Sarah and Rivkah Imeinu Wore Human Hair Wigs Which Looked Better Than Their Own Hair

DreamingOfMoshiach has the latest autistic message, of why the tzaddikim were killed in India. Everybody thinks they know, and just conveniently, the reason falls wonderfully in line with their previous agenda.

1. Some use it to reinforce the debunked rumor attributed to Rav Kanievsky about bomb-shelters by Chanukkah, or false predictions that Mashiach is coming this year, before President Gog Bush leaves office, by saying that the Zohar predicted this tragedy in Mumbai (by getting all the details of the attack wrong), right before a Mashiach ben Ephraim of the last day of Chanukkah.
   
   
2. The Neturei Karta use it (see here and here) to criticize Chabad for
   

   opening their homes and allowing "mechalelai shabbes" and "ochlei treifos" to sit and eat with "shomrei shabbos" and "ochleo kosher".
   That along with the fact that Chabad works together with the Zionist entity.

3. And naturally enough, the "autistics" (or rather the facilitators) use the tragedy to promote their own world-view and agenda.
   

Indeed, it is not surprising at all. The whole idea of these facilitated messages on high is that they take a personal tragedy, of a child being autistic, and claim that it is as a tikkun, and that the purpose is to deliver, via facilitated communication, messages from on high. So too, in the tragedy that occurred at Mumbai, they claim:

Why did such tzaddikim have to die? Because from the time of their birth they had a tikun [rectification] to do. That tikun was to bring a most important message to Am Yisrael. That message is: "Am Yisrael, do teshuva [repent]. Because if you don't, you will have to suffer terribly until you do - or else, chas veshalom, disappear from creation completely." That is the main message.

The message, of course, is the same message of the autistics themselves.

It is also interesting that they blame the attacks on the low spiritual level of Mumbai, and materialism, writing

Also, notice the place where all this happened. Mumbai, India, is a city centered around money [it is India's financial center]. It is a major city of the Olam Hazeh [materialism, the “golden calf”]: full of Western tourism, restaurants, fancy hotels, etc. Moreover, the essence of India is based on avodah zara and there is avodah zara in every corner. And along with that, Mumbai is also filled with the spiritual filth of the Western countries, gashmius [materialism] and many other things hated by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That is why it was an appropriate place to pass on this message against the Golden Calf [materialism and the vanities of this world].

I find this interesting because it patterns what some who know India and Mumbai say was the motivations of the terrorists (see this NY Times article):

MY bleeding city. My poor great bleeding heart of a city. Why do they go after Mumbai? There’s something about this island-state that appalls religious extremists, Hindus and Muslims alike. Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness.

Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim man living in a shack without indoor plumbing what kept him in the city. “Mumbai is a golden songbird,” he said. It flies quick and sly, and you’ll have to work hard to catch it, but if you do, a fabulous fortune will open up for you. The executives who congregated in the Taj Mahal hotel were chasing this golden songbird. The terrorists want to kill the songbird.

By making God's message the same as the terrorists' message, they are essentially justifying the attacks, from a Divine perspective.

Another thing that annoyed me was how the autistics declare that some of the victims (the chareidim) were holier than others:

All the Jews that died there died al Kiddush Hashem [to sanctify Hashem's name] have the status of tzaddikim, yet those specific four stood out the most.

This is in sync with their general attitude, as seen in other such communications.

Part of this message of repentance is, of course, to not wear sheitels and that music needs a hechsher:

Women should dress like Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah [who certainly never wore wigs] and not like models from Paris [see more about this in message 35]. We should not bring into a Jewish home all sorts of written materials from the street or read books of the goyim. We should also not bring in books written by Jews who do not have real Torah hashkafos - even if they wear kippahs. And nowadays, even music needs a good hechsher.

See here about even music needing a good hechsher.

In terms of this message brought by Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg H"y"d, not to wear sheitels, it appears that as a frum Lubavitch woman, she did not receive that message herself. See picture to the right. I do not think that she would take too kindly to the use of her murder to promote an anti-sheitel agenda.

And as part of the general trend of the anti-sheitel crowd, it is interesting to note that a few posts earlier on the same blog, there was a blaming of all the terrible things happening to klal Yisrael on women wearing sheitels. This was accompanied by a collection of anti-sheitel statements from various prominent rabbonim which included:

Women that wear wigs do not have Yirat Shamayim - fear of heaven. The biggest problem is these women think it's allowed and they deny the Tzaddikim's cherem.

and

A woman that wears a wig is as if she does not cover her hair! Stupid women! How can a woman like you have fear of Heaven? A woman that wears a wig has no holiness.

So let me ask. Now that you want to take Rivka Holtzberg as an extremely holy tzaddik, in order to convey this message, would you say that she had no holiness? That she was a stupid woman who had no fear of Heaven? Chas veshalom!

But let us turn to this claim, purportedly made by the autistic Daniel, or perhaps in this particular case filled in by some editor -- after all, it is in square brackets.

Women should dress like Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah [who certainly never wore wigs].

I would guess that historically speaking, this is likely to be correct. But only because it is quite possible that they did not cover their hair for purposes of modesty back then in general. If and when there was any head covering in that hot climate, it was likely done as protection from the sun. But assuming we take literally, and historically, the midrashic assertion that the Avos and Imahos kept the Torah even before Matan Torah, then why assume that they did not wear wigs? Because you don't think wigs are muttar? There are others who disagree. And this is a retrojection of your own values and standards of modesty onto the Avos. (See this post on Oz Vehadar Levushah and Rachel covering herself with sheep, for more on this idea.)

For example, we know that Moshe Rabbenu was Satmar, and that he wore a plotche bibur, as the fellow in this video explains:

Or we have a proof that Yaakov wore a yarmulke. Because the pasuk says vayeitzei Yaakov. Would Yaakov have gone out without his yarmulke?!

Perhaps their proof that the Imahos wore tichels and not sheitels was from the pasuk

וַיָּבֹא יַעֲקֹב מִן-הַשָּׂדֶה, בָּעֶרֶב, וַתֵּצֵא לֵאָה לִקְרָאתוֹ וַתֹּאמֶר אֵלַי תָּבוֹא, כִּי שָׂכֹר שְׂכַרְתִּיךָ בְּדוּדָאֵי בְּנִי; וַיִּשְׁכַּב עִמָּהּ, בַּלַּיְלָה הוּא.

Would Leah have gone out without her tichel, or chas veshalom worse, with a sheitel?! Of course not!

(*Yes, I am aware of the irony of citing this pasuk given the midrashim interpretation of it.)

But I actually have proof positive that the Imahos did wear sheitels, and even realistic human hair sheitels which looked better than their own hair.

The proof is as follows. We know that the Avos and Imahos kept kol haTorah kulah. Which means that the Imahos must have kept the Das Moshe and Das Yehudis of a Jewish married woman covering her hair.

But on the other hand, we see that Avraham and Yitzchak continuously played a trick, passing their wives off as their unmarried sisters. As Avraham says:

וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר הִתְעוּ אֹתִי, אֱלֹהִים מִבֵּית אָבִי, וָאֹמַר לָהּ, זֶה חַסְדֵּךְ אֲשֶׁר תַּעֲשִׂי עִמָּדִי: אֶל כָּל-הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר נָבוֹא שָׁמָּה, אִמְרִי-לִי אָחִי הוּא.

How could Sarah or Rivkah pass for unmarried women? After all, unmarried women do not cover their hair, so their tichels would have been a dead giveaway.

The answer must be that they held like Rav Moshe Feinstein, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and the many poskim they in turn relied upon (Mishnah Brurah, Pri Megadim, Rama, etc.), who permitted sheitels, even sheitels made from hair, and even sheitels made from the woman's own hair. And they wore such sheitels, and Avimelech and Pharaoh thought that it was their own hair, and that they were beautiful and single.