradition with the responsibilities that go with it.

Slides featuring Sholom doing chores were shown while his sister, Chaya, 4, joined their mother in reading a Jewish storybook. His oldest sister, Mirel, 9, sadly told of the absence of their grandfather Zalman Deitsch, who died recently at age 59 in Brooklyn, N.Y. The father of 12 had conducted the upshernish for his son, now a rabbi, 30 years ago.