A flood of emails has come in attacking the recent article on how Rav Dov Landau shlita saved the sheitels.
Ads and articles are circulating that blame the sheitels for the recent car accident tragedies in Lakewood — and for cancer deaths and drownings as well.
The senders assert that the Chazon Ish zt”l is wrong, that Rav Dov Landau shlita is wrong, and that the tens of thousands of bnos Yisroel who rely on psakim permitting the sheitels are walking around in aveirah.
What follows is the fuller halachic picture.
Even if one wishes to attack the Chazon Ish’s chiddush — and the attack does not succeed — his view is only one pillar among several in the heter. Even as a mere snif l’hakel, the heter stands firmly in the eyes of numerous Rabbonim and Poskim.
2004: The Year the Sheitelach Burned
In the spring of 2004, frum women faced a terrifying question:
was the sheitel on one’s head takroves avodah zarah — an offering to idolatry, from which no Jew may derive any benefit?
In Brooklyn, women set curbside bonfires of their own sheitels. In Beit Shemesh, two-thousand-dollar sheitels were traded for five-dollar kerchiefs overnight. In Cleveland, a frum girls’ school closed for a day because the teachers did not know what to put on their heads.
More than two decades later, most of those women are again wearing sheitelach, many made from Indian hair.
The question has resurfaced —several times by people and advertisements that stated that sheitels are forbidden, even with a hechsher, because in their view the hair comes from idolatrous rituals.
