From Blorit to Ponytail: Israeli Culture Reflected in Popular Hairstyles

Introduction

ISRAEL'S DAILY, HA'ARETZ HAS RECENTLY been featuring Hanoch Piven's collage portraits of international celebrities and Israeli politicians. Piven uses everyday objects in creating his portraits and although one of his more striking images consists of little more than two wads of white cotton wool "hair," every Israeli recognizes it immediately as a caricature of the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. (See figure 1) An election poster of the now-defunct ultra-nationalist Tehiya Party featured the silhouette of a young man bearing a flag. What unmistakably identified this young man as a proud Sabra—a native-born Israeli—was his tousled hair, but, even more so, his blorit, that unmistakable, unruly, forelock, falling over the forehead and catching the breeze.

Hair has always constituted a important feature of the Israeli image. Hairstyle, or lack of it, has been emblematic of Israeli identity ever since the advent of Zionism, and continues to be so today. But while the disheveled Ben-Gurion-look was once standard, today's Israelis display a rich variety of hairstyles, hair colors, and hair lengths.

Because hair is conspicuous, and because it differs from person to person, both in its physical and natural aspects (color and texture), and with regard to culture and fashion (length and style), hair has come to represent a racial, ethnic, cultural, sub-cultural, or individual badge of identity.

In this respect, Israel is no different from other cultures, all of which have their unique customs, rituals, traditions, and fashions that dictate whether and how people should cut their hair, shave their faces and/or heads, brush, comb, tie, decorate, style, or cover their hair with a hat, kerchief, skullcap, or wig.² Sculptures, paintings, photographs, and writings —past and present— testify to the fact that every culture has attached moral, ritual, and mythological significance to hair. The attitudes toward hair, and the practices that develop around it, generally reflect a system of social values regarding body hygiene, sex, aesthetics, gender, class, religion, and intergenerational relations. Hence, the analysis of hair as a cultural code or as a collection of codes (whether explicit or implicit) could serve as an important key to understanding the special character of a given culture and of the milestones in its processes of change.

Jewish culture is no exception. The Bible itself associates different kinds and styles of hair with different characters and personalities. Esau's red hair is associated with his appetites, Samson's long hair, with his strength and Nazaritic vocation, Absalom's flowing locks, with his aristocratic beauty. Jewish religious law also addresses the manner in which hair should be worn. Men are to keep their heads covered with a hat or skullcap, and ultra- Orthodox men generally cut their hair short but leave long side-locks, in keeping with a Biblical injunction. Jewish law also forbids men to shave themselves with a razor and, as a result, most observant Jews, especially in ultra-Orthodox circles, sport beards. Orthodox Jewish law requires married women to keep their hair covered for the sake of modesty. ³

This article aims at surveying the sociological and cultural significance of the most common hairstyles or haircuts in Israel since its early days. It is not meant to be a documentary on the business of hairstyling in Israel, but rather an analysis based on a semiotic examination of the functions of signs and symbols. My premise is that hair fashion, as indeed all fashion, can serve as an interesting indicator of changing values in Israeli culture, but that the hairstyles themselves have, at the same time, played a social role in the process of changing values—a process I have proceeded to investigate.

By and large, this study focuses on the younger generation and the non-religious segment of the country's population, because this group constitutes the majority of Israel's population and because it is within...