Black hats�nafka minahs?

For myself, as someone who wasn’t raised frum, I do it because most of the people I’ve known who are intent on learning and doing Torah lishmah wear black hats. I want to be among them. I realize that not everyone who wears a black hat comes under a true Torah rubrick in their private lives, and I am also aware of some who do not wear black hats who are very knowledgeable and conscientious in their Torah observance. I’m just reacting to what my own experience tells me is the people I want to identify with.

My comment was directed at the OP who was speaking from a halachic perspective. From an identification perspective, style and color might indeed be important.

Your question was addressed to those who wear black hats. I guess I can’t answer. Just curious, troll or serious question? Because I’ve yet to receive an intelligent answer on the whole hat thing…

PBT wrote an excellent comment. “

I agree. I would also point out that in my father’s day O”H, frum men wore ALL colors of hats, black, brown, navy, gray, beige straw hats, felt hats, cloth hats, homburgs, fedoras, caps, and a hat that was a smaller version of a fedora (don’t know what it was called). People were not hung up on the stereotype of what a hat meant based on its description. But wanting to identify with and be like a particular group that wears a particular type hat, is fine, if that is one’s goal.

I don’t think anyone argues that a particular style or color is required, Charlie.

Most people who wear that style have no idea what it’s called.

I ware a blak het becawse mi wyfe sez shee wull knot let mi gow tew shewl withowt won.

popa_bar_abba: Are you popa_bar_abba saying that even on Rosh haShono & Yom Kippur when men wear a Kittle with a White Kippa in Shul, that your wife will still not let you attend Shul without a black hat?

& How about if you are coming home from work without a hat passing Shul which is just comencing Mincho or Maariv:- Are you popa_bar_abba saying that your wife won’t let you go to Shul and want you to miss that Mincho or Maariv simply because you are missing a hat?

RF: I could be misjudging people, but most of the men I know who wear black hats aren’t bedavka doing it because they’ve looked up the halachic sources and decided it was the right thing- they do it because that’s just “what you do.”

nira li that the halacha that the kitzur shulchan aruch writes that if there is a begged that is distinctively jewish a jew is REQUIRED to wear it and he gives the example of if jews wear black shoe laces and the goyim wear red shoe laces one should wear black shoe laces i might have it wrong im not a posek i am an 11th grader in yeshiva catana

This is in place of the Sudra. It is considered a Midas Chasidus but was commonly worn by all. Perhaps this is because it served the purpose of Beged Elyon as well.

People wear Tefillin without checking up the sources, too. In fact, not following the Hanhaga until you got to figure it all out on your own is not a great practice. It uproots the last remaining threads of Torah Shel Baal Peh of the original kind.

Just an observation. A black hat is a uniform that underlines the hashkafah of the individual. The wider the brim, the more frum regardless of reality. It comes in very handy when ones children are in shiduchim as the absence of the hat can cancel out all the wonderful midos of a family.

the wearing of black and white as representing the colours of the ink and vellum of the Torah scroll If this would so, why do the Amish also be wear these colors?

BTW Based on the way you Keenanp spelt color with a “u”, are you in the UK? or down & under in Australia or New Zealand?

147, why do some sports teams wear light blue uniforms?

I’m looking at these responses and I can’t help but noticing that some very important information is being left out.

Back at the great Jewish hat conference (2004). The white hat leader (names will be withheld for the sake of peace) got into an argument with many of the other leaders. He took all their hats and put them into the washing machine. Now as you all know colours run in the wash. All of the red, green, blue, ect… got mixed together to create an ugly greyish colour. The other leaders decided to unify to stand against the white hats. They decided that they would all dye their hats grey. This was not to be as they looked at prices for the dye, they noticed that black dye was actually cheaper.

And that is how black hats became the fashion.

The Rambam wrote about a talmid chacham wrapping a turban and making a bracha upon wrapping a turban. Rabbis don’t wear turbans anymore; perhaps the black fedora is seen as a post-Godfather version of a turban?

We live in a world that sadly emphasizes the chitzonius over pnimiyus. People look at someone in a kippah serugah, tzitzit tucked inside the trousers, and a polo shirt and khakis, versus someone in a black Borsalino, white shirt, and black jacket and pants, and they automatically assume that the guy in khakis and a kippah serugah “isn’t really frum,” despite the fact that he could possibly be more religious than the guy in the levush.

One of the most memorable lines of my childhood is from the leadup to the Ahavas Yisrael song in the Marvelous Middos Machine (tape 3). “Look over there. There’s that boy with the funny-looking knitted Yarmulke. And he’s carrying a Gemara. Why would he need a Gemara?” It’s sad that some things haven’t changed.

I have not yet found a compelling Halachic reason to wear a hat. I do know that R’ Schachter says it’s completely unnecessary nowadays (he still wears one though).

charliehall,

Given that the fedora wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, it is really difficult to argue that it is halachically required.

Please don’t beat up the straw man, he did nothing to you:-)

I don’t think that anybody here, even the nuts (and those pretending to be nuts to discredit the positions they disagree with), are arguing that a fedora is halachically required. A lot of black hats worn by chareidim aren’t even fedoras (no pinches or crease on the crown, for example).

The arguments here seem to be:

1. Is there a halachic requirement to wear a hat when davening?

2. Are black hats somehow more special than others?

I sympathize with those making the argument that the clothes should not bespeak the man, because in reality, they do not. It is also reality, however, that human beings are not telepathic and cannot see into the depths of another’s soul in the span of a few minutes. Therefore, every human culture utilizes clothing to make statements about status, temperament, and association, to allow the wearer to transmit information about themselves to others. In other words, the clothes do not bespeak the man, but they do bespeak what the man wants others to see. If you do not believe me, go to a job interview in jeans and a t-shirt and tell the hiring manager that your choice of clothes doesn’t reflect on how well you can work.

Like it or not, there is a culture within Orthodox Judaism that identifies as Yeshivish, and wears white shirts and black jackets and hats as a part of this cultural identification. Orthodox Jews who wear kippa srugas are also making a cultural statement (e.g., modern Orthodox, Zionist, etc). There is value in identification with a culture, so it’s certainly not silly for a person to wear clothing that identifies himself with the culture he chooses. This does not mean that a person wearing the headgear of one culture is more religious than anyone else; the clothes cannot tell us that. It does tell us with whom the person identifies, however.

So to the people who are saying that clothing doesn’t matter: you have human behavior since the dawn of civilization at odds with you.

WIY: I still don’t believe R’ Chaim said that. And if he did, he meant in a community where not wearing a hat and jacket would be considered not being properly dressed for Davening. He didn’t mean somewhere where not wearing a hat is considered tolerable/acceptable.

WIY: Because that’s not considered “laxness”. Your cause and effect is backwards. Mechitzah, for example, is an absolute Chiyuv. If someone doesn’t have that, they’re K’negged the Din. The only imperative for wearing a hat is that society has determined that it’s not appropriate to Daven without one. But if you’re in a society that never made that determination and/or has changed their norms from that determination, then the Halachic imperative to wear a hat (read: dress appropriately for Davening) never existed.

HaLeiVi: Our Kippas, assuming they’re fairly big, probably constitute a Sudar anyway. And a Sudar seems to potentially be societal in nature anyway.

That aside, that can’t be what R’ Chaim is referring to. How can you say that a Middas Chassidus trumps T’fillah B’tzibbur?

Because it’s after Memorial Day.

You’re only a good guy after Memorial Day?

Funny? Why?

For those of you to young to know, in the old western movies and series, the bad guys always wore black hats and the good guys always wore white hats.