The link to rabbi karenlitz and rabbi wosner's psak was posted above. its widely publicized. It says that more information will hopefully come, and until this issue is clarified, based on the information they have, you should try to exchange indian shaitels if you have them and buy non-indian ones goign forward.

Rav Wosner's son, who is BH alive and accessible, said that what Rav WOsner means by "try hard to exchange" is that if you have enough money to buy another shiatel then do it - if not, you dont have to get rid of your indian one.

This means the issue is a safek -- for now.

As far as Rabbi Belsky, he too is available, but if you must, you can say that he was interviewd by the NY Times last Firday and that is what he said.

Yagdil,

If you are not knwledgable about the facts of the case, then you simply do not know what is correct; if you dont know who is greater than you dont know who to follow; if you do not know what the various poskim have said then you cannot the "rove" (there is no such halachah as "rove poskim that I am aware of").

If you dont know any of the above, then you shoudl ask your rav what to do.

As far as assessing the greatness of poskim, Rav Shach ZTL, in a letter to a talmid who asked about who to follow in a dispute amongst the poskim, said that if your family follows a legitimate psak you should follow that, and if they do not, you should follow who is bigger. Then he adds "And you can know who is bigger. For instance, in Eretz Yisroel, the Chazon Ish is 'bigger'."

Two things though - I still have not seen first hand informaiton as to what Rav Elyashev really said; we have the world of a talmid. More importantly, we still do not know what description was given to Rav Elyashev that made him rule hoever he ruled. And again, the issue over here is not what is the right psak, but what is the right shailah.

Tonsuring:

The objective behind tonsuring (shaving one's head for the Lord) is to demonstrate that he/she completely surrenders his/her ego at the feet of the Lord. Pilgrims can have their heads tonsured at the Kalyanakatta (opposite the Annanadanam Complex). There are seventeen sub-centers for tonsuring. Pilgrims can also request to be tonsured at the cottages where they are staying.

This was straight off the website for the Tirupati Temple that Rabbi Dunner visited.

PS - The Maharalbach is quoted lhalchah. The only dissenting opinion I know of may be the Mahari Beirav, who the maharalbach was writing to, but it is not certin he would disagree with that point.

No, its not true. Its a common myth that blonde shaitels come from blonde women.

Well, some do, but black Indian hair is also made into blonde shaitels. They dye them. First green, then red, then blonde. And before that they bleach them.

Now back to this Shakla vtaryia...

<<<If you are not knwledgable about the facts of the case, then you simply do not know what is correct>>>
That is the truest statement in this case. Those that do not know for sure - or have'nt at least made the effort to post to a website ;-) - they are clueless...

<<<if you dont know who is greater than you dont know who to follow>>>
Regarding the Letter of R' Shach Zt"l, most talmidim/chassidim of a particular Rov/Rebbe will do according to their psak - as I will. The qustion is for many people that do not have this distinction - besides the obvious answer of "find a Rav quickly" [ which i think is the true only answer in this case...]

[As an aside, is it really that easy to tell who is bigger?]

<<<there is no such halachah as "rove poskim that I am aware of">>>
Good point. Although it is possible (with a bit of effort of course) to find out at least the opinions of the poskei hador.

<<<Two things though - I still have not seen first hand informaiton as to what Rav Elyashev really said; we have the world of a talmid>>>
Which is why everybody is willing to "err" as it is, on the side of caution.

<<<"...what description was given to Rav Elyashev that made him rule however he ruled...not what is the right psak, but what is the right shailah.">>>
Al kol ponim, in the interim, do you or not feel that people should EOTSOC (err on the side of caution, sorry)?

<<<Maharalbach is quoted lhalchah...>>>
Ok. Yasher Koach for that.

In other words, the logic here would indicate the reverse of what you started this thread; that "sacrifice" is the sybolic "self-sacrifice".
This text is saying that the hair is an actual *offering* [read: sacrifice], and the hair being GIVEN is symbolic of the "sacrifice of the ego".
Lehavdil, elef havdolos, like a Korbon is symbolic of that person giving his korbon nedavah/choivah. There is a fine line (ke'chut ha'sara...) of distinction.

[Note: In any case I don't put much value in what a website states. Reliability is very slim except in rare circumstances. I think you agree on this point.]

For the record, there is no such thing as a "posek hador". It is a colloquial expression but there is no halachic status in it. You would be very hard pressed to find thep hrse anywhere in Torah literature (except in contemporary seforim lie Tzitz Eliezer, where it is all over the place in title lines), and oyu will nto find anywhere that there is a special authority or status to a "posek hador" - the phrase is haalchicly non-existent. I do rememerb either in the teshuvos rama to the maharshal or the teshuvos maharshal to the rama - I forget which - where it was inserted as a title like harav hagaon etc. but it is never used in any meaningful way.

That said, "the najority of poskei hador" whatever that means, is still subject to the assessments of quality mentioned above.

The Maharashdam is totalyl not relavent here. He is talking abotu a group of rabbis getting together anf determining from scratch what theh alahcha is - if one rabbi decides and tells others who then decide, on the phone or otherwise - thats not what he is talking about.

As far as what side to err on, for sure if you dont know the truth then you should stay away from any possible issuring - "better to trespass on 100 measures of heter rather than one of issur". But that doesnt mean burnign your wig, and it doesnt mean throwing it out. This type of psak is what Rav WOsner and Rav Karelitz released, that basically they do not know, so if you have enough money to buy a non-indian shaitel, go ahead; if not, then you dont have to strain yourself (see above that that is what Rav Wosner;s son said his father means).

But of course, its better not to err at all.

About your website article, the man is giving a very loose explanation without explaining it - kind of like if a Jew would say "we sanctify the moon" for kiddush levana, which it what it means literally. As I mentioned, this was the biggest problem, and seems to be so once again - the wording and expressions used. It is clear from every single scholarly and religious authority without a single exception, that the tonsure practice is NOT at all any kind of sacrifice, the hair itself is tameh to them, and according to the guidelines that Rav Elyashev himlsef set down it would not be takrovos a"z.

serge,

First realize that your quesiton is not directed to me, its directoed to Rav Elyashev, who did rely on Dr Mohan to matir the shaitlach then. He says so explicitly in his teshuva, even though they blocked out his name.

First, Dr Mhan had no idea that a Jew was the one asking, and certinaly no idea why. And besides, his story was confirmed to the exact detail, by literally dozens of books, other professors, priests (Mohan is a hindu proest also, btw), researchers, hindus, witnesses, people who have done this, and others without a single discrepency. Its not possible for everyone to make up the same story by coincidence, with not a single dissenting opinion in existence.

May. 20, 2004 23:08 / Updated May. 21, 2004 9:47
Some still split hairs over wigs
By ABIGAIL RADOSZKOWICZ

"My husband says that the girls learned more in one day than they did during years of school," said Miriam, a housewife from Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood.

She was referring to the wig crisis that caused her husband to burn her two Indian-hair wigs, deemed the product of an idolatrous Hindu rite, in the Jerusalem Forest last Saturday night.

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By Tuesday, Miriam had already bought another wig, costing $1,000 and carrying a certificate of kashrut from the rabbi of the Ukrainian town where it was made. But Miriam was not wearing it yet, not while most haredi women were still going wigless.

"I don't want to be suspected of doing something wrong," she said.

Still, slowly, more women could be seen wearing wigs over the past week following last Thursday's near-universal doffing.

That day, one hat-store proprietor who had long complained of lagging sales found herself faced with a line of customers outside her store waiting their turn to come into its small space, after the brew that had been simmering some weeks over the question of Indian hair boiled over into a ruling by leading haredi authority Rabbi Shalom Yosef Elyashiv forbidding Indian hair.

One wigmaker told of ending a fight between two customers over her last remaining "kosher" human-hair wig by offering to cut it in two. Others did a brisk business in synthetic hair, long considered old-fashioned.

Until now, wigs have served for mainstream Lithuanian and hassidic women as the strongest outward sign of their sectarian identity within the Orthodox world. Smaller, more stringent Ashkenazi haredi groups do not allow wigs to serve as head coverings for married women on halachic grounds.

Some have taken advantage of the situation to post wall posters calling on women never to wear wigs again, and thereby show unity with all their religious sisters, such as the Sephardi and modern Orthodox, who generally do not wear wigs. A modern Orthodox woman in a crocheted hat could be overheard on a Jerusalem pavement boasting to her friends of all those rabbis who had long urged women to throw their wigs in the garbage.

However, at this point haredi women seem to be suffering more from the damage to their appearance than to their identity.

Liba, a young, American-born Jerusalem housewife, said, "I don't feel I'm crossing any line by putting on a hat now, but I can understand how some women would. More important for me is that when I look in the mirror, I don't feel as good about myself. I feel I could look a lot better [by wearing a wig]. Like most people I know, I'm more formal and don't even take off my wig until I go to sleep at night. I even cook with it. But I know that the rabbis are not doing this to torture us. I do believe that the leading rabbis are sensitive to people's feelings."

"It's been a tough week, but on the other hand, the issue of idolatory, which is a cardinal sin, is not something I can take lightly."

A hassidic Jerusalemite admitted to feeling less than comfortable suddenly finding herself wearing a snood, but added that her main emotion was one of pride.

"I wasn't wearing the snood because I was too lazy or too rushed to comb out my sheitel, but because the rabbis said not to wear anything we're not sure about," she said.

Thirteen years ago, nonagenarian sage Elyashiv and the late Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach permitted Indian hair wigs, based on on-site research and by testimony by American professors of Hinduism. However, the rite has changed since then, explained associates of Elyashiv.

The ruling was based on testimony by Elyashiv's emmisary, Rabbi Ahron David Dunner, a rabbinical judge of London who spent two days in India, during which he visited the Hindu temple outside Madras said to be the source of the hair.

The temple's internet site &#150; www.tirumala-tirupati.com &#150; explains that "the objective behind tonsuring (shaving one's head for the Lord) is to demonstrate that he/she completely surrenders his/her ego at the feet of the Lord."

One local professor of Indian religions said that while he didn't think that the Hindu ritual itself had changed, he found it likely that there would be different explanations from different participants as to its meaning.

This was universally the case for anyone explaining the meaning of a particular religious practice to an outsider, but for Westerners, understanding Indian phenomena was particularly baffling, he said.

Emissaries sent by leading authority Rabbi Shmuel Halevi Wosner had came back with a less clear-cut stance regarding the Hindu rite. Haredi and other Orthodox authorities, both in Israel and abroad, plan to send their own investigators to the scene.

However, in a interview in this weekend's Hamishpacha haredi weekly, Dunner said that while some halachic authorities have taken issue with his finding, anything subsequent investigators would be told in the foreseeable future would be colored by the worldwide publicity that the haredi wig controversy has attracted.
Rabbis are organizing to set up kashrut boards for supervision and certification of wigs.

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The article is correct, except for some details. Rav Elyashev's psak back then was based not only on "American Professors of Hindusim" - as it so happens, Dr. Mohan is a Hindu Priest, besides a professor of Philosophy and religion, and was pointed out by swamis as the highest authority on Hinusim in America. There was much other research as well, based on Priests, swamis, scholars and other evidence. Rav Elyashev just quoted MOhan because, as he says, he was known as the best authority on the matter.

And Rav Shlomo Zalman permitted because of a sfek sfeka - a totally differnt idea.

And there was no on-site research done, though there were witnesses who went through the process.

And for the recoed, theyre off a year. It was 15, and then, 14 years ago.