[Avodah] "Yeshivishe Payes"

[saul mashbaum]

The following comment of RSRH in his commentary on Vyaikra 19,27 is of interest in the framework of our discussion of the prohibition of bal takif:
This prohibition clearly forbids the removal of the externally visible division between the frontal part of the head and the rear part of it, coinciding with the cerebrum and the cerebellum respectively. This division is in a fissure which runs vertically between the forehead and the parietal bone, above the temples in front of the ears. The hair at the temples is accordingly a natural veiling which hides the back of the head in the human countenance. But the relation of the frontal part of the skull containing the cerebrum to the back part containing the cerebellum is that of the human element to the animal element in human beings; and so here again we meet with the importance and weight which the teaching of the sanctifying of our lives lays on keeping vividly in our minds the existence of these two specifically different elements in man's nature, and of the higher dignity of the intellectual, moral and spiritual factors in man, to which the animal factor has to subordinate inself. It is in the former alone that Man is to recognize his appearance as Man. The hair down the temples is an admonition to a man to be a man.
Saul Mashbaum 
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