Tichel

The tichel is a headscarf tied over the hair by married Orthodox Jewish women, and it is best understood as one of two competing solutions to a single religious requirement.

Covering the hair

The obligation on a married woman to cover her hair is longstanding in Jewish law and is treated by most Orthodox authorities as binding, though its exact scope is debated. Two coverings answer it: the wig, or sheitel, favoured in much of the Ashkenazi and Hasidic world, and the cloth headscarf, the tichel, preferred by most Sephardi communities and by many Hasidic ones, with the choice between them itself a marker of community and custom. The tichel leaves it plain that the hair is covered rather than replaced, which is the ground on which its advocates prefer it.

Craft and meaning

Tying styles are elaborate and regionally distinctive, and the manner of the tying, the fabric and the addition of a shaped pad beneath can signal a woman community and observance to those who read such things. The covering is understood as an expression of modesty and of the married state, uncovered hair being reserved for the husband, and like the other coverings of hair in the tradition it is worn by choice within a framework of obligation that the different communities interpret with real variation.

The obligation on a married Jewish woman to cover her hair is long established in halakhah, and its usual textual anchor is the ordeal of the suspected wife in Numbers 5, where the priest uncovers or loosens the woman's hair, from which the Talmud infers that covered hair was the normal state. Rabbinic discussion distinguishes what is required by the law of Moses from what is required by the custom of Jewish women, and the covering falls partly in the second category, which is why practice varies so widely by community while the principle does not.

The tichel, called a mitpachat in Hebrew, is the scarf answer to that requirement, and it is the preferred form in most Sephardi communities and in many Hasidic ones, in preference to a wig. Other forms exist within the same communities: the snood, a knitted or fabric bag; the hat worn over a partial covering; and among some Hasidic groups the shpitzel, a partial hairpiece worn with a headpiece.

What a woman wears is usually legible to those who know how to read it, indicating not only that she is married but which rabbinic authorities her community follows and how strictly. Some communities require that no natural hair show at all; others accept a handbreadth.

The tying itself has become a genuine craft with a contemporary following. Multi scarf wraps using two or three fabrics, volumising pads underneath, regional knots and a large body of instructional material circulate widely, and there are designers and shops serving it. That is a reminder worth keeping: a covering adopted in obedience to a rule is not thereby experienced as plain, and the women wearing them are frequently the ones who made the style.