Upsherin
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Upsherin or Upsherinish (Yiddish: אפשערן, lit. "shear off" German etymology, auf ["off"], scheren ["to shear"]) is a Jewish haircutting ceremony, kabbalistic in origin, held when a Jewish boy is three years old.
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[edit] Background
In the Bible, human life is sometimes compared to the growth of trees.[1] According to Leviticus 19:23, one is not permitted to eat the fruit that grows on a tree for the first three years. Some Jews apply this principle to cutting a child's hair. Thus little boys are not given their first haircut until the age of three. To continue the analogy, it is hoped that the child, like a tree that grows tall and eventually produces fruit, will grow in knowledge and good deeds, and someday have a family of his own.
[edit] Customs
Some Haredi rabbis, among them Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky (the Steipler) and Rabbi Yitzchak Zev Soloveitchik opposed the practice on various grounds, but it is popular among Hasidic Jews and has spread in recent years to other Jewish groups.[2]
In the Hasidic community, the upsherin marks a male child's entry into the formal educational system and the commencement of Torah study. A yarmulke and tzitzis will now be worn, and the child will be taught to pray and read the Hebrew alphabet. So that Torah should be "sweet on the tongue," the Hebrew letters are covered with honey, and the children lick them as they read.
Sometimes the hair that is cut off in the upsherin ceremony is weighed, and charity is given in that amount. If the hair is long enough, it may be donated to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients. Other customs include having each of those attending the ceremony snip off a lock of hair, and encouraging the child to put a penny in a tzedakah box for each lock, as it is cut. Sometimes the child sings a Hebrew song based on the biblical verse: "Torah tzivah lanu Moshe" ("Moses prescribed the Torah to us, an eternal heritage for the congregation of Jacob" (Deut 33:4).
Among the Skverer Hasidim, the upsherin is held at age two. This is because they want to get the boys used to wearing a yarmulke, so that when they get their tzitzis at age three, they are already used to wearing a yarmulke.
[edit] History
The tradition is (for Judaism) relatively modern and has only been traced back as far as the 17th century. It is part of Kabbalistic teachings. The practice was likely adopted from a Muslim custom that dates back to the 15th century, in which pilgrimages to the grave of the Prophet Samuel in Ramathaim-Zophim were accompanied by celebrations that included haircuts and bonfires. Mustaribim (Arabicized Jews living in Israel, who were criticized for adapting numerous Arabic customs) accompanied the Muslims on these pilgrimages to the grave site. The Mustaribim were eventually prohibited from the pilgrimages, at which time they switched to Meron, and continued the custom of haircuts and bonfires.[3]
Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote in Sha'ar HaKavonot that "Isaac Luria, cut his son's hair on Lag B'Omer, according to the well known custom." Many upsherinish in Israel take place on Lag B'Omer at the grave of Shimon bar Yochai, located in Meron. According to tradition, bar Yochai wrote the Zohar, in which it is explained that the bonfires traditionally lit on Lag B'Omer are symbolic of the light of Torah.
[edit] Sociology
A sociological-anthropological review has been conducted by Yoram Bilu[3] (a professor of anthropology and psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem). Bilu writes:
As in the rite of circumcision, and even more so, the ideal of gender differentiation prevails in the ritual haircut. At age three, after the biological, mother-supervised functions of weaning and sphincter control have been achieved, the child is appropriated from the female world and placed in the center of male territory. ... the first haircut at age three is a powerful social statement that the permissive nongendered, undersocialized period of early childhood, under the protective cover of the mother, is over. The first haircut is viewed as the beginning of the child's education, the first step in the all-encompassing, primarily male world of the commandments and Torah.
Bilu asks why "In present-day Israel, the haircutting ritual is ubiquitous among the ultra-orthodox", and why "the powerful convergence of the first haircutting and school ... . initiation ceremonies at age three is a relatively recent phenomenon that reached its zenith in present-day Jewish ultra-orthodox communities in Israel"? His answer is as follows:
The present-day purist and stringent voluntary ultra-orthodox community battles to defend its boundaries and reassert its values primarily against the mainstream secular society amidst which it is uncomfortably situated. In order to inoculate the children against the polluting influence of the external world, they have to be placed as early as possible in the guarded bastions of learning. This early timing of identity imprinting, which occurs when the child is still deeply engulfed in the domestic, female-governed milieu, perforce accentuates the transition to the all-male world of study.
Bilu notes that there are other gender identity rituals in non-Jewish cultures that involve haircutting: a Muslim ritual haircut, Buddhist pabbajja in northern Thailand, Hindu Busakha in Nepal, and Hindu-Brahmin Ghudakarana.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Notes
- ^ see Deuteronomy 20:19, Isaiah 65:22, Jeremiah 17:8
- ^ see discussion http://listserv.shamash.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0601&L=MAIL-JEWISH&P=2067
- ^ a b see Yoram Bilu: "From Milah (Circumcision) to Milah (Word): Male Identity and Rituals of Childhood in the Jewish Ultraorthodox Community" (Ethos 31 (2): 172-203 published by the American Anthropological Association in 2003
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