Umklempt — Entangled Boundaries
Every year, during the Nine Days before Tisha B’Av, Jewish life quietly changes its rhythm. Music falls silent, celebrations are postponed, and among the most familiar customs is one that often surprises outsiders: many refrain from cutting their hair or shaving.
At first glance, the practice seems almost insignificant. Can mourning truly reside in a beard left untrimmed or in hair allowed to grow for a few days? Yet Judaism has rarely separated the smallest gestures of the body from the deepest questions of the soul. Hair belongs to that fragile frontier where biology, memory, identity and faith unexpectedly meet.
Throughout history, every civilization has legislated hair. Kings, priests, soldiers, monks, prisoners and mourners have all been recognized by it. Hairstyles change with fashion, but they also reveal authority, submission, rebellion or grief. The human head becomes a landscape upon which societies quietly write their values.
The Hebrew Bible speaks of the pe’ot (פאות), the corners left untouched. Rabbinic tradition transformed them into a visible sign that even the body possesses boundaries that should not simply be erased. Modern readers may see only an external custom, yet the custom raises a larger question: where do the visible limits of a human being end, and where do the invisible ones begin?
It is perhaps no coincidence that we now live in an age that delights in reducing everything into fragments. Knowledge is divided into ever smaller disciplines, human beings into statistics, identities into categories, and reality itself into measurable particles. We become experts at dividing without always remembering how to unite again.
That reflection gradually became my new Yiddish poem written.
צווישן צװײ פּאות שפּאַנט זיך אַ תחום
צעשערט מען זיך אױס דעם שכל אױף אַטאָמען,
פֿרעג דאָך ניט װאוּ דאָס האָר הײַבט זיך אָן,
װאוּ דער קאָפּ ענדיקט זיך,
די גאַנצע חכמה גלײַכט אַ שערערײַ,
מיר שנײַדן לאַנגע זאַכן אױף פּיצלעך ־ װי מיטן קינזשאַל.
הײַנט קוּרץ, מאָרגן קאַל, איבערמאָרגן,
בײַ עלות השחר ־ לאַנג ביז דער פּלײצע
תחתון ביז דיקע דיכעס,
Between Two Pe’ot a Boundary Is Stretched
Reason is shorn apart into atoms;
do not ask where the hair begins,
where the head comes to an end.
All wisdom resembles a barber’s craft.
We slice long things into tiny pieces—as with a dagger.
Today cropped short, tomorrow bald, the day after,
at dawn—long down to the shoulders,
lower still, into heavy curls.
Hair is never merely hair.
A child discovers it without thinking. A bride arranges it with joy. A mourner neglects it. A monk removes it. A prisoner loses it by force. Fashion celebrates it one season only to discard it the next. Yet beneath these changing appearances lies the same question: who decides what may be altered, and what must remain untouched?
The Jewish prohibition concerning the peyes is often misunderstood as a matter of appearance alone. It is more than appearance. It quietly reminds us that not everything belonging to a person is available for manipulation. Some limits are not imposed by fashion or politics but belong to the dignity of being human.
The boundary is no longer merely between one hairstyle and another. It has become the invisible frontier between freedom and conformity, between memory and forgetfulness, between what a society allows us to think and what it quietly teaches us never to ask.
צווישן צװײ פּאות שפּאַנט זיך אַ תחום,
די גדרות פֿון װאַנען אַ מענטש טאָר טראַכטן ־ אָדער ניט,
װער האָט געמאָסטן אונדזערע טעג,
װער האָט געצױגן די שנור
צװישן די שלײפֿן און דעם סכל אַלײן?
פֿון דעם דביר װאוּ קײנער קוּקט די רעשטלעך
גנעבֿן זיך אונטער די קלײַנע פֿיקסלעך ־
זײ לױפֿן אַריבער דעם מקום, פֿאַרשװינדן גיך, קודלאַטע
װען ס׳הערן לאַנג־געקװעטשטע געלעכטער.
Between Two Pe’ot a Boundary Is Stretched
Between two pe’ot a boundary is stretched:
the limits of where a person may think—or may not.
Who has measured our days?
Who has drawn the cord
between the sidelocks and reason itself?
From the Holy of Holies, where no one looks at what remains,
little foxes steal beneath the ruins.
They dart across the sacred place, curly-tailed,
disappearing whenever long-suppressed laughter is heard.
The image of the foxes wandering among the ruins of the Temple is ancient. The prophets already knew that once a sanctuary falls silent, nature quietly returns. The Talmud preserves the unforgettable moment when Rabbi Akiva sees foxes emerging from the Holy of Holies. While others weep, he bursts into laughters: destruction also makes the promise of restoration believable.
Meanwhile, human beings continue drawing their own boundaries.
Some are necessary. Every society lives by limits, laws and customs. Yet history repeatedly shows how easily legitimate boundaries become instruments of exclusion or humiliation. We classify, separate, regulate and measure until the person standing before us begins to disappear behind the category.
That is why the verses suddenly shift from gentle irony to something much darker.
די איבעריקע קרעכצן װי אַלע יאָר,
נײַן טעג, נײַן נעכט ־ אַ שװאַרצער ניגן פֿון קלאָג,
נאָר דער תלמיד־חכם זעט װי לעכערלעך שױן
דער מענטש באַשערט די גאַנצע װעלט אױף האָרן.
כ׳זאָג: איך בין דאָך צוריקגעקוּמען,
אַ פּאָר דורות שױן געשלאָסן ־ נאָר לוּפֿט־קורבנות
אַהינגעגאַנגען זײַנען װאוּ קײנע מקפּידים קענען פּילפּולן זיך ־
נאָר בלױז אַ מעסער פֿאַר אַ שטיקל ברױט ־
Between Two Pe’ot a Boundary Is Stretched
The others groan as every year:
Nine Days, nine nights—
a dark melody of lament.
Only the scholar perceives
how absurdly mankind now shears
the whole world down to hair.
I say:
I have indeed returned.
A few generations have already closed,
only sacrifices carried upon the air
have gone where no guardians of strictness
can any longer argue their pilpul –
only a knife for a piece of bread –
The twentieth century taught humanity that the body itself could become an object of administration.
Hair was shaved as names were forgotten.
Whether in Nazi concentration camps, in the Gulag, or in other systems that stripped people of their identity before stripping them of their freedom, the gesture was rarely about hygiene alone. It marked the passage from person to number, from neighboor to anonymous prisoner.
That temptation has not disappeared.
One need not draw historical equivalences to recognize familiar dangers. The faces that reach us today from Gaza, from southern Lebanon, from Sudan, from Ukraine, or from other places where war has dissolved ordinary life, remind us how quickly the individual disappears beneath statistics, military vocabulary or political slogans.
The poem refuses to answer politically. It simply returns to hair.
אַ טרער פֿאַר אַ חורבן,
גאָלן, ראַזירן, האַקן, אונטערשערן ־
ס׳בלײַבט ניט קײן שרונט אױף דער זײַטע.
אין די לאַגערן האָט מען פֿריזירט אָן טעם, אָן רחמנות ־
מען האָט געשױרן באַנאַלע שאַרבנס ־
און דאָס האָר איז געפֿלױגן אין זעק,
קײן תספּורת ניט.
דאָס האָר איז הײַנט געבליבן אַ סחורה, געװױגן, פּאַריקעס ־
שײטלעך…
Between Two Pe’ot a Boundary Is Stretched
A tear for the Destruction.
Shaving, razing, hacking, cropping—
not a single sidelock remains.
In the camps
they shaved without meaning, without mercy.
They shaved ordinary skulls,
and the hair flew into sacks.
This was no haircut.
Today hair has become merchandise:
weighed, bought, sold—
wigs…
sheitls…
There is another irony.
The same hair that may become a sign of mourning can also become an object of commerce. Fashion changes, industries flourish, and what once belonged to the body acquires a market value. The poem does not condemn this reality. It merely places it beside the memory of those from whom even the simplest signs of personhood were taken away.
Between those two worlds stretches another invisible boundary. It is not a legal boundary.
It is a human one. The Nine Days end as they began: not with certainty, but with questions.
Mourning is not meant to imprison the living within the past. It is meant to prevent them from repeating it.
פֿון װאַרענט קוּמט די תשובה? די מחילה?
צי ס׳איז בלױז געװאָרן אַ געװײנטלעכע דרך־ארץ?
װער פֿאַרגיט און פֿאַרגעסט? ־ מען לאָזט איבער אָדער צו.
קײנער װײַסט װאוּ מיר בלײַבן אין דער גורלדיקער שעה.
ניט קײן האָר װעט אַ מאָל געשױרן װערן ־ יעדעס איז שױן געצײלט געװאָרן
ניט קײן האָר װעט פֿאַלן ־ אָט אַזױ,
נאָר ס׳פֿאַלט, און ס׳פֿאַלט אין אָסיען.
אַ משגוגע אין אבלות שטײט אָפֿט נאָענט צו רציחה ־
Between Two Pe’ot a Boundary Is Stretched
From where does repentance come?
Where forgiveness?
Or has it become nothing more
than ordinary good manners?
Who forgives, and who forgets?
What is left open, what is closed?
No one knows where we shall remain
when the decisive hour arrives.
Not a single hair shall ever again be shorn—
each one has already been counted.
Not a single hair falls merely so.
Yet it falls, and falls into the oceans.
A madness in mourning
often stands dangerously close to murder.
There is a remarkable convergence here between Jewish and Christian Scripture.
Rabbinic tradition repeatedly insists that every human being bears the image of God and therefore cannot be reduced to an object, a category or a number. The Gospels express the same conviction with disarming simplicity: “Even the hairs of your head are all counted.”
The saying is not about arithmetic. It is about dignity.
A single hair has almost no value in itself. Yet if even that smallest part of a person is known before God, then no human life is ever insignificant. The sentence quietly overturns every political system, every bureaucracy and every ideology that begins by counting people without first seeing them.
און די פּאות דרײען, אפֿילו אָן האָר ־
מיט צװיי פֿינגער אין דער לופֿט.
מיר דרײען זיך, מיר דרײען זיך נאָך:
דער זיסער זאַנפֿטער צאָפּ פֿון אַ יונגער נאיִװער מײדל
און דער צי־צי אין דער האַנט פֿונעם מלאך־המװת ־
ער רוּפֿט אונדז, שרעקלאָס, מיט שטילער תנעװדיקײט: קוּם!
דערהאַלט די נשמה, ריכט און לעבט אױף!
Between Two Pe’ot a Boundary Is Stretched
And the pe’ot continue turning,
even without hair,
guided by two fingers
through empty air.
We continue to turn,
we continue still:
the gentle braid
of a young innocent girl,
and the “tsi-tsi”
held in the hand
of the Angel of Death.
He calls us,
without terror,
with quiet humility:
Come.
Hold fast to the soul.
Set it aright.
Live again.
Hair grows, is cut, falls away and returns. Civilizations, however, are judged by something less visible: whether they remember that beneath every custom, every law, every uniform, every prison, every refugee camp and every battlefield stands a human person whose dignity cannot be shaved away.
Yet the boundary that truly matters is the one no human hand can draw or erase: the boundary that protects the irreducible worth of every person created in the image of God. Yes, it does exist!
