[Avodah] Why are beards considers so choshuv?

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jan 06, 2010 at 01:44:06AM -0500, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: 4.  Why  do men care if their beard grows in spotty, fuzzy or  sparse? -- 
: that is because, as members of the human race, they are subject to  the trait 
: of vanity.  Men want to be handsome! ...

Perhaps not from vanity, but because they want to look "put together"
at the workplace. Or even for talmidim.

In Litta, a beard on a talmid would have been yuhara. For that matter,
in many yeshivos today as well. (Although wearing black and white was
also part of that yuhara concept -- only the RY did that -- and yet
today it's commonplace in most of those self-same yeshivos.)

Which would appear to show that there is value assigned to having a
beard, not that there is a negative value assigned to wanting to shave.

BTW, I thought the whole thing was meramez in "vehadarta penei zaqein",
that there is a conceptual link between the zaqein (beard) and zaqein
(older man; not to be confused with someone who merely aged, "yashein").

And then there's significance to "zeqan Aharon" (Tehillim 133:2).

Certanly by the time Hineni he'ani mima'as was written, having a beard
was a significant sign.

That said, HQBH decided not to allow me to have much of one. (Not that
it would have been all that full before the radiation...) To both look
older than my sons and yet not messy, I have a van dyke. (As did RAEK
and many other western rabbis from the era when they were in style.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "The worst thing that can happen to a
micha at aishdas.org        person is to remain asleep and untamed."
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