My husband and I visited Israel for our honeymoon a year-and-a-half ago. It was January,and therefore the middle of winter, so I brought hats, thinking two things: it may be cold, and I may want to cover my hair.

The connection between hats as a head-covering and hats as a hair-covering is not a strictly Jewish tradition. Covering the head in religious or holy spaces spans many religions. In Judaism, men are traditionally required to cover their heads. Women, in more Orthodox sectors also have a custom to cover their heads, but the custom relates more to covering the hair rather than the head. I know, a seemingly small distinction, but an extremely powerful one. Both are related to modesty in the presence of G-d, but men’s modesty and women’s modesty have distinctly different dimensions in Jewish life. Men are honoring G-d through wearing a kippa. Women, covering their hair and bodies, are honoring G-d.

As a girl from Virginia, hats were not part of my wardrobe until I went to college in Massachusetts. It doesn’t get quite cold enough to merit a hat in a Virginia winter, but it gets colder in Massachusetts, probably around October, so hats are essential. For years, hats served one purpose - warmth. Fashion was loosely connected, but staying warm was often more important than looking cute. Imagine that, I know!

But, in this period of my life, hats have taken on a new significance. The idea that I may want to cover my hair was not even in the lexicon when I was in college. Growing up, I did not know any women who covered their hair for religious reasons. My association with hats,scarves, and other head-coverings for women was unfortunately extremely negative. My aunt, my namesake, covered her bald head with beautiful scarves as she was dying of cancer. I have only seen her in pictures, many of them lovely, but I do not want to purposely remind myself, or make myself look bald, sick, and dying.

Thus, I have found myself in an interesting predicament. Though I did not grow up with Jewish women who covered their hair, I participate in a community in which women do cover their hair. Since marrying, I too have covered my hair for Shabbat and holidays, and sometimes, perhaps often, in between. When I say cover my hair, I sometimes mean a hat. I sometimes mean a scarf, but I don’t really ever mean that my hair is completely covered. I have long, curly, hair that falls below my shoulders. While there is something extremely appealing about not having to deal with my hair (and focusing more on my inner attributes of beauty, which is the purpose of the practice of covering hair), I
actually kind of like my hair. Covering it completely does echo my aunt’s struggle with losing her hair, but I have found that covering my hair in and of itself does not have as much meaning as, ahem, covering my head.

I have often explained my choice to wear hats or scarves in synagogue to those who have been curious as an opportunity to cover my head, rather than cover my hair. In one of the synagogues I attend, both men and women wear kippot, so the idea of covering one’s head is not foreign at all, and does have significance.

There is one place where I have felt that I wanted to cover my hair. I felt it strongly, not like an impulse but like an obsession. It was in the Ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood in Mea Shearim. My husband and I walked through the alleys, toward the shops, around the Old World neighborhood on a Friday afternoon. Women were scarcely seen on the street - I imagine they were at home, preparing for Shabbat. I felt extremely exposed as a woman. Even though I was wearing a hat, a long-sleeved shirt, and a skirt that fell below my knees, I felt I could have covered myself completely and still not disappeared to the extent that I wished. My hair, my auburn curls glowing in the sun as they slipped out from under the hat and blew in the slight breeze, felt like it was everywhere. I felt that I was my hair. And I wanted to cover it up.

The conflict I experienced in those moments was intense. I was raised in an egalitarian community, became Bat Mitzvah as I read from the Torah after leading my congregation in both Friday evening and Saturday morning services, and am an ardent feminist whose paid work has been directly related to advancing the status of women in this country and
abroad. And yet, at that time, I saw myself as women have been seen throughout centuries - sexualized beings, bodies, temptations. I saw myself as only those things - not as who I am, as we Jews say, inside. I lost my humanity in those moments and became something closer to an object. I was not honoring myself, at all.

Even though I have not since decided to cover my hair so fully, that experience remains with me. I am engaged in a difficult decision-making process about my own modesty and its connections to my life as an observant Jewish woman. Those feelings are still there
under my hat or my scarf, swimming quietly around my covered head.