This week on Madlik we split hairs with Professor Michael Broyde. And I mean that literally. For over half an hour we explored an emotionally charged and symbolically loaded practice in Judaism: women’s hair covering. But somewhere along the way, the conversation stopped being about hair. It became about something much larger. How does halakha actually work? Is Judaism governed exclusively by immutable texts and legal precedents? Or does lived communal practice itself shape the law? What fascinated me most about Michael Broyde’s remarkable new book Splitting Hairs was not his conclusions so much as his method. Again and again, he returned to a concept that I had never fully appreciated: the obligation to defend the inherited practices of Jewish communities. Not explain them away. Not tolerate them reluctantly. Defend them. Broyde quoted Rav Moshe Feinstein:
Broyde emphasized repeatedly during our conversation that Rav Moshe’s principle applies specifically to Orthodox communities. In other words: when an observant community behaves in a way that appears inconsistent with accepted halakha, rabbis have an obligation to search for a halakhic defense. Fair enough. But I could not help hearing something broader and deeper hidden in Rav Moshe’s language. “All which is widely done…” “One must find a reason…” “So they should not be considered in error…” Hidden in those words — perhaps not even so hidden — is a profound instinct to defend the dignity and honor of Jewish communities themselves. Period. Not simply Orthodox communities. Not only communities that look exactly like ours. But Jewish communities struggling to preserve Jewish life under radically different historical, social, and cultural conditions. That instinct may be one of Judaism’s secret superpowers. And nowhere was this more moving than in the extraordinary responsum of the Ben Ish Chai. The Ben Ish Chai — Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad — was writing at a moment of cultural transition. Baghdad was opening itself to European influence. Jewish women were seeing different norms. Families were struggling. Husbands were caught between traditional parents and modern wives. And instead of issuing a thunderous condemnation, the Ben Ish Chai did something remarkable: He listened. Writing in Judeo-Arabic for ordinary Jews, he records the argument of European Jewish women in full:
Read that again. “We do not have an answer to push away this answer of theirs.” What humility. What honesty. What confidence in the ability of halakha to confront social reality without panic. During the episode, Broyde noted that later generations may have been uncomfortable preserving this passage intact. His comment was unforgettable:
That line may explain more about Jewish history than entire libraries of scholarship. And then there was Rav Ovadia Yosef. At first glance, Rav Ovadia appears to stand at the opposite pole from the Ben Ish Chai. He fiercely opposed the Ashkenazic practice of women covering their hair with wigs (sheitels). But beneath the halakhic argument I sensed something else: a fierce defense of Sephardic integrity against the Ashkenazification of Orthodoxy. Rav Ovadia writes:
For Rav Ovadia, this was not merely about modesty. It was about cultural memory. About refusing to surrender Sephardic authenticity to an increasingly monopolized Ashkenazic definition of Orthodoxy. Ironically, one of the sharpest moments in our conversation came when Broyde himself attacked the Ashkenazic embrace of wigs. His critique was devastatingly simple: If hair is erotic and must be covered… why is it permissible to cover hair with more hair? As he put it:
In one sentence, centuries of practice suddenly became strange again. But perhaps the most surprising moment of all came near the very end of the conversation. After writing a 500-page book on modesty, Broyde suddenly cautioned against confusing modesty with virtue itself. He recalled a conversation in Israel:
That observation stopped me cold. Because suddenly modesty itself became destabilized. Maybe modesty is not an eternal fixed quantity. Maybe it is relational. Sociological. Contextual. Maybe that was the argument all along. Which brings us back to the title of the episode: Splitting Hairs. At first it sounds like a joke. But perhaps splitting hairs is exactly what Jewish tradition has always done. Taking tiny textual details seriously enough to open enormous conversations about law, sociology, identity, authority, memory, and change. Not because Judaism is obsessed with minutiae. But because Judaism believes that inside the smallest details lie the deepest truths. Check out the Sefaria Source Sheet: https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/731684 Listen on Spotify
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