natethegreat

I listened to Rabbi Belsky zt”l’s shiur as well as read his opinion on the topic in the safer Shulachan Halavi. First of all, he is not in disagreement with Reb Elsyashv ztl. The question boils down to the mitzus – is the hair sold to the frum population, “temple hair,” – hair taken from woman who shave their hair in temples which might potentially have problems of avoda zara, or, “brush hair,” – hair collected from local villages by woman who earn an income by growing their hair and selling the strands that come off when they brush their hair.

When the whole controversy erupted, a delegation of 20 rabbinic went down and investigated 11 of the “brush hair” factories. Their determination was that temple hair represented a tiny minority of the hair available on the market and was not sold to our wig industry. Temple hair is sold for around $50,000 and primarily used in the Hollywood film industry. According to Rabbi Belsky the information was clear and inarguable, however people intent on scaring the tzibbur kept trying to find new reasons why the data was wrong. They claimed that the rabbanim who went down to India were duped. According to these (conspiracy) theorists the factories they visited, filled with hundreds of workers sorting bales of hair were all actors in an elaborate hoax designed to fool the rabbi’s about the true origin of the hair. After looking through the data, Rabbi Belsky was confident that such thinking was simple foolishness. The poskim in eretz yisoral were simply discussing the halachic status of hair obtained from a temple, not the actual origin of the hair. I have not listened to this shuir in a while, but this is what I remember…