Musings on ‘Jewish Hair’
The buzz about “Good Hair,” Chris Rock’s new documentary about black hair, has got me thinking about “Jewish hair”: what it is, what it means, and where I — a straight-haired woman — fit into this curious piece of Jewish identity.
“Jewish hair” is a tricky thing to define, since Judaism can include people from any racial or ethnic background. And while Jews are known to have a variety of hair colors, as well as levels of curliness, “Jewish hair” seems to refer to dark, curly, and often frizzy, hair.
The first time I became aware of “Jewish hair” was when I went to an overnight for prospective students at Brandeis University. Up until that moment, sitting in a crowded upperclassmen dorm, I had never really thought about my hair as a part of my Jewish identity. But as I looked around the room, a sea of dark curls, I couldn’t help but notice that I was one of the few people with straight hair. With my light eyes and straight, brown hair, I found myself wondering if I “looked Jewish.” And even more troubling, did I want to “look Jewish?”
The introduction of Rebecca Rubin, the Jewish American Girl Doll, sparked conversation about this question a few months ago.
Leah Berkenwald is the online communications specialist at the Jewish Women’s Archive, and a contributor to its Jewesses With Attitude blog, which cross-posts weekly with the Sisterhood.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
