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.
The Problem With Indian Hair
Much of the world’s supply of long, high-quality wig hair comes from India, and much of that hair is shorn in property belonging to or near Hindu temples — most famously the Venkateswara temple at Tirupati — where pilgrims submit to tonsuring as a religious act.
The hair is auctioned on the international market and finds its way into sheitelach worldwide.
The halachic question is rooted in Shulchan Aruch Yoreh De’ah 139:6, based on the Gemara in Avodah Zarah 59b: no benefit may be derived from takroves avodah zarah.
In 2004, Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt”l — re-examining a teshuvah he had written in 1989 in light of allegedly new information about Tirupati — ruled that such sheitels were forbidden. Rav Moshe Sternbuch shlita ruled similarly.
A letter later circulated in New York shuls, signed by Rav Chaim Meir HaLevi Vosner (Rav and Av Beis Din of Zichron Meir), Rav Sriel Rosenberg (Raavad in Bnei Brak), Rav Yehuda Silman (Av Beis Din in Bnei Brak), Rav Shimon Bodni (Chaver, Moetzes Chachmei HaTorah), and Rav Moshe Mordechai Karp of Modiin, declaring that no hechsher can be trusted because temple hair has saturated the market. The letter cited an industry figure, Vince Selva of Indo Asian Human Hair International Inc., and listed 25 alleged “facts” about the human hair industry.
Other poskim — including Rav Yisrael Belsky zt”l and, most significantly, Rav Dov Landau shlita — reached a different conclusion. Their reasoning is a rope woven from several independent strands. Even if one strand frays, the rope holds.
Who Is Rav Dov Landau?
Rav Ephraim Dov Landau was born in Zgierz, Poland, in 1930, a grandson of the Strikover Rebbe. His family reached Eretz Yisroel before the war. He learned at Ponevezh, where his rebbeim included Rav Dovid Povarsky zt”l and Rav Shmuel Rozovsky zt”l. He married Rebbetzin Adina Sher, a granddaughter of Rav Yitzchak Isaac Sher of Slabodka. In the early 1980s he was appointed rosh yeshiva of Slabodka in Bnei Brak, a position he holds today together with his cousin Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch. With the petirah of Rav Gershon Edelstein zt”l in 2023, Rav Landau became, with Rav Hirsch, chairman of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah of Degel HaTorah.
Though still a bochur when the Chazon Ish was niftar in 1953, he considers the Chazon Ish his rebbi muvhak, and his halachic method is built brick by brick on Chazon Ish foundations. It was one of those foundations that he used to save the sheitels.
A Tree in Tzaidan
The Gemara in Avodah Zarah 48a relates that a tree in Tzaidan was being worshipped as avodah zarah. Rabbi Shimon instructed the townspeople to examine the pile of offerings beneath its branches. Buried in the pile they found a small tzurah — a carved form.
Rabbi Shimon’s ruling was counterintuitive: the tree is permitted. The worshippers, he explained, were never really worshipping the tree. They were worshipping the form. The tree was merely furniture. What looks like the object of worship is often not the object of worship. That insight forms the basis of what follows.
The Chiddush of the Chazon Ish
The Chazon Ish (Yoreh De’ah 62:21) asks: when an idolater bows before his idol, what exactly is he worshipping? He drew a line more sharply than anyone before him: one cannot make a korban to something that does not exist.
There are two fundamentally different cases.
In the first, a person worships something Hashem actually created — the sun, the moon, a star, a malach. This is avodah zarah in the full halachic sense, and all the laws apply, including takroves.
In the second, a person worships a koach mufshat — an abstract power he has invented in his own mind. This power was never created and does not exist. In this second case, the Chazon Ish rules, the matter is not avodah zarah in the technical halachic sense at all. It is minus — heresy. A terrible sin, but a different category with different consequences.
The Chazon Ish anchors this in the Rambam (Hilchos Avodah Zarah 2:1), whose careful formulation forbids worship of any created being — angel, sphere, star, element. Had the Rambam meant to forbid worship of every imagined power, he would have grounded the issur in “lo sa’asun lachem elohim.” Instead, he grounded it in the worship of created things. Confirmation comes from the Rambam in Hilchos Teshuvah, who labels one who attributes an image to Hashem a min — heretic — rather than an oveid avodah zarah.
From Bnei Brak to Tirupati
Rav Dov Landau applied this chiddush to the hair at Tirupati. His teshuvah appears in his sefer Minchas Dvar Mitzvah (ch. 26, in a footnote), and is cited as heter number fourteen in HaKetze’akasa and more recently in Me’orei Simcha by Rabbi Simcha Friedman of Lakewood.
When a Hindu pilgrim stands before a statue at Tirupati, what is he or she actually worshipping?
Based on the halachic testimony gathered in 2004, Rav Landau understood that Hindu theology, as described by its own adherents, posits an abstract spiritual power behind the physical statues. The statues are not the deity; they are representations of a koach mufshat. That imagined power, Rav Landau argued, was never created by Hashem. This places Hindu worship, by the Chazon Ish’s criterion, in the second category — not avodah zarah, but heresy.
Takroves avodah zarah requires, as a logical prerequisite, that there be avodah zarah to offer to. No avodah zarah, no takroves. Rav Landau adds that the shaving takes place in a separate area within the temple complex — not before the idol itself. Even one who rejects the first argument must contend with the fact that the hair was never placed before the idol as a formal offering.
The Chazon Ish’s line turns on a single criterion: was the object of worship ever created?
Worshipping the soul of a person who really lived is real avodah zarah — a soul is a created thing (see Koheles 3:21 and Nazir 48a). Worshipping the soul of someone who never existed falls on the other side of the line.
The Attacks
The emails argue, in essence, that the Chazon Ish is wrong — that all Hindu worship is full-fledged avodah zarah not heresy — and therefore Rav Landau’s heter collapses.
Some go further, connecting recent tragedies to the sheitels that frum women are wearing. That requires a heavy answer.
Let’s be clear:
attributing specific tragedies to specific aveiros is a path the Gemara itself warns us away from.
The Gemara in Brachos 5a, and the Rambam in Hilchos Ta’aniyos, tell us to examine our deeds in times of difficulty — but they do not give any of us license to announce which aveirah of which person or persons caused which tragedy. That is nevuah, and nevuah has been gone for a long time.
The halachic attack, though, deserves a halachic answer. Even if someone wishes to reject the Chazon Ish’s chiddush entirely, the sheitels, according to many Pokim, are still permitted. The Chazon Ish is one strand. There are others.
Rav Belsky and the Nature of the Offering
I was personally present with Rav Yisrael Belsky zt”l when he both researched the issue and when he discussed it with the poskim in Eretz Yisroel.
Dayan Dunner’s research concluded that the Indian women were actually giving their hair as an offering to “the gods,” and that the hair was therefore takroves avodah zarah.
The research of others, including Rav Belsky zt”l, was that the women were offering to shave their hair as a sign of devotion, and that the hair itself was not the offering. According to that understanding, the hair is permitted. Rav Belsky discusses additional reasons for permitting it in his sefer Shulchan HaLevi page 438, where letters back and forth with Rav Elyashiv zt”l are printed.
Research at the time, including conversations with representatives at the Indian consulate, indicated that the hair itself is not an offering per se. The consulate official described tonsuring as a mark of personal devotion — the shaving itself is the avodah, not the hair that falls to the floor.
Further research revealed two different Hindu conceptions.
Some pilgrims offer their hair as a sign of surrendering the ego. Others offer it in payment of a debt: according to Hindu lore, Vishnu took out a wedding loan so large it would take him thousands of years to repay, and devout Hindus “help pay off Vishnu’s debt” by offering their hair. Those donating on the second account would arguably be producing takroves avodah zarah; those on the first are not. Punari Aruni, a pilgrim who appears in the documentary Hair India, describes her own donation in the first terms — surrender of ego, not a gift.
Crucially, many hair exporters operate entirely outside the temple system. Agents approach men in Indian villages and pay them roughly $10 for their wives’ hair (per a January 2014 article by Katie Rucke) — no temple, no “offering.” Even at Tirumala Venkateswara, the largest of India’s roughly 28 hair-exporting temples, the director has stated that pilgrims are not paid; the proceeds feed some 30,000 poor people daily. India exports roughly 2,000 tons of temple hair per year, but a substantial fraction is sold to stuff mattresses, manufacture oil filters, or extract amino acids for industrial use. The assumption that “all wigs must contain temple hair” is not supported by the industry data.
The Sfek Sfaika: Not Three Doubts, but Four or Five
This brings us to the second independent pillar of the heter — entirely separate from the Chazon Ish, and unaffected even if one rejects his chiddush entirely.
Sheitels bearing a proper hechsher are permitted through the halachic mechanism of sfek sfaika, which the Shulchan Aruch deploys throughout, including in Yoreh De’ah 122:6.
A careful count yields not three but four, and arguably five, independent halachic safeikos. Each is logically distinct — each would need to resolve against the sheitel for the prohibition to apply.
Doubt One — the worshipper’s own intent. Even granting arguendo that Hindu worship is avodah zarah, is the individual pilgrim actually worshipping the physical idol, or an abstract koach mufshat? As documented above — through the Indian consulate, pilgrims like Punari Aruni, and the ego-surrender theology described by Hindus themselves — much of the donation is explicitly framed as personal devotion rather than a gift to a deity. This doubt operates on the side of the worshipper. This is also the official notion in their religious texts. But just as there are people and Jews who believe that a Kashrus symbol means that a Rabbi “blesses” the food rather than supervising the food – there are errors of conception in every community.
Doubt Two — whether the hair qualifies as a takroves. Even if the pilgrim is worshipping an idol, is the hair halachically an “offering”?
Rav Belsky’s research concluded that the shaving itself is the avodah and the hair is simply what falls away — the byproduct of the devotional act, not the devotion itself. If a person cut off a thumb to demonstrate devotion to an idol, that would not automatically render the thumb a korban. Body parts shed during a devotional act may simply be different from objects brought before an idol. This doubt operates on the side of the offering.
Doubt Three — whether the shaving is even in the right place. Rav Landau notes that the tonsuring at Tirupati takes place in a separate building, not before the idol. A takroves requires a formal offering in the presence of the object of worship. Whatever happens in a separate shaving hall may not rise to that threshold. This doubt operates on the side of the ritual setting.
Doubt Four — whether any particular sheitel contains temple hair at all. Hair is collected from many countries. Much Indian hair is sourced from village agents with no temple connection. A large portion of actual temple hair is diverted to mattress stuffing, oil filters, and amino-acid extraction, never reaching sheitel manufacturers. For sheitels with a reliable hechsher whose supply chain has been investigated, the probability that the hair traces to a Tirupati tonsuring is reduced further still. This doubt operates on the side of the physical provenance.
Doubt Five — the status of commercially-sold hair. There is a strong halachic argument that once hair has been sold commercially at international auction, it is no longer considered takroves avodah zarah for the purposes of combining with other safeikos, on account of bitul. This is the ruling of Rav Yosef Teumim in his Pri Megadim (siman 586), based on the Gemara in Zevachim 74a, which does not rule like Shmuel’s stringent view that sfek sfaika cannot be applied to takroves avodah zarah. The Beis Shlomo (Orach Chaim 30) likewise rules leniently. Whether one counts this as a fifth independent doubt or as the halachic gateway that makes applying sfek sfaika to this category possible, the result is the same: the ordinary stringency attached to avodah zarah does not block the combination of doubts here.
Each of these attacks the prohibition at a different logical joint — worshipper, offering, setting, provenance, and halachic category itself. The case is not a sfek sfaika but something considerably stronger.
Even Without the Chazon Ish, the Sheitels Stand
Even if someone wishes to argue that the Chazon Ish’s chiddush does not apply to Hinduism, should not be extended to Tirupati, or is open to reconsideration entirely — the sheitels remain permitted.
At worst, his position becomes a snif l’hakel joined to the other independent factors above. A snif combined with other grounds is how the Shulchan Aruch and the later poskim construct heterim in cases of shaas ha’dchak, hefsed merubah, and kavod ha’briyos. Snifim are how difficult halachic cases are actually decided.
Even if the Chazon Ish’s leg is removed entirely, the remaining legs — the nature-of-the-offering research of Rav Belsky zt”l, the industry reality that much hair is not temple hair at all, the separate-building argument, and the four-or-five-fold sfek sfaika grounded in the Pri Megadim, the Beis Shlomo, and Zevachim 74a — may more than suffice. And the Chazon Ish’s position, even when not primary, becomes an additional snif strengthening the others.
Where Stringency Is Appropriate
This is not a blanket permit for every product on the market. Hair extensions are a more significant halachic problem. The company Great Lengths, which produces high-end extensions, manufactures them exclusively from temple hair. That is not a sfek sfaika — it is close to a certainty.
Anyone wearing such extensions should consult their rav. At best, extensions sold in ordinary hair salons might be permitted through a double doubt, but the grounds are considerably weaker than for sheitels.
Similarly, sheitels marketed as “ethical” or “temple sourced” should be avoided: the entire heter is built on doubt, and where the seller himself eliminates the doubt, the heter disappears. But the ordinary sheitel carrying a reliable hechsher, from a manufacturer whose supply chain has been investigated, is likely protected by multiple independent halachic arguments, any one of which may likely suffice.
A Final Word on the Tone of the Debate
To those connecting specific tragedies to the wearing of sheitels:
b’ahavas Yisroel, please reconsider.
Tragedies in Klal Yisroel are not puzzles to be solved by pinning them to one mitzvah or one aveirah.
The Gemara in Bava Basra 16a and the sefer Iyov itself warn us away from this kind of accounting. When Chazal tell us to examine our deeds after tragedy, they speak in the first person, not the third.
To those attacking the Chazon Ish zt”l and Rav Dov Landau shlita:
attacking gedolei olam is not a small thing.
The Chazon Ish is the Chazon Ish. Rav Dov Landau shlita is the rosh yeshiva of Slabodka and a chairman of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah. One may respectfully disagree — great poskim have disagreed throughout the generations — but one does not discard their words lightly.
And to the frum women who have been made to feel that the sheitel on their head is a churban:
please know that the heter on which you rely rests not on one foundation but on several. The Chazon Ish, Rav Dov Landau shlita, Rav Belsky zt”l, the Pri Megadim, the Beis Shlomo, the Gemara in Zevachim, the researched reality of the hair industry, and the time-honored principle of sfek sfaika all stand behind you.
You are not, b’ezras Hashem, wearing takroves avodah zarah.
This third wave of controversy is only beginning, and the matter will need to be brought again before the gedolei haposkim in America, where most of the women in question actually live. Until a more airtight system for verifying sources exists, the multiple halachic grounds outlined above remain the basis for the psak.
May Hashem spare us further tragedy, and may we merit to see each other — and each other’s mitzvos — with an ayin tovah.
The author can be reached at yairhoffman2@gma
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