[Avodah] Yeshivishe Payes

[Jonathan Baker]

Spelling Note: In the below, I try to distinguish between "payess" meaning
the tuft of hair growing from the "peiah" - the patch on the side of the 
head.

From: "Danny Schoemann" <doniels at gmail.com>
> On 6/6/07, Marty Bluke <marty.bluke at gmail.com> wrote:
> > With regards to the length of payists, the poskim point out that the
> > shiur of hair in general is to bend back the hair on itself, about a
> > half a centimeter.

Yes, that's the shiur I've heard, from a Karlin-Stoliner friend who
does have payes to put back behind his ear - but chasidim have various
hiddurim about hair, beards, etc. which go well beyond ikkar hadin.
So yes, the length of the hair growing off the peiah patch is about half
a centimeter.
 
> Which doesn't quite match with YD 181:9 which says that the shiur of
> the Paye is from the [top of the] forehead till the [top of the]
> jawbone - and this entire width Lo Siga Bo Yad - shouldn't be touched.

Um, I'm pretty sure you're  confusing the length of the hair, with the
area from which hair should not be shaved.  Remember the analogous usage
of peiah - the corners of your field.  It's about not cutting the stuff
out of the corners of the field (a measure of area), not about how much 
stuff to cut (a measure of length).  So too here, YD 181:9 is talking 
about the area on the head which is not to be shaved, rather than the 
length of hair growing out of that patch. 

And it's a smaller patch, and lower down, than you might think from
looking at chasidishe peyess.  Looking at the SA, and his sources in
Rashi and the Gemara stemming from the Mishna in Makos 20a-b, the patch
is really small, only about a square inch (each side) on my head - from
the base of the hair on the forehead (the bottom of the forehead, not
the top - see Rashi) to the top of the jawbone below the [top of the]
ear - which is about the middle of the ear. 

The peiah, according to Rashi, on the head, is where the hair tapers
to its minimum width.  The head is divided into two parts: the hair
part, and the face-beard part.  The peiah which is not shaved, is the 
point at which those two areas come together, which is quite small.
 
> But - as has been pointed out - there's no halachic point in having
> part of the area "long" and the rest short.

Well, that depends on how we define "long" and "short" and "area",
doesn't it?
 
RMi:
> Actually, Rav Dovid Lifshitz did it, so I would think the custom is
> Litvish, not merely a "growing trend". However, RDL's payos were thick
> blocks of hair swept back, not the strings one now sees.

Don't pictures of R' Moshe Soloveitchik, and the Chofetz Chayim, also
have bushy payess?
 
RDSchoemann:
> : Everything else is "fashion"; tucking behind the ear vs. let it hand
> : loose; curling them...

I'd also think that any kind of visible payess is "fashion", since as I
note above, ikkar hadin is small and quite short; i.e., any kind of 
mid-ear sideburns counts.
 
> Don't you find it interesting, though, that East Europeans and
> Teimanim have similar "fashions"? Just how old is the idea of wearing

Hungarians, not East Europeans in general.  Most non-Hungarian Chasidim
(Polish, Volhynia, Lithuania, Galicia/Podolia) have little strings of 
payess tucked behind the ear.

And could it be from kabbalah?  Or is it also prevalent among the anti-
Zohar Teimani faction?

Hair fashions can arise independently and repeatedly; I could tell you
stories about Deep Springs College, where my brother spent a summer.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com