[Avodah] What's All This About People With Good Hair?

[Jay F. Shachter]

> 
> How should community leadership (Rabbi/Tovei hair [officers])
> think about the trade-off between number of attendees and
> appropriateness of timing when setting time for slichot
> (including PM)?
> 

I don't think that people with good hair should automatically be
considered to be the officers of the community.

Now, it is true that in order to become a navi, you must be, in
addition to other qualifications, rich, and physically impressive,
which means that you must have good hair (Nedarim 38a).  But that is
only at the beginning of your nviuth, so that people will not despise
you, and will be willing to listen to your message.  Once you have
been accepted as a navi, you can lose your wealth, and you can lose
your hair.  We know, for example, that the prophet Elisha lost his
hair.  Moreover, when children teased Elisha about his baldness
(2 Kings 2:23), God sent bears to eat them (2 Kings 2:24).

(I might still become a navi, parenthetically, because I still have
all of my hair.)

Also, we see from Leviticus 13:40-41 that anyone who is bald, is tahor
from tzara`ath.  That pronouncement, in those two psuqim, is made
without any qualification; clearly the pshat of those two psuqim is
that, even if one has tzara`ath elsewhere on his body, anyone who bald
is tahor.

And, in contrast, Avshalom had good hair (2 Samuel 14:25-26), and he
was a mored bmalkhuth -- and the king was his own father -- and he
died an ignominious death, and his hair, in fact, was the indirect
cause of his death (2 Samuel 18:9).

So I think the original poster should retract that part of his posting.


                        Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
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