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Why is it that most litvishe bouchrim that wear brim down hats, wear thier brims up by davening and surely other time that they wear thier hat (except on shabbos they have the brim down)? I don’t undestand, a brim-down hat is meant to be worn brim down, If they want to wear thier brim-up, Why don’t they just get a brim-up hat?
Does it have to do with putting on tefilin shel rosh?
The boys wearing “brim down” hats, a/k/a fedoras, with the brim up look like idiots. Sorry, but that’s the fact. It’s the same with the people who leave the designer label on the outside sleeve of their suit jacket or top-coat – those labels are intended to be removed after purchase – it’s not like the Levi’s tab on the back pocket of your dungarees.
You want to wear your brim up, wear a homburg.
The RBSH is very makpid on this.
It’s laziness.
They feel they are obligated to wear the hat for davening, but don’t really want to, so they just plop it on.
Same for jackets that some drape over their shoulders.
IMO, if you want to dress up for davening then wear a tie and jacket, and put them on like a mentch.
I don’t think it is laziness. It is a style.
They do it to look like the others.
i dont think that either the brim or draped coat is a matter of laziness.
i think its a matter of being cool.
i think also a common “minhag” among the bochrim from some Yeshivas to say the Brochos for an Aliyah in a very casual and hurried manner is a matter of coolness.
cool is very important to many Bochrim in a number of Yeshivas,
or so it seems to me, looking from the outside.
I did not think of that. Now that I think of my teenage nephew in yeshiva, trying to be cool comes to mind. I guess I’m out of it.
Going back to the original issue – that it seems to annoy some of us – It’s funny what may seem to be cool to some looks like stupidity (or laziness) to others. Mussar to be learned.
These are plagues throughout the Yeshivah world that is part and parcel with the ‘on-the-fringe’ children that we have been hearing about.
I am not exaggerating when one Shabbos I saw a group of Israeli bochurim – each and every one of them was wearing his jacket on his shoulders, holding his hat in his right hand down, chup from here to yehupitz- sauntering by. There must have been about 5 of them identical to the T. It’s a shud, because its not like these bochurim have no shaychis to Torah, they probbaly have a few mesechtos each under their belts.
It keeps better with the brim up!
not I:
That’s why the fedora brim should be up…. when it’s not on your head:-) Thanks for the reminder, I left mine down when I took it off this morning.
I go with the front brim down and the brim in the back, up. I tried going with both down, and people asked if I was from Texas.
Every time I see the title of this thread, my first thought is:
Brim Up
Brim Down
Brim Up Brim Down… the Clapper. 🙂
The Wolf
They should wear a brim like the Chofetz Chaim and the other frum of the times, which was no brim.
its cool perhaps up to 30 but thats stretching it.
between 30 to perhaps 50, front tilted down and a bit to the side is cool.
over 60 cool is to wear it with dignity
Weekdays – brim up
Shabbos / Yom tov (or suit occasions, like a wedding or vort) = brim down.
Wearing a brim down mid-week is a VERY yeshivish move, and would mean a whole different type of shidduch (no, I’m not kidding)
Its up there with tzitis in or our. It speaks volumes.
This is applicatble until around 45-50. Not past that yet, but I would imagine the rules are different. But for a bochur? Its VERY telling
Real brisker,
there is acertain adelness that the people that wear the hat down. It is the same geder of not putting the hands in the pocket. When I was a Boucher my father repeattedly requested from me to wear the brim down. I quote you his loshen “you won’t find a rosh yeshiva or godal wearing the brim up!” it’s a status quota.
real- brisker; IMHO it has to do with losing track where the brim is , up or down. Because it DOES look funny. (Weird). I don’t think anyone does it deliberately. I am not a very big expert on this subject because I wear neither a “Brim Up” or a “Brim Down” hat. I hardly wear a hat at all. Only to M&M, sometimes. Never to Shachris. My hat (and Shtreimel) have very low mileage.
Lakewood Dude,
Actually most litvishe roshei yeshiva and gedolim (or anyone who thinks that he is one) wear a hamborg.
Teenagers is teenagers is shtick. Some things never change. When I was in public high school getting beer to drink on the weekend was cool. In later years I heard it was smoking something funny in your cigarette.
We should be happy if the worst shtick they’re doing is wearing their hats funny.
i am not saying what is right or wrong, but the brim down is a very tememusdik a look, not that it is chas ve shalom an avla. but MOST bachurim prefer it UP.
Lakewood Dude; I actually have a “Chakira” (Inquiry/exploration) about the last statement in your post. “It’s a “Status Quota”. Those two words, really don’t jibe. It’s either “Status Quo” which means everything stays the way it is presently. Status, meaning “Matzav” Quo, meaning Stays (Like in the Gemara ??? )?????). Or “Quota”. A proportional limit. But you are (probably) trying to say something entirely different. An Expression of Status. i.e; The (Boch(u)rim) who go “Brim Up” are making an expression of status.
Brim down means either you’re very yeshivish, faking it, or just don’t care about pretending to be cool and are wearing your hat like you’re supposed to.
That being said, I have a question for the oylam, especially pba who brought up shidduchim: What about someone who wears colored shirts and no hat even on shabbos, but wears his tzitzis out? How do you judge his avodas Hashem and shidduch prospects?
Avodas Hashem- Not judge-able.
Shidduch prospects- sounds like a frummed out MO guy back from OJ.
I know this is a brim thread but I wondering if we can talk about tzitzis. I always wondered if the way a boy wears his tzitzis says something about him. I don’t have any brothers so I have no idea about these things. Like under the belt type or very messy type or other types….
“What about someone who wears colored shirts and no hat even on shabbos, but wears his tzitzis out?”
No human can measure another person’s yiras shomayim, and that’s not what I was referring to.
But who would I expect a bochur like the one you just described be his most likely (but not necessarily, iron clad) shidduch prospect?
A super-frum, davens every day, speaks no (or litte) loshon horoh, young woman who probably clocked more kiruv hours this month, than I did in a whole year. But she wears a North Face down jacket, with the ski-lift tags dangling from the zipper pull.
Nothing wrong about that; its just not in sync with the “brim down in middle of the week” bochur.
post sem –
I’ll quote my son (who BTW wears his tzitzis out, yet I don’t)
“its not a problem if a bocher does not wear them out, but wearing them out shows “where he’s holding”
Go figure what THATS supposed to mean, but that’s how they see each other.
And yes, his brim is up mid-week, down on Shabbos.
pba: I was being sarcastic, but thanks for admitting you can’t judge avodas Hashem like that. RE the second part, you really don’t know your MO yeshivot, do you? The ones who flip out buy hats, the ones who wear their tzitzis out without hats frummed up before they went to Israel.
BP Totty: Thanks. The last girl I dated did not really answer to that description, though she was close.
Itche:
I wouldn’t call OJ an MO yeshiva.
I reserve that term for yeshivos who are ideologically MO. Like YU, KBY, Shalhavim, etc.
That said, I think there are some who don’t buy hats.
YU has a different dynamic than any yeshiva in Israel, so we can leave it out of the discussion entirely. Shalhavim is an interesting case in its own right which merits a separate discussion.
Neither KBY nor Sha’albim would view themselves as Modern Orthodox, and the term is not applicable to them. Furthermore, an analysis of Sha’albim would first require someone to get the name right. It is not Shalhavim. If I would analyze YQ or the Brinsk Yeshiva, no one would take me seriously.
Blah Blah Blah.
There is no need to get all in a tizzy. If you pick on little inanities, nobody will take you seriously.
Pardon my out-of-townishness, but what difference does all of it make? How can you estimate someone’s avodas HaShem by such trivial details? Tsitsis in or out, brim up or down, shirt color, hat or not – give us a break! What has this got to do with a person’s middos, or their sincerity?
All the same, I have two questions:
1. Why the ongoing inflation in hat sizes? In the last 10-15 years not only have the hats becvome obligatory, they’ve also gotten larger. The crowns are higher, and – more noticeably – the brims have gotten wider and wider until your average yeshiva bochur looks like he strayed in from a 1930’s cowboy movie. To someone who’s not used to it it’s really funny, and it’s way beyond the size that people used to wear “before Lakewood.”
2. Since when is it obligatory for girls and women to wear black too? Especially in the East, this seems to now be almost halachah – no colors, just black, white and the occasional shade of grey. Again, this is a chiddush. Ladies used to wear colors (just not bright red). I remember hearing that black makes someone look thinner. Is that the origin? Or has there been a psak about looking grim that I missed hearing?
midwest- Seriously! I always ask my brother in law why he is wearing a flying saucer on his head! The brims are really huge!
Why is tzitzis out a gauge for a persons level? There are many good torahdik reasons not to wear one’s tzitzis out. I highly doubt that a guy with an untucked shirt with tzitzis flying out is any holier than a normal neat person with his tzitzis in.
Styles change over time. In recent years, brims have gotten larger and have begun to be worn brim up. This is simply a change in common fashion, and should not be read into too much.
As for those who say this style is “ridiculous,” “silly,” etc., the older generations always think the new generation’s styles are ridiculous and silly, just as the generation before them thought about their styles. Some things don’t change.
in 6th or 7th grade me and my chevra used to make fu of MO until this guy Mordi shapiro (look him up), told us this: a MO guy wears jeans and a t-shirt to shul davens 3 times a day. but a guy with a hat down & jacket ( and maybe even a gartel) misses mincha because he’s busy with his job. who’s on a higher madregah? at first my friend said “MO went to a co-ed school so the yeshivishe guy is on a higher madregah.” and the guy started explainig to us; who are we to judge people? is a person with a brim down frummer than a guy with his brim up? and from then on we both are dan lcaf zchus
moral of the story wear you brim up or down it doesnt effect your avodas ??
Both the issue of wearing hats and the issue of tzitzis in/out are potentially halachic issues. That being said, there are some people who wear hats in a way that does not look repectable and some people who wear their tzitzis in a way which does not look respectable.
And there are those who comment in ways that do not look respectable. ahem.
There was a meshugana troll some time ago who has left now, but one of his crazy nonsense was a Halachic piece where he suggested that it was a chumra and that to wear a brim wider than a tefach brim-down was assur on Shabbos.
But he was crazy, and trying his best to be a troll.
A lot of the reason is to do with the fact that lots of Bochurim use their old Shabbos hat for weekdays, and is often not in such a good shape, and doesn’t look so great with the brim down. With the brim up looks better.
“There was a meshugana troll some time ago who has left now, but one of his crazy nonsense was a Halachic piece where he suggested that it was a chumra and that to wear a brim wider than a tefach brim-down was assur on Shabbos.”
The Shulcha Aruch says (301:40) ???? ???? ????? ???? ????? ??? ???? ????? ????? ????? ???? ???? ???
While there may be heteirim, it hardly qualifies as crazy nonsense.
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