Under Cover: Demystification of Women’s Head Covering in Jewish Law

Jewish law requires Jewish women to cover their hair. Modern women who obey these laws ascribe various meanings to the act of head-covering: It is a sign of marriage, or of identification with the tribe; a symbol of piety and humility; an act of deference to the Divine Will; a sign of sexual modesty. This paper challenges these taken-for-granted explanations for the practice of head-covering and argues that they are, in the words of Roland Barthes, myths that take certain discernable forms—legitimation, reification, unification and dissimulation. These myths obscure the underlying power relations that head-covering signifies. I argue that head-covering, like the Jewish marriage ceremony, and like the Jewish laws of divorce, demarcates the exclusive and unilateral property rights that a Jewish husband has in his wife’s sexuality. In this paper I explore how these myths operate, their historical origins, and how they sustain relations of domination. My aim is to confront and challenge the extent to which the halakhah and Israeli law continue to view and treat women as the chattel of their husbands.