Coverage of wigs issue displays news media’s anti-religion bias
The news media had a grand time recently when tens of thousands of Jewish women stopped wearing their wigs out of concern the wigs might contain hair that had been offered to an idol.
The more revealing story, though, lay not in the women’s dedication to the Second Commandment but in the feeding frenzy of the Fourth Estate.
The facts are simple. Halacha (Jewish religious law) considers a married woman’s hair to constitute a beauty reserved for her own eyes and those of her husband. Therefore, an assortment of head coverings — including wigs, made of synthetic or human hair — are worn by observant married women.
What happened was a recent realization that much of the hair India provides for wig-making — which represents a sizable proportion of the market — is shorn as part of Hindu religious rites.
Since Hinduism is polytheistic and venerates physical objects, it has the halachic status of idolatry. The Torah forbids Jews to use idolatrous offerings in any way.
A respected rabbi went on a fact-finding mission to the Tirubati temple in India, where 25,000 pilgrims are said to arrive daily to cut their hair. He reported his findings to a preeminent halachic decider in Israel, who ruled that wearing wigs made from Indian hair indeed seemed to present a halachic problem.
As that information was publicized, Orthodox wig-wearers responded by eschewing their hairpieces until they could ascertain the wigs’ provenance, or until religious authorities could sift the facts and pertinent principles.
Wig stores catering to Orthodox women researched their wares’ pedigrees or cancelled orders until they could ensure that the hair they were selling was halachically acceptable.
What ‘mass hysteria’?
Then came the deluge. The New York Times placed a story on its front page, and then ran a follow-up, which termed the happenings an “emotional upheaval.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency described the situation as an “uproar” and quoted an observer who called it “mass hysteria.”
The editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal mocked the Jewish women’s reaction as an “absurdity” and suggested they had been coerced by “Orthodox rabbis (all male).” Other news media took similar approaches.
Those of us in the Orthodox community were amused — though rather surprised — by the attention. Obviously, we took the issue seriously, but there was little sign around us of uprising or hysteria.
Orthodox women selflessly and responsibly put aside their wigs in favor of other head-coverings until they could ascertain the wigs’ “kosher” status, and those wigs that did not meet halachic standards were discarded. The story was the talk of our own global village; but what we read about ourselves in the larger world’s press seemed like yellow journalism.
Not long ago, Americans were being warned about anthrax. After germ-laced mail was discovered here and there, we treated our mailboxes like terrorist-lairs.
Suspicious letters were reported to the authorities. Hazmat-suited investigators gingerly entered places suspected of contamination in Washington, New York and elsewhere.
The news media covered the heightened concern for that invisible menace. But that caution was not characterized as hysteria, nor were there words of mockery or disdain for the precautions taken.
The contrast between the treatment of one population’s concern for a biohazard and another’s concern for a major religious principle highlights the unfortunate fact that, to much of the press, religion is silly. To most people, though, religion indeed matters.
We’ve certainly seen the negative side of that coin, with mass-murderers motivated by warped but undeniably religious concerns. But even as we confront the fact — and it’s hardly new — that religious devotion can lead to evil things, we must not treat religious devotion, inherently, as suspect.
Judaism’s core teaching is monotheism. Devotion to that ideal can be expressed in myriad ways — from the daily proclamation of G-d’s one-ness in the Jewish credo the Sh’ma to the refusal to use an item that may have been used in a polytheistic rite.
To believing and observant Jews, such things are parts of the highest human achievement: service to G-d. The press’ treatment of the wig controversy did not adequately recognize that fact.
That lapse may have been a manifestation of the reality revealed in a recent Pew Research Center survey.
A mere 12 percent of self-described “moderate” journalists said they thought belief in G-d is a necessary underpinning of morality. Among self-described “liberals,” the figure was three percent.
While the journalists polled were not asked if they themselves believe in a Divine Being, one might be forgiven for surmising what the result of that question would have been.
Or for imagining that the answers might have helped explain why so much of journalism today has so jaundiced a view of anything religious.
Rabbi Avi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.
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