[Avodah] Gezeiras haKasuv

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Micha Berger wrote:

> Interestingly, Googling "gezeras hakasuv derashah" found
> <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol14/v14n093.shtml#01>, where
> R' Akiva Miller (2005) posted pretty much the same argument I
> made about how hair covering differs from other forms of ervah
> as being caused by a different issur rather than erva causing the
> issur. And then, as I just did, used it to argue that we
> therefore don't know the point of the issur and can't deduce
> whether or not human hair sheitlach are a bad idea.

Yes, indeed, and that continues to be my understanding: Regardless of the terms one uses to describe this (d'Oraisa, d'rasha, whatever), the fact that hair covering differs for married and single women seems to prove that it is different from all other topics of ervah, which severely (perhaps totally) limits anyone's ability to draw comparisons and analogies from other such restrictions (such as skin-colored clothing).

(In fact, my reading of this thread presumed this to be a widely-held understanding, because the topic of the thread was NOT whether or not wigs are an acceptable manner of covering the hair. Rather, the topic of the thread was a question of why it isn't considered Maaris Ayin. Invoking Maaris Ayin is usually an admission that the act in question is not actually forbidden, but only appears to be so. That certainly seemed to be view of the Igros Moshe, who solved the Maaris Ayin problem by noting that most people (i.e., virtually all the women, plus a very small number of men) *can* distinguish between a wig and the woman's hair.)

Akiva Miller

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