In season 2 of the TV show Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, playing the eponymous heroine, makes a brief iconic speech about style: “Hair is everything. We wish it wasn’t so we could actually think about something else occasionally. But it is.”
Hairstyle says a lot about a person’s culture, who they want to be in the world, and how they want others to see them. And while some folks might try to dismiss the importance of hair as silly, or as a “woman’s issue,” in Judaism there is just as much emphasis — if not more — on men’s hair.
Many people know that Leviticus 19:27 contains the following prohibition: “You shall not round off the corners on your head, or destroy the corners of your beard.” This is the reason that many Jewish men have sidelocks and beards — so they do not violate this prohibition. But there are two lesser-known prohibitions on men’s hair.
Regarding priests, Leviticus 21:5 states: “They shall not shave smooth any part of their heads, or cut the side-growth of their beards, or make gashes in their flesh.” The Torah has no concern about a naturally balding priest, but one who intentionally removes a portion of the hair on his head is in violation of divine law. Similarly, speaking specifically to mourners, Deuteronomy 14:1 states: “You shall not gash yourselves or shave the front of your heads because of the dead.” Reading further in Deuteronomy, it seems the immediate concern is imitating the practices of idolatrous neighbors.
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Interestingly, both prohibitions on shaving a bald spot, stated for priests and mourners, also forbid violent self-harm. This suggests that, from the Torah’s perspective, the former was as disfiguring as the latter. Medieval commentators are not entirely sure what to make of these twinned prohibitions. Rashi seems to think that the concern in Deuteronomy is presenting a dignified appearance, while Abravanel sees the Torah as concerned about extreme mourning behaviors, of which these apparently qualify.
We’ve seen cases where the Talmud limits the application of a prohibition that may no longer feel relevant or even morally defensible — such as in the notorious cases of the sotah (the woman suspected of adultery) and the ben sorer u’moreh (the stubborn and rebellious child). But on today’s daf, we see no indication that the rabbis are uncomfortable with this law forbidding a priest or mourner from shaving part of the hair on their head. As with other Torah prohibitions discussed in this tractate, the rabbis hold that the punishment for intentional violation is makkot, lashes. Moreover:
One might have thought that even if he created four or five bald spots, he will be liable to only one set of lashes. Therefore, the verse states: “Bald spot,” to make him liable for each and every bald spot.
The verse that prohibits priests from making a bald spot is phrased in the singular, which the rabbis read as making one liable for lashes for every single intentionally-created bald patch.
Today, no Jews actively serve as priests in the Temple, but the concern about what we communicate with our public presentation still influences the Jewish mourning practice of not shaving while in mourning.
From a religious and cultural perspective, then, hair really is more than something that grows on our bodies. What we do with our hair speaks to how we present ourselves and our people in the world, how we mourn our dead and the traditions we honor.
Read all of Makkot 20 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on April 28, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
